No pressure....

I mentioned in my previous post about being a little stressed about Thanksgiving. So, I thought I'd share with you the source of my stress. Since Steven and I got married, our Thanksgiving tradition is to have lunch with his family and then either later that day or on Friday, we get together with my family for a couple of days. Now when I came into my husband's family, they had a pretty well established Thanksgiving routine, meaning this person always makes this and this person always makes that. So the first year of our marriage, when I asked what I could bring, the response was something like why don't you just bring a dessert. So over the past 5 years, I have taken my role as the dessert maker very seriously. I have done my best to make a variety because for some strange reason, not everyone loves pumpkin flavored desserts!
How un-thanksgiving!
Anyway, last week, Steven tells me that he is getting a free turkey from his bus driving job. He calls his brother to see if they have bought a turkey yet. He tells Steven that they haven't and then he asks Steven, "why don't y'all just cook the turkey?" And Steven says, "sure WE'LL do that."
Y'all...even though my sweet husband used the personal pronoun WE, it really means SHE!

OMW!!! I just went from being the dessert maker to the turkey cooker, HOLY COW!

And since the free turkey isn't big enough to feed everyone, I'll actually be cooking two.
I've been a little freaked out by this responsibility. I've called my mom, been reading all kinds of websites, talking to complete strangers and did y'all know that there are about a million different ways to cook a turkey? To brine or not to brine, baste every 30 minutes to don't open the oven at all, rub butter under the skin to don't put anything on the skin...blah..bla..gooble..gooble..gooble! The sweet little lady in Wally World told me (yes, I told you I asked complete strangers!)that she completely wraps the turkey in aluminum foil and cooks it all night! But did you know that the FDA doesn't recommend cooking turkeys at a low heat for long periods of time because of the possibility of bacterial growth?
You can see my dilemma, I've over educated myself on this!
So tomorrow, I'm going to go ahead and cook our two turkeys. I'm doing it early for 2 reasons, we have to be at the in-laws around 11am so if I waited til Thursday, I'd have to start cooking ridiculously early. Secondly, if I totally mess them up tomorrow, I have time for a do-over!!!

At this point, I don't think I'm going to ask for any of your advice. It would probably do more harm than good. If you think about it, say a little prayer for me. And I guess if things go really bad, we could always just show up with some packets of ketchup.

Hope you have a very blessed Thanksgiving!
Love Y'all!