The Boswell House: 21 Days to go!

But wait, you're thinking, there's only 15 days left until Christmas!

You're right.

But there's still 21 days to go before "The Holidays" have ended.

Of course New Year's is part of "The Holidays" we're still gathering with loved ones and consuming far too many calories on New Year's aren't we? There are always leftover Christmas cookies and goodies that all need eating before you swear them off on January 1st!

The Holidays, my friends, they carry on.

Lest we forget where The Holidays begin: Thanksgiving! (Well, okay in my book it began at Halloween but I don't have any more Halloween recapping to do so we'll start with Thanksgiving.)

My last post left off at Thanksgiving Prep, and I'm more than happy to report that Thanksgiving Day went off without a hitch! It was amazing, the food was top notch of course. Having so much of Dylan's family together, under this roof where they have ALL lived at different times: That was incredible!

***Disclaimer here: remember, I don't put pictures of people on this blog, especially the minor kind. So the lack of actual family photos does not indicate a lack of family love and/or enjoyment: kapish?***

We even got the fam in on some Bob's Burgers jokes. It all started with Lance.

Lance spent a 3 day Father of the Brine event in the fridge, just like Bob himself would have done.

With Lance all nestled into his briney bath, it was time to fill up that fridge!

The filling of the fridge actually occurred while I was at work. Dylan was able to take some time off, and since his mom and step-father were in town, they got things ready! I was elated to see this site when I got home:

I was giddy! Thanksgiving was coming!!!

Then, both finally and too soon, the big day arrived!

Step one: Prepare Lance.

Our 23lb baby boy was slathered in butter, and stuffed with rosemary and citrus.

Check out this amazing shot of the rosemary, eh?

Thank you, thank you. I'm quite proud of it myself. Now, where was I? Oh yes! Lance!

Lance needed about 5 hours to cook, and since the rest of the meal didn't need that much time, we were well equipped with snacks.

Dylan even fried up some buffalo wings - all from scratch!

The wings received the big stamp of approval, a declaration from our 10 year old niece that they were the best wings she'd ever had. Way to be Uncle Dylan, way to be!

Dylan's mom prepared a delicious tart for us to enjoy while all of the amazing scents began to permeate the house

Dylan was in charge of Lance

And, with about an hour left to go, we even threw in a ham

When Lance came out of the oven, he was beautiful!

I was able throw together a little cranberry sauce:

Dylan's mom took care of the gravy and pulled out this amazing deep dish pumpkin pie that baked up beautifully in the toaster oven!

Dylan's sister whipped up 3 AMAZING side dishes that I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of!

After that, the only thing left was to set the tables

Dylan carved the roast beast - I mean Lance

It was time to gather around the table and start passing around the goodies

We gave thanks, we ate way too much, and then we had dessert. We snapped more family photos, shared fun stories, played with the kids and the pets - and then we cleaned it all up. Our brother-in-law did the majority of the cleaning and *poof* just like that, all of the prep in the fridge became leftovers

We had a couple more fun-filled days with the family before we all had to part ways. It was an amazing Thanksgiving, 2015 is definitely one for the record books.

Come Sunday, it was just Dylan and I in the house again, well, us and Lance. Lance was a big, big boy. Even though we had 9 people to feed, there was a whole Lotta lance leftover. By then, we hadn't had a lot of leftovers yet because we kept going out to eat with the family. Tucson is a food town, you have to indulge while you're here!

So, Sunday, we put the lights up on the house

Yes, I know. It was like 80 outside today. But the Sunday after Thanksgiving, it was only like 55 degrees out there and do you know what else? I'm from Tucson. I have thin lizard blood, anything under 78 is cold.

Here's the fun part, whilst Dylan and I were outside partaking in manual labor, an apple crisp was baking inside. Since we ended up having leftover green apples, it just made sense. The house smelled like a dream!

At the end of a long, cold, productive day we sat down to Thanksgiving leftovers in all of their gravy drizzled glory!

Mmmmm mmmmmm!!!

Of course, there was still a whole lot of Lance leftover. But isn't that part of the fun of the holidays? Coming up with recipes for your leftover turkey? Or in our case, leftover Lance.

I started with a tip from my boss: Turkey Nachos.

Yup! Just use turkey in the place of any other protein you would have used, I opted for dark meat in this particular circumstance. It worked out nicely, a lot of the dark meat pulled apart much like shredded chicken. Perfect for nachos!