As far back as I could remember, my Dad has always been the one to cook and prepare the turkey for our Thanksgiving feast. It’d start with days of preparation from picking out the turkey to buying all the ingredients to doing hours of  prep work in advance to making his traditional Chinese sausage sticky rice the night before. Every Thanksgiving morning, my Dad would wake me and my sister up at 8:30 am sharp. He’d pull the drapes open and tell us to quickly wash up. Each minute of delay was another extra minute the turkey would have to spend in the oven. There in the center of the table was the 18 lb turkey and two bowls of sticky rice — one bowl was for us to stuff the front and back of the turkey, and the other bowl was for us to stuff our own bellies. My sister and I would see compete to see how much sticky rice we can hold in our palms before shoving it into the turkey. For the turkey to get a share of the sticky rice, we deemed that one lucky bird. Within good time, we were stuffed and most importantly, the turkey was stuffed and ready for the oven. This is one of the Thanksgiving rituals I cherish and love. Thank you, Dad for all the hours, days and years you spent making the turkey for Thanksgiving and creating this wonderful tradition for our family. We both tip our hats to the Chef in thanks as you gracefully retire from being the Cook.

While Susanna and I won’t be able to wear the chef hat just yet, we thought we’d make sure our cooked turkey have a friend or two. With a little inspiration from Pinterest, and a lot of vegetables and chopping, we present our Turkey Vegetable Platter.

And just in case the vegetable platter needed a friend, we made these Oreo cookie Turkeys using Reeses, Whoppers, chocolate sauce and piping. Now how fun is that?! If this can’t get you to say “Gobble, Gobble,” then I don’t know what can. Happy Thanksgiving from the Lee Family!