Why helllooooo! How was everyone’s long Thanksgiving weekend? I hope it was filled with tummy-stretching eats and perhaps some great shopping steals 
Me, on the other hand, well I’ve had to work 3 of the 4 days off. Grrr. 
I’m not a happy camper about this as you can tell. But at the very least, it will bolster the checking account and make me feel less guilty for the knee-high black boots I purchased on Friday..hehe.
So back to The Big Day (aka Thanksgiving). Did I mention it’s my favorite holiday? Anything that is all about eating, drinking and socializing all day is a huge WIN for me. The day started with a fab 60 minute cardio workout followed by some ab work. This was my meager attempts at thwarting the insane amount of calories I had planned on eating later.
Prior to the workout I made two pumpkin pies: 1 with crust and 1 without. The crusty one was for the T-day festivities and the crustless one was all for meeeee! Yes, I get my own pumpkin pie every year, and frankly I’d rather have all pumpkin and no crust, but a huge helping of whipped cream. Oh yes. Gluttony at its finest.
We were off to our friends house by around 2p with Naava in tow. Her two boyfriends were waiting for her:
Schafer and Oscar (pic stolen from Kevin's FB)
If you think these two look big in the picture, you should see them in person. They’re awesomely ginormous Naava looks like a pipsqueak in comparison:
The Naavster
Needless to say Naava was a little overwhelmed but had a blast.
Okay now onto the food 
I was very slim on photo-taking because I was too busy stuffing my face socializing.
Appetizers included:
- Jarlsberg Cheese
- Chevre Cheese with Herbs
- TJ’s “Everything” crackers
- Rosemary Lemon Roasted Chickpeas
- Beer Bread with jalapeno/cheese center
- VINO!
- Rob’s Special Sangria
- Kevin’s Homemade Beer
I’ll share the chickpea recipe in another post, but I have to say the star of the apps was Kevin’s cheesey, jalapeno bread. It was perfection I must learn how to recreate (hint, hint Kevin).
The main meal included:
- Deep fried turkey — oh yeah! (ps don’t let this happen to your turkey (below))
-
My hubby's turkey fry demo for his engineering job. Huge fireball!
- Stuffing
- Green bean casserole (heavy on the beans)
- More bread
- Sweet taters with marshmallows
That's some good lookin' turkey
Did you know turkey skin tastes good?
The spread (notice the coconut sweet potato pie and the crack pie in the background)
My plate (x 1.5)
And, dessert, well dessert kicked my @ss. Exit Shanna, enter fat kid. Here was what was on the menu:
- Pumpkin pie
- Sweet potato coconut pie (Mark Bittman)
- Crack pie
- Deep dish pecan pie
- Apple pie
Apple and deep dish pecan pie
So yes, 5 pies for 6 people, but 1 person doesn’t eat dessert therefore it was 1 for 1. And it was ON! I had 7 slices. Yes friends S-E-V-E-N! The breakdown was something like 2 pieces crack pie, 2 sweet potato, 2 pecan, 1 apple (who needs to waste room on pumpkin when I had a full one at home!).
Ugh. Word of advice: don’t eat 7 slices of pie. Really, don’t. They were tasty but I immediately felt like crap-ola and was soon sippin’ on peppermint tea.
After crashing at 11p, I awoke at 2a only to be violently ill for the next hour. Not fun. This was a first for me to get ill purely on over-eating. I don’t know if I should be proud of myself or sickened by my ability to pack it in
Funny thing is that I didn’t feel that guilty. I got a great cardio workout in on Friday, did a schweaty Bikram class on Saturday, and did cardio/weights on Sunday so I feel back on track. Booyah!
Have you ever had deep fried turkey?
How many pieces of pie (or dessert) did you have? (Come ‘on make me feel better and say you had 8..haha)
