Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving 2012!

This year we decided to go all out for Thanksgiving and make everything from scratch!  Last year, I had a gluten-free Thanksgiving with a lot of Primal/Paleo options.  And this year, well, we just went for taste, haha.

I was lucky to have some family and friends from home fly in to spend Thanksgiving with me!


The Thanksgiving Menu: All the traditional Thanksgiving dishes + more!  We literally cooked for 8 hours straigh.  Good thing this year I got to cook with someone who loves cooking just as much (or maybe more?!) than me!  Some of you probably think that's crazy especially for a 2-hour meal, but whatever, it's my kind of fun.  So happy the power outage in Palo Alto didn't ruin our dinner!  

Appetizers.  Well, intended appetizers.  Our fat stuffed turkey cooked so fast (3 hours!) that these appetizers became side dishes to the main menu.
  • Roasted Rosemary Fingerling Potatoes
  • Spinach Rolls
  • Apple Brie Rolls
 
2. Appetizers.

Main Dishes: Holy butter!  I don't know how many sticks of butter we went through, haha!
  • Organic Pasture-raised Turkey w/ Gravy.  25# of goodness.  We used everything in the gravy: turkey innards, potato water, etc.
  • Garlic Mashed Butterfinger Potatoes.  Butterfinger potatoes for the unique nutty flavor and buttery texture, of course.  3:1 potato:butter ratio baby.
  • Stuffing w/ Chanterelle mushrooms
  • Scalloped Root Vegetables.  This one is Primal/Clean/Paleo!
  • Porcini Macaroni and Cheese.  Best mac & cheese ever.
  • Green Beans w/ Caramelized Shallots and Thyme.
  • Creamed Kale w/ Bacon Ends.
3. Multimeter put into good use.

4. Big turkeyyyyy 

5. Epic mac & cheese.

6. Root Veggies.  Two most popular side dishes.


Dessert: homemade pies served with vanilla ice cream!
  • Pumpkin Pie
  • Apple Crumble 

7. Pumpkin Pie.

8. and the ridiculously popular Apple Crumble made with freshly picked apples.


My legs were SO SORE after cooking all day that I could barely sit up to eat dinner.  Haha.  Need to work on that.

9. not drunk.  just sore and hungry.

On Friday, I raged on the online shopping and at the TB boutique.  We also had a Vietnamese Thanksgiving dinner without turkey, hah.  Then we finished Thanksgiving weekend off with some wine tasting in Napa.  Fun!

10. Grandma, aunts, and brother in town!

11. Mmmmm wine tasting with friends from home.




Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!  I know I did :)