Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving found us with a lot to be thankful for this year:

And we celebrated in a very relaxed fashion.  Just the King, Princess, a turkey and I and a few of our favorite side dishes.

We thought we were up to the challenge, but as it turns out, we had a lot of leftovers!

Here's the run-down of our menu:

My favorite side is mashed potatoes, so I made 2 kinds:

Brown butter mashed potatoes

Buttermilk Blue Cheese Bacon Smashed Potatoes

And of course gravy was needed and necessary.

The green beans were steamed and then tossed with butter and browned panko breadcrumbs and our corn was tossed with bacon bits (how can you go wrong with added bacon).

The king got his favorite crescent rolls (homemade rolls were a little ambitious with a new babe in the house) and I made my favorite Pepperidge Farm stuffing...all bread...no vegetables...one could say it resembles broken down croutons in a way.  And Wegmans cranberry orange chutney.  Yum.

I dry brined the turkey in a rosemary, orange rub which seems to be all the pinterest rage, but was not the greatest.  I think having it hang out in the fridge in a bag for 3 days caused it to change funny colors and be a little dry.  Thankfully, it still makes great leftover melts, as what cannot be delicious with the addition of cheese (much like bacon):

turkey cranberry and brie grilled cheese

Thanksgiving turkey panini

and I plan on giving this one a go shortly- Panera's turkey artichoke panini

And the story behind Thanksgiving dessert- a few weeks ago, my mom came for a visit and I tore her away from snuggling the princess to put her to work making apple pies.  So for Thanksgiving dessert we had delicious homemade apple pie curtesy of the Queen Mother.  I can't really provide an exact recipe because she kind of does her own thing with the apple spices to make it taste incredible.  I also caught her off guard in my request for pies, so she didn't have her crust recipe.  SO sad.  We made do with this.  Not the same, but an acceptable substitute.  We had enough apples, so we used a Pillsbury crust for a second pie and that was actually much tastier than the homemade crust.  Maybe next year I will have the ability and the time away from the princess to create an apple pie masterpiece according to the Queen Mother's recipe.  And as a side note, apple pie can always be made better by eating it during the first viewing of the season of The Muppet Family Christmas movie (via YouTube) and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.

All in all, it was an excellent day spent with my little family with plenty to be thankful for.