Happy Thanksgiving...

Belated Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Yesterday was thanksgiving and we hosted our very first thanksgiving feast at our humble abode. Mr. L and I really had a great time with my in-laws. Mr. L and I were really looking forward to it. We made sure we had everything we needed from plates, stemware, flatware, table cloth, napkins, napkin rings and of course food and drinks, etc.

Plastic cups and paper plates were not going to cut it this time that just seems so juvenile for this occasion. I can almost hear my dear mother talking in my ear; she’s not a big fan of using plastic cups and plastic cutlery. She thinks that you might as well go the extra mile in getting glass stemware since they usually sell affordable ones anyway and you can always reuse them.

As you know, I’m very OC (obsessive compulsive) and a perfectionist to a fault so I really wanted to make sure we were prepared for this event. We’ve a made a list of things we needed several weeks ago and we just seem to keep updating it every weekend until the culmination of this event. Lol, every other weekend we would check our list, check off our list and would end up revising it anyway making sure we have all of our bases covered. We collected all of the coupons that we received in the mail. We hopped from one store to another (from Target, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart and Bed, Bath and Beyond) to get the best deals for the items that we needed.

Since we don’t celebrate thanksgiving in Manila and I really never bring anything but my fabulous self (lol), an empty stomach and bottle of wine (to keep me in a festive mood the whole day) to the ones I’ve attended and my in-laws hosted in the past. Needless to say, I really don’t have a clue what to cook for thanksgiving. Of course I do know the basic ones that we definitely must have like--- a turkey, a pasta/lasagna dish (since my in-laws are of Italian descent), chips and dip, cranberry sauce, stuffing (which I do not have a clue how to make) and side dishes. So I was starting to stress out and was panicking a bit about it because I’ve never really cooked for so many people before, never roasted a turkey and I don’t have any idea on what side dishes to prepare and I didn’t want to serve a mediocre dish I wanted our dishes to be the best there is… well according to my own standards that is lol.

Thank God, I found this cookbook last month as we were checking out of A&P. There are a lot of good recipes on here to prepare for thanksgiving. One weekend, Mr. L and I went through the whole cookbook to decide which dishes we were going to prepare for our feast. It was tough deciding which ones we wanted to prepare lol.

So here’s our menu (most of the dishes we got from this cookbook):
Chips and Dip
Meat Lasagna (recipe c/o my mother dearest)

Creamed Peas and Carrots

Celebration Green Beans

Sweet Potato Casserole

Mashed Potatoes

Ultimate Macaroni N’ Cheese with Bacon (Mr. L found this online and “cooked” it)

Apple Walnut Sausage Stuffing

Turkey

Gravy (made by my SIL)

Cranberry Sauce (straight out of the can lol)

Deluxe Pumpkin Cheesecake

Apple Pie (made by Tony)

Pumpkin Pie (Tony's present for my BIL---brother-in-law)

Drinks: Wine and Soda

Of course since I’ve never roasted turkey in my whole entire life, I’ve asked Mr. L to ask my SIL (sister-in-law), Jamie and her boyfriend Tony to make the turkey for us and the gravy too. My MIL (mother-in-law), gave us the free 20 lbs. turkey that she got from Pathmark.

So the weekend before thanksgiving, I prepared a list of things that we needed to get at the grocery (Shop-Rite) and list of things that we should get from our local farmer’s market the day before to ensure that our produce will still be fresh for thanksgiving.

I also asked Mr. L to ask my SIL and Tony what we can make ahead of time because I don’t want to go crazy on the day of thanksgiving. They told us that we can make the lasagna ahead of time and just starting prepping the ingredients for all of the side dishes.

Over the weekend, Mr. L and I cleaned our place top to bottom making sure that it was spick-and-span.

On Tuesday night, I worked on my lasagna.

Wednesday night, I worked on my Deluxe Pumpkin Cheesecake. Mr. L washed our dog and cleaned the bathroom. I put all of our dishes, serving plates, glasses and wine glasses in our dish washer and changed the table cloth. Mr. L and I started prepping for ingredients for the big event and ended up staying up until 4 am lol.

Our dining table (the night before):


Table setting (the night before...without the cutlery):


Our service table:



Thanksgiving Day: Mr. L and I woke up so early because my SIL, MIL and Tony, were coming early to help us cook. Mr. L bought bagels at the Dunkin Donuts across the street and made coffee too. The next thing I remember, my SIL and Tony started cooking the turkey and everything lol. Thank God, we prepped all of the ingredients earlier so at least all my SIL and Tony had to do was cook everything. Thank God for both of them (SIL and Tony) --- they made everything lol. Mr. L “cooked” his Ultimate Mac’ N’ Cheese (with the supervision of my SIL and Tony of course).

