thanksgiving philly style

i spent thanksgiving in philadelphia with b&d this year. i took the bus up on wednesday and came back to nyc just yesterday. we went over to d's friends' house. the center piece was the turducken, which turned out to be phenomenal. the fact that the birds were all pretty much deboned made it easy to serve. carving was not necessary. we just cut it into slices. the 10-pound turducken was accompanied by decadent gravy, tasty cranberry sauce, infallible apple-sausage-cranberry stuffing, scrumptious mac and cheese (i didn't try this since i don't like dairy, but i would totally have scarfed it otherwise), sweet butternut squash, savory mashed potatoes, and garlicky collards.

after only one plateful, i had to take a break. while vegging in front of the television, i managed to make two more trips back to the delicious smorgasborg. after we watched the dallas cowboys slaughter the new york jets, we played apples to apples. it's sort of a word game where you match nouns to adjectives. like "hopeless" to "republican" or "ludicrous" to "tom cruise". during the game, we dug into an awesome pumpkin pie and a sugary cherry pie.

i have to admit, as much labor that goes into cooking such a grand meal, the result is definitely worth the hard work. i miss leftovers, not wanting to travel with tubs of food on the bus. luckily, there's still pumpkin pie in my fridge, from our trial run of the pie...not that it'll last much longer in there!