And at the butt crack of dawn, we cooked

I got up really early Thursday to start the stuffing. The bird was so big, it had to go in by 10:30 am, so the stuffing had to be done by then. Sides could be finished later, since they couldn't go in before the bird was done at 4 pm, but the stuffing had a hard deadline. Of course, the first thing you do is chop the celery (a full head in my case, with such a large bird):

Chop up a few onions, toss them in some butter and sautee:

Toss in the celery:

Tear up a bunch of bread (stale if you got it):

You will mix the sauteed onions and celery, having seasoned it with pepper and sage, with the bread. Throw in some chicken broth (purchased is fine -- I never make my own for this), mix it up and stuff it in the turkey. Extra can be cooked in a casserole dish. I also make some butternut squash soup, which has been documented earlier on this blog. I made it for an appetizer:

People appreciated it. I also made some stuffed potato skins and bacon-wrapped tater tots as game food (both seen on this blog before -- just search those terms for recipes). The disappeared surprisingly quickly.

Finally, the bird came out. It look really good:

It was really good. This year, Mrs. Wolves bought me some chafing dishes to keep food warm. In those dishes is the gravy, stuffing, and mashed potatoes in the three nearest the camera, and corn pudding, green beans and carmelized carrots in the farther three:

Still in the kitchen, with not enough chafing dishes, were the sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, extra stuffing, asparagus casserole and more mashed potatoes:

The food was enthusastically received:

 Married into Wolves brought a chocolate cobbler, which everyone ate as their first dessert (although most people also ate a second dessert):

This required ice cream:

All of this induced food comas:

In fairness, they rallied in time to watch the Packers suck out loud against the Bears. Shameful football performance, but an excellent Thanksgiving spread.