For a blog about food and eating, how can I not post something about Thanksgiving dinner in a non-timely manner? So for my favorite holiday of the year, I have gotten my lazy and very full self together to actually upload my photos and write up this post - don't you (whomever you may be) feel honored? =)
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| At some point my sister noticed that they sky was pretty and purple...so she made me run outside to capture the moment |
So Thanksgiving is actually my favorite holiday of the year - and for the past few years, we've started a tradition where we invite family friends who don't have large families in the area to celebrate with or don't really do Thanksgiving the American way. When we were young, me and my sister used to get to pick a dish or two to make to help out with Thanksgiving dinner (this was before it got to 20-30 people at dinner). And gradually, we got to make more and more dishes until at some point, I think this might have been when I was in college, I started planning the menu and all the cooking was done before me and my sister - I have sometimes been referred to as a kitchen nazi and that I use Thanksgiving as an excuse to be Miss Bossy Pants =X
Bossy Pants aside, I did start thinking about Thanksgiving in mid-October, which was when I sent the Save-the-Date e-mails out...I got complaints because it wasn't even Halloween yet, but I wanted to make sure everyone was prepared! Then November 1st I sent out the reminders that I needed to know what dish everyone was bringing by November 10th so that I could properly plan my menu in my shared Google docs spreadsheet with a tab for the guest list, menu with every dish and when the dish was to be prepared, and another tab with a compilation list of all the ingredients needed! Phew! That was probably more exhausting than the actual cooking!
But on to the best part - the FOOD! Dun dun dunnnnn! This year's menu (from our kitchen) and which had sort of a pumpkin theme was:
Appetizers
Layered Pesto Dip w/ Pita chips
Baked Asparagus
Entrees & Sides
Turkeys - 2 of them!
Desserts
Libby's Pumpkin Pie - why fix it if it ain't broken?
Nutella Pizza Pie
Drinks
In addition, we also had sweet potato rolls, crab cakes, deviled eggs, cocktail shrimp, crab, seafood paella, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, green tea jello, chocolate cake and fruit punch. So much food, soooo gooood!!! Needless to say, everyone was absolutely stuffed by the end of the night and we were just full and exhausted after 2 days of cooking.
Now, on to the prep part. First of all, I am proud to say, that by 4:30 pm on Thursday, my sister and I were pretty much done with everything and just had one bird left in the oven and dishes ready for reheating before the guests arrived at 6ish. Prep actually officially started Tuesday night, when my mom and I started brining the turkeys. I dubbed our two turkeys Jay-Z and Kanye and decided that on Thursday, they would "Watch the Throne" from the dining room table. Jay-Z was the organic turkey marinated in a cajun rub. Kanye was the larger turkey bought from the supermarket and marinated in a citrus-cider mix which is generally juicy enough that we no longer make gravy - just cranberry sauce, and I think I must have had a bad experience with stuffing as a child, because I've never been a fan. So other than the year we stuffed the Asian-style turkey (we had 2 turkeys that year also) with sticky rice, turkey sans stuffing is maybe the one traditional Thanksgiving dish that we don't do.
Day 1 - Wednesday prep covered pretty much everything but the salad, turkeys, baked asparagus, pumpkin lasagne, layered pesto dip and nutella pizza pie. Though I was awoken at 6 am because a certain someone had gone to bed super early the night before, I didn't actually roll out of bed until around 10:30, and by roll out of bed, I mean, was forced to get up by my family - in my defense I wanted to enjoy my day off and I never get to sleep in! Sleeping til 9 is a luxury for me these days =( But enough whining. After getting out of bed, armed with aprons, and catchy Top 40 songs blasting from my laptop, we were ready to begin cooking.
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| er...this means we're ready? |
I started with the pie crusts so that I had all my foundations ready - I was really trying to emulate all the cooking shows on TV where the chefs always have their ingredients in their correct portions in little bowls and they're all "next I need a cup of chopped scallions...oh look! Conveniently, I have at my fingertips here, exactly the one cup of chopped scallions that I need! **neatly dumps into the bowl**"
I needed pie crusts for my potato tart gratin and pumpkin pie w/ caramelized pecan as well as a maple crust for the apple-maple galette. For the Libby's pumpkin pies, I always figure, if I'm making the pie out of the can anyway, crust might as well be store-bought as well! Plus, as I mentioned before, why fix it if it ain't broken?
I started with the potato tart gratin because it was to be baked at the lowest temperature, and then I moved on to the apple-maple galette, then the pumpkin and caramelized pecan pie. The libby's pumpkin pies actually weren't popped into the oven until after dinner because I had been planning on making it Thursday. But then after baking dinner (pizza!) I thought, hey, why not today and just reheat tomorrow.
While I was working on those, my sister was working on the broccoli gratin and twice baked sweet potato which ended up taking her almost 2 hours because we don't have the most efficient food processor...it's actually rather old.
Was having a full-on phone convo by the last hour...
As I let my citrus cranberry dressing simmer, we took a dinner break (which really ended up lasting until Thursday morning). Dinner was simple since we were prepping for a giant feast. And what's more simple than pizza? Just toss a bunch of things onto a pre-made crust and bake it for a bit. I even got to use the lone egg yolk that was leftover from my glazing of the dessert crusts.
pre-baking
post-baking
Day 2 - Thanksgiving Day is here!!! Started with my pumpkin lasagne, which I've been super excited to try (and turned out to be a big hit!), and then Turkey time! During which, of course, I was playing the Watch the Throne album. While the birds were in the oven, I also prepped the layered pesto dip.
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| Turkey Kanye marinating in the mini-fridge |
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| Cajun Jay-Z |
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| Citrus-Cider Kanye |
Last (at least last before the guests arrived - the nutella pizza pie was simple enough to prepare right before serving) but not least, mulled red wine sangria!
Final outcome:
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| HAPPY THANKSGIVING! |
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| Dinner Plate #1 |
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| Nutella Pizza Pie! |
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| dessert spread - photo borrowed from bluetifulangel |
Been super thankful to have been able to have such a food and friend-filled Thanksgiving again this year and hope everyone had a most enjoyable Thanksgiving weekend without too much family drama!
~Cheers!
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