Friendsgiving Festivities

Nothing like a 5 hour train ride home to catch up on some writing. I am heading home for Thanksgiving, but I want to tell you all about the Friendsgiving that my roommates and I hosted.

Thanksgiving is all about reflecting on the things that we are grateful for, and that usually includes our family. So on the Wednesday before Turkeyday people fly across the country or sit in hours of traffic to spend at least this one day with their family.

I am so thankful for my family, and I love my Mom’s food, so I am super excited to be going home for the Holiday. But I am also thankful for my friends. They are the ones who see me everyday, and can’t be on our A game all the time. My friends are the ones who will drop what they are doing to help me if I need it. And they are there for the good times too.

So last year, my friends and I celebrated our first Friendsgiving. It included microwave mashed potatoes, canned green beans, grocery store rotisserie chicken, and lots of wine. And it was perfect! We didn’t need any fancy food (mostly because we couldn’t afford it). No one had to slave away over a stove because everyone brought a dish (and most of it was microwavable). And everyone who attended Friendsgiving was a close friend so all we had to do was be ourselves and have fun. No planning, awkward conversations, just fun.

This year, my roommate and I wanted to step it up one notch (literally only one).

And we thought we would actually make a turkey.

So we went to Target and bought a turkey breast because I found a crockpot recipe. How can you mess up using a crockpot? And we got home and realized that our turkey breast was frozen. How the hell did we miss that?

The directions said that it should defrost for 3 days and we were having dinner in 7 hours. So into the microwave went the turkey. After about 10 minutes it was maybe a little less frozen. But we had a dinner to serve. So next step was to get the frozen gravy packet shoved into the turkey, out. And trust me that sounds a lot easier than it was. We had to take turns squeezing frozen gravy out of this damn packet because the turkey was still so cold. And if you have never seen frozen gravy it is brown and chunky and you can picture the rest for yourself. We laughed so hard through out this whole ordeal. I mean what a rookie mistake buying a frozen turkey. The turkey breast finally ended up in the crockpot and the rest was out of our hands.

This year we still wanted to do a potluck style for Friendsgiving, so one of our friends brought pie, another brought mashed potatoes, someone took care of the stuffing and someone else took care of the ham. My roommate and I took care of the frozen turkey, dinner rolls, panko asparagus, acorn desserts, and drinks. Even though everyone showed up with beer or a bottle of wine (but we will get to that later).

All of the food was in the works and I started decorating the house a little. Decorations are not a necessity to have a successful Friendsgiving, but it is in my nature to create an ambiance for a party. And what I did was so simple and only cost me around $30.

I bought sunflowers and white filler flowers to decorate the table. I love flowers, and I try to have them in my room or on the table because they just make me happy. So flowers were a must. At Target I picked up a simple white table cloth and paper placemats that had Thanksgiving activities to fill out. The place mats were probably for children but I knew my friends would get a kick out of them, and if nothing else they brought a little bit of contrast to the table. I also grabbed a set of 12 glasses for around $14 at target for my drinks. Everything else I already had at home. I pulled together some candles, used glass jars as vases, and dispersed small pumpkins from Halloween on the table; very eclectic. The plates and cups that we used were a hodge podge of our nicest dinnerware. And yes, we used plastic utensils and paper napkins. Remember, this is all about keeping it simple and easy!

The food was almost ready. I made my acorn candies out of Hershey Kisses and Nilla Waffers. For drinks I made apple cider mimosas. A little apple cider, a lot of champagne, and a cinnamon/sugar rim for fun. Then our friends started to show up, and surprisingly almost everyone was on time.

Then it was the time for the moment of truth. We took out the turkey and whipped up a little gravy and it was time for dinner.

Everything was so good! And we were so proud of ourselves. I have never made a turkey before and I cannot tell you how we managed to cook it in 6 hours, but we did. We enjoyed each other’s company. Drank a little, laughed a lot, and drank some more.

The night ended with the boys chopping some wood outside, smoking ourselves out of our home (side note: never make a fire when its really windy) and dancing to the YMCA. Success!

It doesn’t take much to have a good time when your with your friends. And maybe next year we will step up our game, but it isn’t the food or the decorations that we will remember, it is the people and the laughs that we shared.

Happy Thanksgiving!

#friendsgiving #thanksgiving #decor #food #friends