my first Thanksgiving

This year, I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time.  It was a small affair - just my husband, my mom, my dad, and I.  I think it was good that my first time hosting was small - made the cooking more manageable! I made turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and roasted zucchini/squash/onions, as well as fruit tartlets and brownies for dessert.  I started the food prep on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the mashed potatoes were mostly ready to go by Wednesday evening (just needed 45 minutes in the oven).

Thursday morning I woke up in time to go for a 4 mile run before I had to get started.  I think I was most nervous about the turkey, since I had never cooked one before.

I used a really basic recipe, and basically just covered the turkey in a mixture of olive oil and herbs and popped it in the oven around 10am.  Then it was time to start chopping a million veggies - luckily my parents were bored and willing to help with that, so I was able to get started on the stuffing recipe.

I hadn't cooked mushrooms in a while, and oh my gosh, I forgot how delicious cooked mushrooms smell.  YUM!  After abour 3 1/2 hours, the turkey was ready and I was able to put the stuffing and mashed potatoes into the oven.  After that, I roasted some veggies in the oven and made green beans on the stove, and by 3pm, here's what we had:

Turkey, green beans, stuffing, and mashed potatoes (not picture: roasted vegetables, store bought bread, and store bought cranberry jelly).  YUM.  And now all together:

Everything was delicious, but I think the stuffing was my absolute favorite.  I highly recommend it.   The roasted zucchini/squash dish was my second favorite, although we left out the mushrooms - the poultry sauce really brought out all the flavors!  After we ate, we settled into to WATCH THE REDSKINS WIN (so amazing), and then watch the Pats win too (also good, but less thrilling).  We had some of these for dessert:

They were good, but I just REALLY wanted pumpkin pie, so we ran out to the store and bought some later.  Oops!  So, overall my first Thanksgiving was great - I'm no longer afraid of cooking a turkey, and I definitely will make the stuffing and roasted vegetable recipe again some time... delicious!
How was your Thanksgiving?  Did you have to cook anything?  What was your favorite dish?