My first Gluten and Dairy Free Thanksgiving SUCCESS!

Well, Thanksgiving meal was an overall success. Unfortunately, I was only cooking for 3 people so we have a TON of leftovers! Yet, I would say that nothing I made was awful and everything was edible and tasty! There were a couple of things that I would change in most of the recipes if I made them again though. I accomplished my goal of a dairy and gluten free (except the special stuffing I made for Brett, my brother)! I did not stick to making everything egg free or sugar free. This was honestly due to the fact that I was really sick of going to the grocery store! Almost everything was sweetened with a natural sweetener such as agave or sucanat though.

After my kick-butt workout/bootcamp in the morning with Jerome, I came home and I ended up spending almost the full day on Thursday in the kitchen cooking. Of course there was one trip to the grocery store on Thanksgiving day to top off the I believe 5 total trips for this one meal. Luckily though I had my sous-chef in the kitchen with me on Thursday! He was definitely very excited about the whole process (as you can tell!) We had a lot of fun cooking and of course joking around!

Obviously, Thanksgiving was not a day that I was concious of my diet! I pretty much just snaked all day though and then overinduldged when we finally sat down to eat! It was definitely a carb loading day!!

I was excited about making everything from scratch though. I did not use anything canned or fake. Everything was all-natural and fresh. I even roasted my own pumpkins for the pie and all the other dessert pumpkin dishes I made. They were definitely tasty! Although it wasn't exactly easy to "gut" the pumpkin and take all the seeds and junk out. It took me forever and was a second shoulder workout for the day! I shouldn't switched arms halfway through to even it out.

Of course we couldn't cook the meal without our aprons. It is a tradition that whenever my dad and I cook together (which is usually for a holiday) we always wear one of my mom's aprons. Except we always have the wrong holiday on! Well, for Thanksgiving we had the Christmas aprons on. I mean after all in their house the Thanksgiving decorations usually come down that day and the Christmas ones start going up, so we were just getting a head start on the next holiday! ;)

I think I must have peeled a million potatos between the potatos to make the mashed potatos and the sweet potatos! My shoulders got a serious workout for Thanksgiving! Maybe I should start a cooking workout routine/video.....hmmm.....the ideas!

I love cooking with my sous-chef, my daddy! We always have so much fun! Also, I am sorta a messy cook. Ok, to save all the comments that I know will come from that, I am a REALLY messy cook. I some how find a way to get stuff everywhere including all over me! Plus, I am slightly ADD so I am always doing a million things at once, so there is always 1,000 things out and going.

As much fun as I have cooking, I HATE to clean! So it is definitely nice to have my personal dishwasher/helper putter away of things!

Thank you Daddy! I love you! :)

My dad is totally goofy! It is very rare you can catch him for a picture without him doing something silly! This was him being very sophisticated adding the butter to the mashed potatos! He did definitely did a fabulous job! Although, he couldn't quite figure out just how to put his apron on properly!

The only major problems I had were with the desserts. On Wednesday night I was trying to put together as much as I could to make the next day easier. I decided to make the Pumpkin Cinnamon Cheesecake (Gluten free and dairy free of course) so that it would be chilled for the next day. Well, the recipe called for it to be baked for 45-50 minutes. Well due to the fact that I had to make some of the substitions in the recipe to make it dairy free and didn't even get my first choice at what to use for a substitution, I don't think it cooked the same. I cooked it for 45 minutes and I went to check on it to see how it was doing and it was still pretty much liquid. I didn't really know what to do so I just cooked it longer and longer and longer. Probably not the smartest decision, but hey by this time it was already past 11 and I knew I had to get up early to get my butt kicked and then cook the whole next day!

So anyway when it was all said and done I was up until 12:30 an night waiting for this cheesecake to cook. Needless to say it definitely did not turn our quite as I had hoped or planned. I still think it tasted alright and was definitely edible and sweet, yet the presentation wasn't the best! Oh well, better luck next time! Next time I will use a better substitution for the dairy.

We decided to do the turkey in the bag to make it easier and faster. And boy did it turn out yummy! My dad thought that there were going to be a lot of leftovers that went to waste or that we would have to freeze, but I have been eating leftover turkey all week and it is delicious and almost gone!

This picture to the right is the only picture that I could get of Brett! He isn't much of a picture taker or a smiler! But at least I got this one however accidental it was!

Overall, Thanksgiving 2009 was excellent! I really enjoyed and am so thankful for all of the yummy food and the time with my Dad and brother. I am very thankful for all the amazing blessings the Lord has given me! Happy Thanksgiving! :)