A Yankee does Southern Style Thanksgiving

In 13 years of marriage, I have never hosted a family Thanksgiving dinner in our home before this year. I've cooked a couple turkeys at the grandma's houses, and once 10 years ago I made a turkey dinner 2 weeks before Thanksgiving for our then small fam and a couple single sailors when my husband was going to be deployed on the real Thanksgiving. So when my little brother and his family said they would drive a really long way to spend Thanksgiving with us, I got a little excited.  Wanted to do something special, so decided to try to prepare some Southern delicacies, even if I'm not sure if I really like them.

So we had turducken (note to self: buy a meat thermometer instead of cooking 10 hours to make sure everything is dead):

Collard greens sauteed in bacon grease (note to self: grits are good with butter and cheese, but not on your collards.)

Cornbread oyster stuffing (I think my proportions were a little off; or it's obvious that I like cornbread  better than oysters):

Of course we also had the staples: mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (yellow and white mixed together), green bean casserole, clover leaf rolls, and cranberry relish and sauce. My kids and husband all like these terrible cinnamon apple rings that are only in stores this time of year, so we had those, too. But the best part of the meal were the pies: sweet potato, pumpkin, Jefferson Davis (a meringue topped confection with a cream, raisin, pecan and brown sugar filling), and a most scrumptious buttermilk pie.

We had to take a couple of walks after all the sugar.  Good excuse to try out the macro on my new camera.

Someone really enjoyed the leftovers.