TURKEY WEEKEND

Hi everyone. Remember us? The people who once updated on a daily basis? Well, we're back. We had some technical difficulties and a long trip to the homeland, but we're back, baby!

There are a lot of photos up there. And I'll be honest, there are a bunch that I just didn't include. But I hit the highlights and I'll do my best to describe everything in as much detail as I remember.

We started off last Wednesday with a bowl of Dad's beef and vegetable soup. He serves it with his jalapeño cornbread and it's pretty much the perfect union of flavor. It was a nice way to end our first night back in town.

The next morning (Thanksgiving) Mom got us started with her baked eggs. I feel like this is where I first learned the basics of muffin tin madness. But I'm not sure. Anyway, this one is awesome. It's basically bacon wrapped around an egg baked in a cup with herbs. And then you top the whole thing off with Heinz 57 sauce. It's seriously perfect. I think we had some zucchini bread too? It looks like it.

Before we even started breakfast, Dad had thrown his bird on the grill with some hickory out in the back yard. That's right, the man did his 19 pound gobbler on the Weber. He's pretty impressive right? Anyway, he did a great job and as you can see in the photo, he knew it.

Once he'd carved up his smoky, delicious bird, we got to sink our teeth into all the other wonderful things mom had mixed up. Here's the rundown:
- mashed potatoes with a fresh sage gravy
- cranberry sauce
- cornbread stuffing with sage
- sweet potatoes with a crumbly topping
- bbq green beans with bacon (my personal fav)

Everything was amazing. The smoky turkey. The green beans (I could have seriously eaten all of them). Awesome Thanksgiving meal.

The next morning, Mom whipped up another little delicious breakfast treat - chile cheese egg puff. It's an interesting name, but it's actually really simple. Eggs, cottage cheese, green chile peppers. Some other stuff too. But in the end, a scoop of that stuff with some hot sauce and a bunch of citrus and bananas on the side? Awesome.

There's a gap in here. Between breakfast on Friday and dinner on Sunday, we had random eating. A party on Friday with heavy appetizers followed by Broadripple drinking. A hungover Saturday morning followed by dinner at Mitchell's and some more drinks with Grant and Sara at their beautiful house. It was fun, but no photos. Sorry!

The conclusion on Sunday night was supposed to be grilled pork chops, but because the weather didn't cooperate, Mom ended up baking them. She also threw together a simple salad with lots of cherry tomatoes, olives and a white balsamic dressing. Great pork chops, salad and some (not pictured) mashed potatoes - I can't think of a better way to end our trip home. Oh yeah, I can ... with Mom's Derby pie.

YES!

Awesome bourbon soaked Derby pie.

As you can probably tell from all the great food up there, we had one pretty amazing trip back to Indy.