The results of my cooking Thanksgiving 2025

The results of my cooking this year:

The pumpkin pie was baked on Tuesday & after 2 days in the fridge, I found the flavors to have a definite sweet note with the spices really being there. It's like the Pumpkin Spice mini wheats cereal. I've never tasted it so sweet so maybe the recipe I followed on the Walmart canned pumpkin needs the sugar reduced a bit?

I changed how I cooked the turkey breast roast. I put it in while still mostly frozen into an oven coming down from 350F, and baked it for about 30 minutes until the oven recovered at 325 like the wrapper said. Then I covered it with aluminum foil. I had already sprayed it with cooking spray while cold. Then at 2 hours into roasting, I added water to the roasting pan to prevent the residue from drying out since the fat had rendered out unlike other times I've cooked these. In the end, I got a good amount of drippings (if you could call it that) which made the gravy packet turn out really good for once.

I kicked up the greener beaner casserole a notch with some imitation bacon bits. I also weighed out 5 ounces of french fried onions & put the last 2 on top from the 7 ounce packet.

The loaded cornbread was different this year, but still came out okay. I also measured the cheese by weight which I probably shouldn't do.

And instead of mashed potatoes I decided to microwave a single potato & mashed that. It tends to take up a lot more room than a dollop of pre-mashed. The gravy came out kind of salty though.

A rice dish I considered was cancelled. I still have the garbanzo bean crockpot stuff in the fridge, & I'll likely open the cranberry sauce later.

I ran live streams for the Macy's parade on my laptop since the TV needs serviced. The tube seems to be getting voltage but a burned out component (hopefully just a resistor) needs replaced.

I miss my mom. She loved the holidays. At least I still cook.