The Feast

The Thanksgiving Feast
(and Kimball, who snuck into the photo and who is absolutely adorable)

Here is the feast, my friends. We had turkey (glorious), red-mashed potatoes (insane), bacon wrapped dates (delicious), stuffing (traditional and Mexican - both great), cranberry sauce, cranlillie (wonderful), maple-glazed carrots (yummy), asparagus in a pomegranate sauce (heavenly), and country green beans (mm...mm...good). And then we several pies (pumpkin, mincemeat, and chocolate cream) and a pumpkin cobbler with whipped cream and ice cream for desert. It was fabulous. Fabulous.

Zach and me, in our chef coats that my family gave us. I think the black accents make Zach the head chef and I'm cool with that. Anything that means I don't have to stick my hand inside the dark, echoy, cavern that is the inside of a turkey is a good thing.

Thanks so much to Mom, for being our kitchen lackey (she didn't have a coat, only an apron, so there wasn't really anything we could do about it. A kitchen without rules is chaos.) And thanks to Todd and Betty and Andrew and Kim for coming over and celebrating with us. And bringing food. :) It was wonderful.

It was also great to be able to spend some time with some of my family. My Mom, Dad and younger brother came in for a few days.

Uncle Jonathan hanging out with Batman and Robin.

Grampie and Ben. I'm not 100% sure what is going on here. But they had fun.

It was a great holiday. Pictures of our trip to the beach and San Fransisco forthcoming. Stay tuned!

The Giving of Thanks...

The Feast!

In spite of a last minute invitation to dinner, we decided to stay home and have our very first family Thanksgiving. It really turned out fabulously! Zach brined the turkey over night, just like Alton would have him do.

So, So Delicious!

Oh. My. Goodness. It was so freakin' succulent it forced me to seriously consider buying up all the remaining cheap turkeys and a deep freezer and just having turkey for the rest of my mortal existence. Or at least make another one before next year. We had stuffing and mashed potatoes and brown buttered corn and cheesy asparagus and gravy and - oh! It was wonderful! For some crazy reason we made two pies - a pumpkin pie and an apple cherry spice pie. Actually, I made the pies. And they were awesome. I had never made pie crust before, but it was crazy simple.

Zach carves the bird

Ben wants to eat!

So does Sam! (We set the nice-ish plates for them, but they ate out of the plastic stuff per the usual. I've learned my lesson)

I have been baking up a dough filled storm the last couple of days since Zach was home and could try to distract the boys a little. I made a huge batch of gingerbread cookies from Mom's classic gingerbread recipe (holy cow - it made almost 8 dozen cookies! It was a glorious surprise. I also realized I need cookie cutters), the pies, some cheesy calzones and honey biscuits from the back of the Western Family bread flour that we have had since - well, I think the first time we went shopping after we got married.

Apple-Cherry Pie

I have never been much of a baker. When I was a kid and in a Anne of Green Gables or Laura Ingalls faze or something, I would get out flour and water and play with until it went from a sticky mass of revulsion to a smooth ball of dough. I don't recall ever actually baking biscuits from said dough, but if I had they would have been the roughest, toughest bread this side of Mississippi.

But sweet Anola Gay! It seems all I have been doing lately is mixing, rising, punching down only to allow things to rise again. How domestic of me. And delicious.

So, after a long and winding tangent, it was a great Thanksgiving, even if we couldn't be with the rest of the family. And I am thankful for my family, for Zach's turkey, and for the magic and mystery of yeast.