This turkey is stuffed!

It's not even Thanksgiving yet and this turkey (me!) is stuffed. Any day that begins with a bowl of Frosted Flakes instead of my usual Fiber One has the makings of a bad diet day. Forget the fact that the diet has been pretty non-existent for some time now. Today was a little more over the top. And now I am filled to the top. It's past midnight and I'm headed for bed only to know I will get up tomorrow and eat EVEN MORE! So how did my day go so far astray? The Frosted Flakes got me started, followed by a banana, and a couple of chocolate chip cookies. Chocolate chip cookies?! At breakfast?! Why yes. You see I am visiting my mother's house and she has left her world famous chocolate chip cookies for my enjoyment so pretty much I feel the need to have a few with each and every meal and snack. She's not here at the moment having left town for a pre-Thanksgiving gambling junket with my father. I'm here getting our Thanksgiving dinner ready for tomorrow. That would be the second thing has led me astray today. I discovered as I cooked that it is not turkey that anchors our family Thanksgiving meal but cream cheese. There's cream cheese in the grape salad, and in the jello salad, and even in the mashed potatoes. If you came to our house for Thanksgiving and had some sort of cream cheese aversion, you would be hard pressed to fill your plate because it seems to be a key ingredient in all our favorite dishes. So the BLT's (bites, licks, and tastes in WW jargon) have been adding up all day.   But the thing that really did me in was dinner with 'the gang". Visiting mom and dad's house means I am back to my old childhood friends so we got together over pizza and beer and cheesecake (more cream cheese!) and ate and ate and ate. We ate so much because we st around the table talking so long. So cookies and cooking and conversation were my downfall today.   And just for posterity's sake, I'll review the menu for tomorrow... I'm updating with the post-Thanksgiving critique of the menu! turkey recipe from Southern Living This was very good. I think it's just the act of cooking the bird breast side down and then flipping at the end that makes it so juicy. I don't know that you actually need the full stick of butter rubbed all over. Did decide that although I couldn't taste the bacon as a flavor, the layer of bacon kept the cheesecloth from sticking to the breast and pulling the skin off when the cheesecloth was removed - which would have been VERY sad! Green bean casserole also from Southern Living This was great! I didn't think the buttermilk sauce was worth the effort. I'll probably just use a can of cream of mushroom soup next year and save myself the time of preparing it and the trouble of having to buy buttermilk and figure out what to do with the rest of the half gallon! corn casserole Family favorite - always good. Pepperidge Farm stuffing with sausage, onion, and celery added Recipe calls for apples but we don't add those. We like the salty more than the sweet when it comes to stuffing. make ahead mashed potatoes Another family favorite that alwasy turns out well. cranberry jello mold Yuck. I used cranberry jello and a can of the berries. It was not sweet enough for me. strawberry jello pretzel salad This was wonderful. Could have eaten the whole pan solo. Sister Shubert's rolls Why does anyone make rolls frm scratch anymore? These are delicious!