This was a smaller Thanksgiving dinner than some years, but Oh the food was as good as ever.
There was a vegetable galette, mushroom gravy, black eyed peas, and a stuffing with chestnuts (yum!) for those who eschew meat. In addition to turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and sausage/cornbread stuffing there were sweet potatoes roasted in maple syrup, rosemary rolls, farm butter, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, and.. and.. oh I am forgetting things. There were pickles! Bread and butter pickles, yellow dilly beans, and my beloved mustard pickles. There was cranberry chutney, our family cranberry sauce (raw cranberries crushed with orange and just a bit of sugar), and.. well.. my very sad cranberry mold.
This is maybe the fifth year I've made a cranberry gelatin, and the first year I bungled it. See, I make a double recipe to fill the mold, and well.. (you can see where this is going..) I forgot to double the gelatin, and then I remembered, but was loath to reheat the entire batch in case I overheated it and killed the gelatin already in the jelly... my final delicious wobble was uneven and sloppy, so we just tossed it in a bowl and moved on with dinner.
It was a great crowd, and the talk was all encompassing, so it was Big E who noticed the bread basket was on fire. With his diligent awareness, the buns were not even toasted, although the batiked cloth lost about a quarter of its length and the basket was singed.
Dessert.
Dessert was fairly simple this year. Pumpkin pie, mince tarts, and baklava, served with dark coffee and tea.
There was a discussion about the mince tarts. My mom's homemade mincemeat has meat in it. The wisdom going about that mincemeat has no meat? Not so much at our house.
Oh, and the baklava was very nice this year, if I do say so myself. I finally upped the lemon juice to the point I wanted it, and my nuts (almonds, pecans, and local hazelnuts/filberts) really worked together well.
After returning home, the girls and Big E took a bit of a rest, while I worked on some projects. (PPG, you'll be happy to hear that I finished the dolly crowns!) We then had a snack... it had been 5 hours since "dinner" started, you know.. and played games at the dinning room table until it was the girls bedtime. I then stayed up past midnight putting together 5 packages to put into the mail this morning.
Tonight? Well it is time for the Harvest Feast. I blame this second culinary overindulgence on cooking magazines. See, every year Martha, Gourmet, Bon Appetite, and the powers that be come up with new autumnal treats, and my mom and her neighbor were so tormented by the dishes they could not work into Thanksgiving Dinner, that they decided have a second dinner, the day after Thanksgiving.
Thus was born the Harvest Feast. (as well as the need for skirts with elastic waists...)