Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks back, and we had the good fortune of attending three different thanksgiving dinners, saving the final dinner for the one at our house on Thanksgiving Monday. We were ready this year!

Our lovely CSA providers, Coopers Farm, had delivered the goods on a fresh gigantic turkey, as well as a CSA box full of Thanksgiving staple veg.

And like the loser I am, I completely failed to take photos while things were cooking or just being served! I was so excited to try everything and to ensure that our guests were happy and contended (which included three children who we weren't sure what types of food they liked) that I just didn't get to it until after we had started eating. But like many Thanksgiving dinners, it centered on turkey and fixings. But started with G's fantastic roasted tomato soup...


Here's the pot cooking. Tomato soup is always a bit of a crapshoot. I love it, but not everyone does, so we were a bit nervous. But we had to use up the rest of our roasted tomatoes, so it fit the bill. There was no reason to worry. The soup went down a treat! Everyone loved it, even the kids, and this entire pot of soup was finished!!!

From there, things started coming to the table.

Bread...


Not homemade, alas, but delicious.

We make our turkey in the oven bag... do you do this? Here it is out of the bag...



The bag gaves us all that juice that you see in our lovely new pan, a Demeyere saucepan that has a 7-layer InductoBase that makes it heat quickly and easily. I must confess, I was given this pan because I have the blog, and have had it for a bit. I now use it all the time. It heats so evenly, it cooks rice unbelievably, nothing stick to the stainless steel "Silvinox" bottom, and it cleans up like crazy. It's really heavy and the lid fits on seamlessly, so while you see it holding the turkey juice from the bag here, it's also made all sorts of bechamel sauces, rice, risotto, mashed potatoes, whatever else you can think of. It's not cheap, but I highly recommend this line and can't wait to try out another piece!

But back to the turkey... the bag just completely rules. We take the turkey, season it up, put it in the bag with some veg for flavour, and let it take care of itself. It cooks incredibly fast in the bag, and doesn't have to messed with at all. It's absolutely lovely and it makes clean up a breeze.

We also had a couple of stand-bys that you've seen before... the wild rice stuffing...


I shook it up by adding quite a bit of sauteed mushrooms to this mix. Really good. We also had my fresh cranberry sauce that I failed to take a photo of at all, but it was loved universally by the table.

We had mashed potatoes...


They were a hit! And some very "smokey" green beans (where smokey is nice speak for burned!)...


But otherwise, I just took fresh green beans and cooked them in a saute pan with a little bit of chicken broth. LOVELY until I burned them. *Smack on the forehead*

And then for my chanciest dish... a brussel sprout gratin.

I wasn't sure what to do. I really wanted to make something rich to have with dinner, as I always really like one kind of crazy heavy thing on the plate, but because I am trying to lose weight, I didn't want to make it crazy. So I mixed up a recipe for a brussel sprout gratin that I had found, and made the sauce with flour and milk (no butter) and added less gruyere cheese, but more parmesan, and salt and pepper with bread crumbs on top.


There it is, with people eating tons of them! I was shocked because I really dislike brussel sprouts, but I enjoyed them and everyone at them up! Good stuff.

But as with all things, the best part of the Thanksgiving dinner came with the leftover sandwich...


Oh yeah! Little leftover buns with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, potato, and a little bit of mayo. I probably ate about five of these perfect sandwiches over the course of the week... They are such a lovely way to eat leftovers!