How to Crash and Burn a Thanksgiving Dinner

We were going to be traveling the day after Thanksgiving and we've been a tad bit busy, so Bill said to keep the meal low key.


Menu plan:
Turkey
Green Beans
Salad
Rolls
Dessert


Why:
I was going to make just a boneless turkey breast, but the grocery special was for a full turkey, so that's what I got.
Fresh green beans are easy.
Salad is light and I found a great recipe that sounded perfect for a Thanksgiving meal.
Hey, I'm not that much a rebel. Rolls are on the menu.
The whole meal was planned around the turkey and the dessert, apple dumplings.


How to:
The turkey was delicious. I keep it simple. Basted with butter, seasoned with salt and pepper. Yum!
How can one go wrong with green beans. Only I would have eaten green bean casserole.
I'm skipping to the rolls. Audrey's only request was Rosemary Rolls. The store was all out of frozen roll dough, so I made the dough the day before hand. Drape raised dough with melted butter, fresh chopped rosemary, sea salt and more butter.
The salad. It was Maple Roasted Butternut Squash with Apple Cider Vinaigrette. It was delicious. The vinaigrette was homemade. Chopped butternut is tossed with olive oil and maple syrup then roasted. Toast some walnuts then toss it altogether with some fresh parmesan. It was delicious. Amanda , you would love this salad! 
I'll move on to dessert. I found a recipe for apple dumplings. Sliced apples are wrapped in crescent dough. A "sauce" made of butter, sugar and cinnamon and poured over the apples. Mt. Dew tops it all off. Please serve this with ice cream because you need something to cut through it all. 


Verdict:
I thought it was all delicious. I nearly had a slight heart attack with all the sugar and butter in the dessert, but it was still really good.
The rolls, turkey and green beans were slammed down by my family.
My salad? Well, we were talking about what we wanted for Christmas and Ben said he wanted something that would eat his salad for him!
The next day we were talking with Bill's brother and sister-in-law and Tia asked what kind of pies I made. I said none. I did not make any pies this year. A hush fell over the conversation. It was like they were all mourning the loss of an unmade, unbaked, uneaten pie. 
I also did not make any potatoes or gravy of any kind. Nor any cranberry sauce or stuffing. I do not know that my father-in-law will return for quite some time to our house for Thanksgiving. 


I do know that I didn't spend all day cooking. I didn't have to manage keeping potatoes hot while whisking gravy. I didn't have a pile of dishes so high that it was time to eat again when we were done. I also know that we had a home-cooked meal, we had plenty to eat, even if we didn't like all of it, and we were together.