A week of parties–Thanksgiving

This picture from my 365 Project sums it all up:

So, as I was saying in my last post before I got all caught up with Neely, Ann, and Jennifer (the dolls!!), this year Thanksgiving was celebrated at my little place in Long Beach. We ended up having 14 people, although one didn’t eat at the table with us because he is only 4 month old! I borrowed a table and many chairs from two different neighbors. One neighbor emptied out most of her refrigerator and freezer for me to use for the week. I also used a different neighbor’s oven for several dishes when we figured out that the turkey was sitting in an oven that had been turned off an hour earlier! Nothing like a little Thanksgiving turkey drama.
I made several copies of the dinner menu for guests to peruse before dinner.
My mother got many compliments from Tinu’s cousins about her cheese ball. We’ve all been making her recipe for years. It’s a family favorite.
She also got raves for a new recipe that she created – Blue Cheese Slaw. I am still trying to get the recipe from her. I hope she remembers how she made it. It was a HUGE hit and the first dish to be finished.
We added several dishes at the last minute so before we added them, we were afraid that we wouldn’t have enough food. Boy were we wrong. There were so many leftovers.
We made a 23 pound turkey – well, mostly Jessica and my mother made it. My father did the carving (by hand as he didn’t realize that I had put a electric carving knife right by him – oops! I guess he did it the same way the pilgrims probably did.)
I made chicken a la king using all leftovers but I adapted the recipe quite a bit so I am now calling it “Turkey a la Celine”. It was very yummy.
Another hit was my mother’s Out of This World Salad (which is actually in my Joys of Jello booklet!) She insisted on calling it Out of This World Jellied Salad. She makes it every year, usually serving it in a bowl. This year she gave her recipe to Karen, who made it in an original Jello mold. It turned out looking beautiful and tasty.
As usual, I was so busy that I didn’t take many pictures.  A few of these pictures were taken by Karen and my mom posted some on her blog. She was especially happy that we found mince pie for her so she posted quite a few pictures of pies. 

Here are a few pictures of the food and people enjoying it.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving too. My nephews are posing outside my door with a picture that they made for it in honor of our big turkey. Aren’t they so cute?
Whew…only one more party to go…stay tuned!