Thanksgiving Part II: Wild Mushroom Bacon Stuffing

This was my favorite dish of Thanksgiving, and I don't usually even like stuffing! We didn't stuff the turkey at all, just made a separate dish since most of us prefer a crispy-topped stuffing. This was the first leftover to be devoured (cold, with spoons, directly out of the baking dish) the next day. That's how good it is.

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Thanksgiving Part I: Citrus-Herb Roasted Turkey

Well this is embarrassing... all my previous lapses in posting are nothing compared to this one! So let's catch up. My summer was great. The Mediterranean cruise was unbelievable (picture from Cannes to the right) and our new house is all we ever wanted. We attended five beautiful weddings this year, ending the wedding season at the beginning of November with one of my best friend from college's rustic carriage house wedding. Oh, I also turned 30, but we can gloss right over that one.

This fall my parents visited from Connecticut for Thanksgiving, which was held at my house with my sister and brother-in-law also in attendance. It was my first Thanksgiving! (If you don't count the time in college my family visited me and cooked a meal in my dingy college apartment while I was at work) The meal turned out so well that it inspired me to pick up the keyboard and type up a few blog posts about it. My mom and sister helped tremendously and we all had a great time cooking together while the boys built a bonfire out back.

First, let's focus on the main event: the turkey! I picked up a fresh 16 lb hen from Maple Lawn farms, which happens to be just a few miles from my house.

Because of its freshness I decided against brining, but I definitely would have brined if I had gotten a store-bought turkey. The recipe is Giada's, but the real expertise came from my mom who has years of turkey-perfecting practice.

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