This year, my sister found a wonderful recipe in the Kansas City Star for a Herbed Roast Turkey With Gravy. Traditionally, our family’s turkeys have always been a bit bland and quite dry. Today, was a different story entirely. It was super moist, and both the meat and the gravy were much more flavorful.

My contribution was a super easy and very economical corn casserole recipe. It called for a can of whole kernel corn, a can of cream-style corn, 2 eggs, sour cream, a small package of Jiffy cornbread mix, and a stick of butter.

When I arrived at my parents’ house with my hot out-of-the-oven casserole, I discovered that my brother had also made a corn casserole. Fortunately, his was a little different than mine. It was very spicy, and definitely not for the faint of heart. Like my casserole, his had both the whole kernel corn and the cream-style corn. However, his did not have eggs, sour cream, or cornbread. Rather, he mixed in a can of chipotle peppers, shredded cheddar cheese, and crushed Cheez-its. Yes, I am talking about the cheese-flavored crackers that kiddos like! It turned out to be very spicy, indeed.

Because, both my mother and my sister are vegetarians, we had homemade vegetarian stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash,  and my mom’s family-favorite pea salad. It is just peas (frozen or canned) mixed with chopped celery, chopped dill pickles, a few thin slices of American cheese cut into tiny squares, and mayonnaise or Miracle Whip.

My nephew, who is nine, provided the place cards. He had made them as part of a project in school, where they learned about the origins of Thanksgiving Day. The cards are super simple to make. They are made from a piece of brown construction paper, folded length-wise. He glued a Bugle on the left side of each one, as well as some nuts and seeds, representing a cornucopia. Cute!

We finished off the dinner with two store-bought pies. We had one traditional pumpkin pie, and one apple caramel pie. What set these apart from other pre-packaged pies, was that we topped them off with Andy’s Frozen Custard in vanilla. Yum!  We thought about making our own version of Andy’s Pumpkin Pie Concretes, by chopping up the pie, and mixing it in with the vanilla frozen custard.  For those who are not aware, Andy’s announced on Twitter that the Pumpkin Pie Concrete would end for the season on the night before Thanksgiving. Never fear, their new holiday concretes start on Black Friday, and are Andy’s Nog, which I assume is their version of an eggnog flavored concrete, and Candy Cane.  Both sound wonderful!