I feel like I should apologize in advance for the quality of these thanksgiving photographs. As thanksgivings go, there was just too much to remember this weekend, something had to be forgotten and this year it was my camera. I’m more than just a little disappointed about this and even contemplated just skipping these posts, but I came to the conclusion that too much hard work went into it, so I’m going to pretend these photos are exceptionally beautiful, you know the kind you would see here or here and call it a day.
I’m pretty excited that this years Thanksgiving dinner had very few hiccups. I think this was in part due to my busy work schedule which allowed me no time to over think the menu, make changes and generally complicate the process. I have a major tendency to over think things and in most instances this leads to more problems than inspired ideas. But there were definitely a few things I would change if I could have. For example, I would not have bothered running out to the store last minute on Sunday afternoon and avoided the extremely annoying human being who decided to merge right into my car, minor though it was and not my fault, that would consume my precious cooking time and result in the making of what I call “anger pies”. My mother has since informed me that I’m no longer allowed to make pies at her house. I told her that would result in no more Natalie pies, she seemed not really to care about that but I bet she changes her tune come Christmas time-that woman loves her pie.
Angry or not the pies tasted good, they may not have been the prettiest but in my opinion taste is what matters and that was there for sure. As for the other dishes that comprised my thanksgiving dinner, the recipes came from a few places but for the most part I was inspired by the October/November issue of Fine Cooking. I find that in thanksgivings past I have relied on what I have learned from my mother and grandmother and then just sort of winged it, using old family recipes to the best I could remember. I thought that since this was going to be the first time that I actually cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my whole family, I would be wise to actually create a menu that was based on actual recipes I could follow so that as little as possible would be left to chance.
The Menu
Roast Turkey with fresh herbs and pan gravy
Bread stuffing with fresh herbs
Mashed potatoes with cream and chives
Glazed carrots
Braised leaks with garlic, thyme and parmigiano
My grandmothers cranberry sauce
Spiced pumpkin pie with coconut milk
Traditional apple pie
Maple whipped cream
This menu is fairly traditional and I decided against too many side dishes. I always get stressed out by the sides, especially considering that with a 15 pound turkey it’s a challenge to get everything in the oven. In my family the turkey, stuffing, gravy and mashed potatoes are what people are really interested in, there was no need to add multiple vegetable dishes-I know what these people like and it’s definitely not multiple vegetable based sides. I think this was one of the best decisions that I made, once the turkey was in the oven there was relatively little to do and I didn’t have to spend the entire evening in the kitchen.
I’m going to break down these recipes into individual posts over the next few days, otherwise this would end up to be an epically long post-I’m not an organized person so that would surly get confusing both to write and read. I’m also trying to edit the dark photos I took so that they can at least somewhat represent the beautiful dinner that I thoroughly enjoyed with my favorite people in the whole world.
Recipes can be found here:
