Thanksgiving Recap

Here's a brief recap in photos of our Thanksgiving meal. I was grateful to spend the day with loved ones, and had a great time cooking up this wonderful meal!

Here again are the recipes we used:

• Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup: Delicious, and rich-tasting. We'll make this again for weeknight dinners.
  
• Sage Stuffing (made with Buttermilk Corn Bread): One of the best stuffings I've had, but definitely labor intensive enough that I'm not sure we'd make it again. My mom prepared the cornbread the night before we arrived, but I think if I had done the cornbread in addition to all the other work, it would have put me over the edge. Also I dropped the pan of breadcrumbs in the oven TWICE because I'm a klutz.
  
• Roast Stuffed Crisp-Skin Turkey and Giblet Pan Gravy from Cooks' Illustrated (login required): Both amazing. The secret to the crisp skin is allowing the turkey to dry in the fridge for 8-24 hours (we only had about 3, but it still helped). And it really helped with the timing of the meal to have the gravy mostly prepared before the turkey came out of the oven. The turkey turned out really well - moist and flavorful, which I partly attribute to the brining, partly to cooking it breast-side down for most of the time, and partly to this being a free-range, local Ho-Ka Turkey.
  
• Cauliflower Gratin: Amazing, as Deb said, it's like macaroni and cheese except with cauliflower, and so healthy, right?
  
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts: you've already heard about my addiction to these.
  
• Walnut Tartlets w. Unshrinkable Sweet Tart Shell : You may have picked up on my slight pastry fetish, but this was my favorite recipe of the bunch. The tart crust really does not shrink, and it turned out flaky. And we all preferred the gooey walnut filling to the filling in pecan pie.
  
• Mom's "Holiday Relish": Really tasty. A treat for cinnamon lovers.

Putting the meal together mostly on my own (with Chris as occasional sous chef), I gained a new respect for those who do it every year without a lot of help (like Chris' mom - I was bummed we forgot to bring her corn casserole recipe). It's tiring! But on the whole it was fun, and it was immensely satisfying to sit down to a feast like this.