friendsgiving

For the past, oh...nine or so years, my group of friends and I have hosted Friendsgiving before the actual Thanksgiving holiday. 

This year was no different, however, we were missing some of our core group!

We go all out, someone (usually me) makes a turkey and everyone else brings all of the side dishes.  We always have waaaaaaaaay too much food and for some dumb reason, we all go home with whatever we brought.  You'd think we'd split up the leftovers so that someone doesn't go home with half of a pan of stuffing or a huge bowl of mashed potatoes...

Nope, we just put a lid on what we brought this year and left! 

We started this tradition in college, mostly because we loved to eat and thought it would be fun to see what kind of food we'd end up with.  One year in particular, the guys that lived across the street from us brought over approximately 20 lbs of mashed potatoes to share with a group of fifteen people.  20 lbs of mashed potatoes is A LOT of mashed potatoes.

Even after college, we've continued this tradition.  While we all see each other throughout the year, friendsgiving is a time when we all get together to eat, drink wine, and relax for an evening.  Usually we end up playing board games, this year, our beloved Wildcats were busy beating Texas so we had to tune in to the big football game!

I hosted the event this year and Lincoln and I made the turkey so I had a decent amount of turkey left from the weekend.  With Thanksgiving being just a day away, I knew I had to get to work on the leftovers....

Lincoln carving the big bird!

Last night I reached out to my favorite lady, Ree Drummond over at The Pioneer Woman for some guidance.

She sent me an email earlier this week with a recipe for this turkey tetrazzini and it turned out to be fabulous.  Seriously.  I wanted to eat the entire pan.


via

 She has some other tasty recipes on her blog for what to do with turkey leftovers and she shares pictures of every step along the way.

What do you do with all of your leftovers?  Can you stand eating the Thanksgiving meal for more than just the day of Thanksgiving? Or do you have to change up how you get rid of all of the leftover food?

Hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

HEY YOU! do you live in the KC area?

Oh, you do? 

Then you should probably mosey on over to my other blog, Flights and Kites to check out the awesome event that I'm planning!

Do you love wine?  Do you love food?  If so, we're having both!  And, the money we raise goes to a great cause.

Or, if you don't live in the KC area, we're happy to accept donations...just sayin' :).

Purchase your tickets here!

4 months

In approximately four months, I'm going to be a married lady. 

Crazy! 

The first four months after we got engaged flew by, I can't imagine how quickly these last four months will go!

Because I'm getting married I have increased my workouts and have been harder on myself about getting to the gym every morning.  I've been pretty good except for one day last week when it was raining....I got up and out of bed, turned on the news, let Laila out, changed my clothes, and then decided that it was probably in my best interest to get back into bed for an hour. 

WTH?  

I was up! My clothes were changed!  That's half of the battle at getting up at 4:45 am!

Anyway, since the weather is changing and it's getting colder I'm sure it's going to be even more of a challenge to get up and out of bed every morning, but I'm committed to doing it. 

Now if only I could avoid tempting foods like french fries and pizza on occasion. For the most part I eat well, but some days it's a challenge for me.  Pizza and chinese food call my name when it's so darn cold outside...

Also, we had a vendor in at work today and he brought in this 20 pound bag of candy:

He also took us out for lunch to Jack Stack barbecue and in addition to ordering our meals tried to make us order appetizers and desserts!  Some of my coworkers got some dessert to go, look at this carrot cake!

I resisted the dessert but I had to bust into the bag of gummy bears...this has to be THE worst time of year to try to be careful about eating well and working out...I really enjoy Thanksgiving and holiday baking and all of the crap that gets brought in from vendors at this time of year.  Ugh.