Turkey!

I roasted my first turkey yesterday!  I love cooking and baking, but for some reason I have never roasted a bird.  Not even a chicken.  It is surprising because I am a big Martha Stewart fan and one of her favorite go-to recipes, in her books and magazines, is a roast chicken.  I would always look at it, feel overwhelmed, and turn the page.
But this year my mom didn't feel up to making the entire Thanksgiving meal, which is fine, because JF and I both enjoy cooking and have talked about taking over the duty for years now.  So I went to my beloved Everyday Food Magazine and in this years Thanksgiving issue the Citrus-rubbed Turkey with Cider Gravy sounded really good and the recipe was easy to follow.
The turkey itself wasn't too bad.  The neck was creepy yet interesting.  The boys were very interested in helping so we showed them where the head had been, the spine, the rib cage and all that anatomically fascinating stuff.  JF found the bag of goodies in the neck cavity and then I gave the bird a good rub down with a citrus-spice mix.  
Sunday morning I set my alarm so that I could take it out of the fridge, let it sit, and then get it in the oven.  The one way I deviated from Martha is that I used a roasting bag.  Several of my students said it's the only way to go and it was pretty easy from a cooking and clean-up perspective.
And that's it.  No cooking horror stories.  Everyone enjoyed the meal!  I definitely feel brave enough to try a roast chicken now, which is great because my boys love it!
In addition to the other side dishes I made a sweet potato casserole that used coconut milk instead of any other dairy products.  Really good!

I failed as a blogger and Instagrammer and didn't really get any good pictures of the bird or the meal!

Beautiful!

After the meal and halfway through clean-up.