Mr. L making his Ultimate Mac N' Cheese with Bacon with my SIL and Tony:


Our Thanksgiving Spread:
We used paper plates for the lasagna :)...

Our 20 lbs. turkey:


My SIL bought us presents: Poinsettia & my birtday card with an Express gift card :)

It was truly a beautiful thanksgiving for us. Although, our life may not be as “perfect” as others have it I honestly believe our life is perfect in its own special way. We definitely have a lot to be thankful for --- everything that God had bestowed us this year ---good, bad and the somewhere in betweens. It’s the not so perfect things, perfect and imperfect things that makes our whole unit a family. A lot may seem different from we had last year and we may not have what we want but at least we have everything we need. It’s also the simple things that you see around you the make your heart and soul happy. What a difference a year makes…the best is yet to come.

Happy Thanksgiving Y’All!

Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum NYC

Mr. L’s was on his long awaited week-long vacation last week and so we decided to visit Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in the city. This summer we have decided to stay local since we wanted to save all the money that we could and besides we’ve always wanted to dedicate one week to see the different sights and tourist attractions in NY before it gets really cold. There are just so many places to visit and experience in NY. I actually have a long list of places to visit and we aren’t even half way through lol and to think I’ve been living here for almost 4 years already. Imagine what it would be like for Mr. L living here his whole entire life and haven’t had the chance to explore the Big Apple completely. Ha! Shame, on you Mr. L!

I remember when I first moved here, I told Mr. L’s best friend Dan that I will dedicate one year (ha, imagine that one year) to visit all of the sights and tourist attractions in NY. He told me that it will take me more than a year to do so because there are just so many places to visit and see. In my mind, I kind of challenged the possibility of seeing everything that needed to be seen in NY in one year. And guess what? Of course, I have to admit I failed miserably! Yes, there are just so many places to see here and there are a lot of factors that hindered me from accomplishing my goal such as the daily grind of living in the US (household duties); events, birthdays and holidays to be spent with family and friends; being strapped for cash since entry to these places can get really costly; weather conditions (extremely cold and snow) and just for the simple reason that we all get lazy and a lot of us especially those that have been living here all of their lives simply neglect the opportunity to enjoy this wonderful city.

Yes, believe you me a lot of the locals here have yet to experience the greatest sights and sceneries in NY. Shame on you! I personally feel competitive when I see some of my friends that don’t live here visiting places in NY that I haven’t set foot in. Ha, if they’ve been there I have to be there because we live here! Why can’t we enjoy the same experiences? This is what prompted me to create a small list of places to visit in NY but I find myself adding to the list as the years go by. The more local I become the more I realize that there are still a lot more to be added to my list and so the adventure continues.

It was our first time to visit the Wax Museum and we were both equally excited to see it. There are just so many to see ranging from famous personalities --- actors and actresses; politicians; singers and band members and athletes… ah the list just goes on. We were also able to enjoy walking around their horror section (which was really scary, you can even ask Mr. L) and watching a 3D movie, "SpongeBob arrives in Jellyfish fields” (this was really cute a lot of bubbles and you can really smell the pickles ah you’ll understand me more when you visit).

One thing that was really a funny experience from the visiting the museum was when we were waiting for our turn to take a picture with NSync. We were patiently waiting for this Asian woman to finish her turn to take a photo of NSync. Both Mr. L and I and another couple were kind of getting impatient with her and wondering how perfect she wanted this picture of NSync to be because she’s been standing there for quite some time with her camera focused on NSync. So there we were (Mr. L and I and the other couple) waiting and waiting for her like the stupid fools that we were. And then it hit all of us (Mr. L and I and the other couple) that this girl was actually made of wax lol we just all stared at each other and laughed hysterically. I wish we took a picture of this figure from another angle because she looked real lol.

There’s just so many to see and unfortunately I can’t upload all of the pictures that we took and besides my pictures will do no justice to such a great experience. But it was definitely worth it and both Mr. L and I enjoyed our visit. Before we left, we bought magnets of course to add to our collection. Here’s one magnet we bought which is actually a photo of Mr. L and I with President Obama’s wax figure lol. It’s really blurry because I took a photo of it using my phone.

I’m glad we visited the Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. We can definitely remove this from our long list of places to visit.

Here’s their website:
http://www.madametussauds.com/NewYork/Default.aspx