I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving full of too much food and too much family. We were extremely excited this year because we were able to host our very first Thanksgiving. Jackie’s parents, Julie and Glen came over and everyone brought a dish. As mentioned earlier, we were planning on deep-frying the turkey, but when we went to buy the oil to fry this bird, it was ridiculously expensive so we had to pass on frying it and decided to roast it. Holy crap was this a good turkey. We had all the other traditional fixin’s and everyone, unsurprisingly, gorged themselves on wayyy too much food. It was awesome.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we hit the road for a trip to the majestic town of Roseburg, Oregon. Oh but wait.. My car, which was supposed to have been fixed 3 times by now, began to act up just outside of Corning. Luckily, Jackie’s dad had offered up his truck in case there was crappy weather, so we had to make a pit stop in good ol’ Palo Cedro.

Back on the road, we drove to Ashland and went to lunch at Standing Stone Brewery. The food and beer were decent; nothing spectacular but it was worth the $5 for the sampler and it gave us a good idea for the trip back (more on that in a bit).

We got back on the road and finally arrived at my mom’s (after a minor detour thanks to Google Maps). Holy crap my nephew is huge! He just turned 3 and looks like he could easily be 4. He is just about the cutest kid ever, even if he does look just like my brother (heh.. Hi Branden!).

It was a lot of fun spending time with my mom, Branden and Noah. It had been way too long since we’ve spent that much time together and I can’t even remember when the last time we enjoyed each other’s company for a holiday.

We had an early Christmas this year and were extremely thankful that we were able to enjoy watching Noah rip open presents and even though it was the first weekend of December, we all felt that the day was very “Christmas-y”.

We packed up and left Tuesday morning and were excited for small pit-stop for the trip back. From our lunch at Standing Stone Brewery we noticed that the cheese on our burgers was from just up the road at Rogue Creamery. After getting directions online, we drove to the creamery.

I’ve never been to a creamery but I do love me some cheese. As soon as you walk in there is a big window into the room where all the magic happens: Cheese! I wasn’t familiar with Rogue Creamery and didn’t know that they specialize in blue (or is it bleu?) cheeses. The had some samples set out and they were all really tasty. I especially liked the Smoky Blue (cold-smoked over hazelnut shells) and the Pesto curds (un-aged cheese mixed with pesto).

We then moved on to the case of cheese. We tried the newly crowned “World’s Best Blue Cheese” and hot-damn was that good.. We had some other extremely tasty cheeses, and even nibbled on some sort of “stinky” cheese that tasted like a foot and some goat cheese that did not.

Unfortunately we arrived there before the winery and chocolate shops, located just next door, were open and had to hit the road. And it’s a good thing they weren’t open, otherwise we may have needed to stay the night to take full advantage of all of their tasty treats.

We finally made it back to Chico and unpacked our bags, exhausted. We ended the long weekend of good food and family with some Pasta-Roni and frozen corn, too pooped to exert any effort of going to the store for groceries.

All in all, it was a great extended Thanksgiving weekend. Jackie and I both enjoyed hanging out with our families, cooking and eating really good food, and all of the stops in between. Personally, I’m just thankful I had such a great partner-in-crime to enjoy every moment of it.