Thanksgiving--What a Crock!

This is our oven:



It's a good little toaster oven that has really come in handy.
The house actually came with a 16 inch rotisserie oven (for little chickens of course, a standard oven is 30 inches) but it didn't even work. So we ordered one and of course, idiots at the embassy messed up the order and then an idiot at ICE HQ in DC messed it up even further so we didn't have an oven in time for Thanksgiving which is fine because I'm inventive and I have a killer crock pot cookbook. I also have two large crock pots, one medium crock pot and 2 small crock pots...I like crock pots.

The Thanksgiving Menu:
(I was limited to what I could cook in a crock pot or in a toaster oven and microwave)

Turkey
Gravy
Aunt Theresa's Cranberry Sausage Stuffing
My mom's Onion Casserole (sounds gross but it's cheesy and yummy and I love it)
Church Potatoes (I refuse to call them funeral potatoes)
Rolls
Corn
Peas
Glazed Carrots
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Peach pie

Rolls were easy, send Kris to Costco to pick them up.

Next was finding everything I needed at the grocery store. I was way passed impressed that I found everything except bread cubes and hash brown potatoes (the diced kind but they didn't even have shredded and I'm not about to make my own at this point)

I made my own bread cubes for the stuffing, lay flat, dry overnight, easy enough:



The frozen diced hash brown potatoes (2 lbs was what I needed) on the other hand...well they did have french fries so I diced them...a 2 Kilo bag is a little over 2lbs but it works: (Oops, I mean a Kilo bag is a little over 2lbs...I hate the metric system)



The Turkey was easy, after thawing it I just cut off the legs, thighs and wings:



Put the breast on top of a bed of carrots and onions:



And a little over 10 hours later (I put it in at midnight and it was ready at about 11am):



The legs, thighs and wings didn't come out as pretty:



Another comment about the dark meat though. I cannot stand the stuff. (If we go to KFC or Popeyes we will only buy breasts.) I almost threw it all out before even cooking it but the frugal Fran in me said "just cook it and freeze it, you'll find use for it somewhere". So when the dark meat was done I notice that it was so tender and just fell off the bone. So I gave a piece of it to my cats...cuz I'm not about to touch the stuff. Out of curiosity and because I was starving I tried just a bit of it and was amazed at how non-greasy it was not to mention just an amazing flavor, nothing like the dark meat my mom has on her turkeys (sorry mom). So I yelled at Kris to come in and try it. He immediately said "NO WAY! You know I can't stand that stuff!" I told him to just trust me and try it. He did and he was also amazed and sat there eating it like he couldn't believe it was dark meat. So dark meat in the crock pot is what we will be doing from now on.

The turkey was very good. Problem was, the turkeys here aren't injected with brine so as strange as this sounds, the turkey was super moist but at the same time it was dry. (I know this makes no sense but you have to try it to understand how it could be both) Had I cooked it in the oven without flavor injecting it myself it would have been a disaster.

Another thing about crock pot turkey...makes the most incredible gravy EVER! Best gravy I have ever made and I'm not much of a gravy fan.

Everything else made it into the other crock pots:



An now the pies (which I made the day before so I could have the crock pots free for the rest of the stuff)

I thought I could easily make the filling in one of the small crock pots for the apple pie, the pumpkin filling would go into the medium one and the peach filling would be done on the stove top and finished off in the toaster oven. I made the crusts separately into individual sized rounds, baked them in the toaster oven like cookies and stacked them in a container until we needed them. To serve, grab a pie crust wafer like thing, top it with some pie filling, add another wafer (for the peach and apple pie), scoop of ice cream or whipped cream and VOILA! PUT-TOGETHER-PIE!

Kris was doubtful of my pie idea and bought 2 pumpkin pies from Costco "just in case"....yea, my pumpkin "put-together-pie" was so much better!

The finished pumpkin pie filling:



So where are all the pictures of us eating? Well, Jamison fell asleep while eating and I nodded off too completely forgetting to take pictures and barely touching my food (that's how tired I was). I told Kris I couldn't stay awake any longer and crawled into bed. When I woke up, Kris had done all of the dishes!!!! He is so awesome! So I sat down to my own plate of my Thanksgiving dinner while everyone else was enjoying pie. It was darn good! I'm still ticked I didn't get any pictures of the boys. Next year I'm doing things a bit differently so I'm not so exhausted during the actual eating part...reservations at the Marriott sounds good.