Food Glorious Food

I never remember JUST how much I love cooking for a crowd until I get to again. My roll this thanksgiving week is to be the cook. We're visiting my sister in AZ, while she's stuck here on her internship. It's awesome being all together: Dad, Mom, Kris, Brian, Jamie, Me, Matthew and Markie all together for a whole week! It's wonderful. Before coming down here, Kris requested items and approved a menu for me to put into motion once we got here.

So far I've made:
-crockpot apple pie,
-my friend Trela's breakfast casserole,
-crockpot barbecue chicken with homemade fries and broc and peach cobbler
-stew (with separate pots for the meat, peas and onions to please everyone) with wanna-be apple pie muffins (which were a huge hit!)
-tonight will be red pasta bake that I invented last week
-tomorrow is ham and homemade mac-cheese
-thursday is our Thanksgiving spread of course with me handling everything besides the turkey. Brian takes care of this. Then there will be stuffing, rolls, three kinds of green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato souffle, pumpkin pie, apple pie, chocolate pie.... and hopefully I'm not forgetting anything, though I do have the approved menu across the room.
-Friday and Saturday I'll be off duty as we manage with a fridge full of leftovers.

I love pleasing everyone. I love that last night's dinner was PERFECT be/c everyone got exactly what they wanted: Mom didn't have peas, I didn't have meat, Jamie didn't have onions and anyone who wanted it all could scoop it up! Same as how I love that there will be three kinds of green beans to please everyone's desires. I've got desserts to make everyone happy, though apparently next year I need to add a pecan pie to the menu for Brian and my mom.

I guess it really is true that the way to a man (or anyone's) heart is through the stomach, as we all seem to be in really pleasing and happy moods so far... oh.... well that might have something to do with how we haven't stopped laughing since we got here and the boys are so dang cute, no one can stand it. But of course, I'm a little biased!

I hope everyone has a happy happy Thanksgiving.