Thanksgiving for Two

Sometimes I randomly get inspired to cook a meal for four.  Even when there’s only two of us coming to the table.  This happened for last weekend’s Thanksgiving meal.

We weren’t planning on cooking a festive feast, but after discussing the fact that there was a nice roasting chicken just sitting in the freezer waiting to be used we got inspired to put a meal together.

(do you know this is the first time I’ve ever made real cranberry sauce?  Hey Mom, this year don’t buy the canned stuff at Xmas.  LOL.  Who knew it was as easy as boiling some sugar and water?)

My main motivation for making this meal was knowing we would be throwing together some Brussels with Bacon.  Oh yum.  I could just eat a big bowl of those…who needs the rest?!

Beer can BBQ chicken with rosemary, gravy made from homemade chicken stock, sour cream whipped potatoes, the magic Brussels sprouts, smashed carrots & turnips, homemade cranberry sauce, fresh bread and chilled white wine. 

And homemade pumpkin pie of course.  Another first.  Another winner.

I am thankful for a sweet man, three sweet dogs, and a relaxing weekend in the kitchen.  xo

Rewind to Friday

OMG…sooooo sorry for disappearing on you all over this incredible long weekend.  As you can imagine, the blog girls GTG grew a life of it’s own and the good times totally trumped any computer time.  :)

Friday night we tackled our Thanksgiving Dinner.  Huge thanks to the rest of the gang for really pulling it together.  I had to work all day and as previously mentioned it was the busiest day we’d had in a long time so I couldn’t duck out early and was actually the last to arrive for the meal.

My contributions were two of my family’s traditional veggie dishes. 

Mashed turnips and carrots.  Just cube, boil, and mash roughly with lots of butter, a little cream and salt & pepper.  nom nom nom.

Also roasted brussel sprouts…we usually just boil and butter them, but I decided to fancy them up a little by roasting them with real maple syrup, grainy dijon mustard, balsamic and a bit of olive oil.  I wasn’t impressed with them right out of the oven, but everyone said they were good so I’ll gladly take the compliment!  :)

We also had a lovely 21lb organic free range turkey, two kinds of stuffing (three if you count the Stove Top…I don’t, sorry Jason!), garlic mashed taters, Amy’s twice baked sweet potatoes, sweet potato casserole, corn, buns, homemade cranberry sauce, etc etc etc.

My plate:

Everything was deeeeeelish.  I need recipes for all of it!

I was feeling tired and a little out of it so opted not to drink that night.  I had one shooter for the group shot, but stuck to water (not nearly enough) and lemonade for the remainder of the evening.  It’s slightly hysterical to be one of only a couple of sober people in a house full of drinking and foolishness.  I laughed a lot!

There was drinking.

 

There was Rock Band.

There was singing.

 

There was Rubik’s training.

There was hugging.

There was 2am pie.  Pete’s Frootique pies.  The apple was freaking awesome.

There were a lot of blurry pictures that didn’t make the cut.  :(

There was sleep at 430am.  Phew.