Thanksgiving Day Baking
This year for Thanksgiving, we spent it at Maumee Bay. Maumee Bay is a family friendly resort on Lake Erie. They have the main lodge which has a heated indoor pool, soft play area for kids, lots of places to sit and relax, lots of windows, fireplaces, and a restaurant. There is a campground there and cottages and a nature center and nature trails. We have spent many weekends there with my parents. This year, we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving at Maumee Bay and we stayed in a cottage. My parents stayed in the main lodge.
I agreed to do all the baking for Thanksgiving Day.
So, Tuesday night of Thanksgiving week, after a long PTO meeting, at 8pm I started baking.
I made a chocolate chip pumpkin bread, regular pumpkin bread, a pumpkin pie, and got those started in the double oven. While those were baking, I cut up the apples for the apple pie. I prepared the apple pie, and a pecan pie. While the apple pie and pecan pie were baking, I made the Make-Ahead Breakfast Casserole.
Wednesday, I got off work a little early to start packing everything. We got to Maumee Bay around 9pm. Unloaded everything into the cottage. The kids were so excited and started exploring right away. My parents watched the kids while Trish and I went to Meijer to get some groceries for the week.
Thanksgiving Day - I started with the Breakfast Casserole. My parents came over and joined us for breakfast. After breakfast, my parents had some errands to run and I started baking.
I made the sweet potatoes first. Then I made the mashed potatoes. The kids loved the mashed potatoes. Trish likes sweet potatoes. Then I made the Broccoli Cheese Casserole. Then I made some stuffing which I was missing half the ingredients for.
The mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes were a Betty Crocker recipe that just involved mashing the potatoes and adding a little butter and salt. The Broccoli-Cheese Casserole from Cook's Illustrated was really good and I posted that in a separate blog entry. The recipe I used for the stuffing didn't turn out very well. I will need to try another stuffing recipe at some time.
We had pre-ordered some turkey from Honey Baked Ham. I had everything ready around 3pm. However, everyone had finished a light lunch, so I kept everything warm until around 4:30/5ish.
We had turkey. We had mashed potatoes. We had sweet potatoes. We had broccoli cheese casserole. We did have some stuffing even though that didn't turn out very well. Then later on we had some pie.
We had enough leftover turkey, sides, and desserts that lasted us for several more meals over the next several days.
Then, every morning, I made breakfast for everyone at the cottage including my parents. I made turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, and homemade pancakes.
It was a great Thanksgiving.
