Whew!

We survived hosting our first Thanksgiving!   Usually the holiday is a huge extended-family affair, but since we couldn’t get down to Arkansas this year, we decided to host Thanksgiving for our friends who were also spending the weekend here. 

I was really excited about making my first turkey, which was pretty much my only consolation for not being able to go home.  We reserved a turkey at the farmers' market a few weeks in advance, so we got it fresh and straight from the farm!

I spent lots of time in the kitchen and even laid out a cooking plan for the days leading up to Thanksgiving and a detailed schedule, in 15 minute intervals, for the hours leading up to dinner time.  I knew if I hadn’t done this we would not have eaten until well into the evening.  As it was, we sat down just barely an hour after our 2:30pm dinner time.   There were plenty of appetizers to nibble on in the mean time, and no one seemed to mind the wait.

Saturday:
Groceries
Bake bread for stuffing

Sunday:
Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce

Monday:
Pumpkin-Spice Cheesecake

Tuesday:
Salt Turkey

It was my first time dealing with a whole bird.  I was a little intimidated when I first saw the giblets, but I quickly got over it and went to working dry-brining the turkey.

Make Cookie dough
Make Cheese ball
Bake and skin sweet potatoes

We bought some at the farmers’ market and realized we didn’t have enough, so we had to supplement with a couple of supermarket sweet potatoes.  Look how much deeper in color the local potatoes are!

Make pie crust

Wednesday:
Dry bread for stuffing
Bake Cookies

I have a sugar cookie recipe that I have used for years.   It makes wonderfully chewy and delicious sugar cookies.  However, the cookies spread quite a bit when baked, which all but ruins most cookie-cutter shapes.  So this time, in addition to my usual sugar cookie recipe, I tried a couple of new recipes (which came in the mail with my beautiful new cookie cutters).

While they were much more shortbread-like than my usual sugar cookies, they still tasted great and held their shapes perfectly.
  

Bake pies

My favorite holiday pie is the Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie that my mother has made for years.   Since one of our guests can’t eat chocolate and Brian can’t eat pecans, I decided to make miniature variations for the special diets:
2 miniature chocolate-bourbon pies and 2 miniature pecan-bourbon pies.

Make frosting and decorate cookies

Since I didn’t start frosting the cookies until  after midnight, I decided to skip the butter cream just use a glaze.

 
Make bourbon cream
Make streusel for sweet potato casserole
Start gravy
   (I’ll spare you the photo of the giblets frying.)
Wash veggies and herbs

I didn’t do all the work.  Brian made sure the apartment was spotless and washed all the produce for me.

Thursday:
Stuffing, turkey, gravy, sweet potato casserole, corn casserole, rolls…
Stuffing and Roasting the Turkey

Salt pork lends flavor:
 
Several hours later

Setting the Table

Carving the Turkey


The Spread


  
Dinnertime
 
The Aftermath