Friendsgiving 2012

My roommate, Amanda,  and I hosted our very first Friendsgiving this year. While my family has never been really traditional with Thanksgiving, we wanted to do something fun before everyone headed home for Thanksgiving Break. We managed to scrap together a whole feast of food this morning with only a couple days of preparation. We had a lot of help from some good friends, and over all it was one of the best things I've done this semester. :)

This was the menu for this afternoon. Finalizing the menu was the hardest thing, because my roommate and I just weren't sure what we were going to serve. You could very well say Amanda and I are practically vegetarians. It's not like we don't like meat, we just don't like dealing with raw meat at all. But you can't have proper Thanksgiving without some form of poultry, so I sucked it up and made some. 

While a lot of the things there I've made before (like the salad and the Apfelschorle), I've never in my life cooked chicken by myself! We literally slathered our raw chicken with mayo, and sprinkled a Parmesan herb packet over all the chicken.  Surprisingly it was a hit, and my parents are so excited for me to make it for them.  

Amanda was in charge of the stuffing and the corn and green beans. My friend Monica, who was my suitemate for the last two years, made the Crab and Corn soup. Victoria, another good friend, made the sweet potatoes. And I was in charge of the salad. 

Angela, who has been in almost every lab with me since the freshmen year of college, and I had the best time naming the salad. Although the salad took five seconds to make, we named it 

A Pomegranate, Dried Cranberry, and Spinach salad lightly tossed with Balsamic Vinaigrette infused with fresh Pomegranate Juice. 

Needless to say, it was one of the best salads I've ever made. The spinach was very fresh, and combined with the Balsamic Vinaigrette that Monica had hastily made, it was delicious.

 I think the funniest thing was that we didn't actually have turkey at a Thanksgiving  Feast. To make up for it, we had so many fake turkeys to make up for it. We had paper turkey centerpieces, turkeys to tape on the wall, jelly turkeys on our dorm door..  Each guest who came to the party got a hand drawn turkey as well. We had them personalized with everyone's names.

We had finished making, eating, and cleaning everything by 3 in the afternoon. After which, everyone had left to go back to their scholarly duties. Unfortunately the cooking, the cleaning, and the hosting was getting to me, and I was just about to pass out, but I had to get some stuff done too. Angela, Amanda and I started our next big holiday celebration-- Christmas. While we've come up with some silly plans, (Blingmas) I'm so glad I've got a great group of friends to do all of this silly stuff with. For that, I am very grateful. (Oh gosh, that's so cheesy!) Anyway, one tall iced peppermint mocha (see what I did there?) and a beautiful sky later, Friendsgiving had past, but with the promise of many more to come. 

I hope everyone has a good weekend! :)

-- Sheilly 

((Pictures courtesy of Amanda, Angela, and yours truly. <3))