With Thanksgiving being a huge tradition, I’ve surprisingly never had the opportunity to cook it! I have always been invited to the house of friends or family, and never actually prepared a turkey.

This year, since I’ve moved abroad, I wanted to be able to remind myself a little bit of home. Unfortunately, my fiancé is abroad for work, so there wasn’t an opportunity to share the holiday with him, so I decided to make my own “test Thanksgiving” to see if I could knock it out of the park before maybe inviting over some friends next year! From start to finish, I managed to cook Thanksgiving dinner in just under 2 hours. (Note: this does exclude some veggie chopping the night before, marinading overnight, and the cornbread I baked the day before. I also built a rough time table in advance so that I could get it all done!)

Curious to see how my first-time Thanksgiving cooking fared? Keep reading.

Click here to see more pictures and details of my first Thanksgiving abroad.!