We went to the indoor Farmer's Market Saturday morning and bought the most beautiful vegetables imaginable from Greg and Blue Moon...and some cheese from Prairie Fruits Farm. We came home and I happily plotted and planned Thanksgiving dinner.
Softly and gently the Le Creuset pot went into the oven with turkey wings, necks, onions, carrots and celery. We let it barely simmer for several hours and pulled out gorgeous turkey stock to use for the gravy, etc. on Thanksgiving.
I made my favorite cranberry sauce with brown sugar as we were low on white...I think I may even prefer it to the white sugar a bit.
Spiced Cranberry Sauce
2 bags fresh cranberries (12 oz. each)
2 cups sugar (it didn't make a huge difference in taste but I preferred the brown sugar)
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Add first three ingredients over medium high heat and stir until the cranberries have popped. Mash with a potato masher until your desired consistency, add spices, stir and refrigerate.
Making cranberry sauce make me ridiculously happy.
Then I roasted the beets to make pickled beets to go with our tourtiere which we have on the night before Thanksgiving. I overdid them a bit but I don't think it will matter. When I lifted them out of the pan Ernie looked at the gorgeous red left from the beet juice and said, "ohhhhh man....you need a skirt like that." Reason #3,584 thta I love my husband.
Last but not least I experimented with a new sweet potato recipe. I'm going to try it again tonight with a tweak or two. It has sage and garlic in it and it just may be a keeper....
Today? I'll dig through the freezer to see how many odds and ends of leftover bread I have thrown in there for the stuffing....and probably change my mind ten times again over what green vegetables I'll be making.
On Thursday I'll set the table, Judi's table, with my mother's Spode and her sterling and use our flint Bull's Eye with Fleur de Lys goblets....and maybe I'll have Ernie dig my father's silver turkey cover out of the basement.... The only thing missing will be my sister Debbie but she has a good Thanksgiving tradition of her own and talking to her on the phone is part of our day.
Ernie will pick out what music to play. Boo and Doug and my boys (maybe a brother in law too) will all be here.
I love Thanksgiving.
