Thanksgiving Recap 2016

Thanksgiving was great this year. We had a modest party of nine with the perfect amount of food. (Perfect amount to us means that there's enough leftovers to make turkey soup and turkey salad sandwiches).

Keeping with tradition, I got caught up in the food and entertaining and didn't take the exact photos I wanted but I have enough to give you a flavor of our festivities.

I brined the turkey, per usual (I plan on putting together a more comprehensive post on turkey roasting, which may come in handy for Christmas) and I made lemon ricotta to serve as an appetizer along with fresh baked bread.

I made sticky toffee pudding for dessert, along with fresh churned vanilla ice cream.

We've been making green bean casserole for the past few years because we love it. However, this year, I didn't make my own crispy fried leeks; I just bought them because I wanted to have some Icelandic-style hot dogs for dinner (which I'll be sharing soon).

And of course, we had mac & cheese, made with lots of gruyere cheese.

The turkey was brined for five days and then given a thorough butter massage, filled with aromatics (including lemon, orange, and thyme), and roasted for a few hours until just done (165F internal temperature). We also added some carrots to the pan (from our garden) which looked pretty but to be frank, they didn't taste that good.

Mashed potatoes were compulsory, of course.

And I made gravy with the giblets and neck meat.

And this year, instead of cranberry sauce, we used lingonberry sauce from Ikea, which was fantastic.

It was a really great day filled with food and family. I hoped you enjoyed your holiday as much as we enjoyed ours.

xoxo.