I have to confess that I'm the one responsible for most of the side dishes and dessert. Hubby takes care of the bird; he always has. We use the recipe found in the Better Home & Garden New Cookbook; it includes a recipe for stuffing (which I never used to like until the first time that we had a Thanksgiving dinner), and it has yet to fail us. We had a VERY juicy and tender bird this year, and I'm pretty stoked about making the turkey and corn chowder later with the leftovers.
I made my very first yam dish for our Thanksgiving dinner, and it turned out very well. Very filling, and sweet (almost like dessert). The pecan topping definitely added to the dish, and the yams were very light and fluffy. I think if I were to make it again, I would probably go easy on the brown sugar, as it was both in the yams and in the topping. Not that anyone was really complaining, because the dish was half finished by the time everyone had their fill. I also made mashed potatoes, as this is something that has always been made at my family's dinners as well as my hubby's. I'm not sure which side I land on when it comes to potatoes or yams, but if we host again, I'll probably make both. Maybe it'll spark a new tradition!
Finally, Thanksgiving just doesn't feel like Thanksgiving without some kind of pie. Since I've never been a fan of pumpkin pie, I use a cheater apple pie recipe. It looks more like a tart, because it doesn't have a cover, but it is still very tasty and relatively easy to make. I used to be completely terrified of making pastry dough because it is really easy to mess up, but once I started making it myself, it turned out to be not so bad.
I have uploaded recipes for some of this week's meals, and they can be found under "Recipes". Hover your mouse over "Recipes", and you will see the categories that I have added. You can click on the respective pages to see a short piece on each recipe and a link to download it to your computer. Happy cooking!