We had a quiet and fairly peaceful Thanksgiving. My sister Kathy drove down from Wisconsin. She only stayed for Thursday and then headed home on Friday, after a busy day of cooking, hanging out, and playing Gloom and Ticket to Ride. I failed to get any photos of our Thanksgiving dinner!
Our (mostly local) Thanksgiving menu:
Turkey
Sweet potato gratin
Mashed potatoes
Bread stuffing with apples
Green jello salad
Olives and pickles
Cranberry sauce
Pumpkin pie
Our turkey came from a local food co-op that does a vegetable CSA and a meat CSA - Avalon Acres. This is our second year with a turkey from them and both years we've had moist, flavorful, and incredibly tasty turkey. We used the same cooking approach as last year: we roasted the turkey breast-side down until the last hour. This protects the breast from the heat and keeps the breast meat moist. Then we flipped the turkey breast-side up (infinitely less scary to do than it sounds!) for the last hour of cooking. Delicious!
Tim made his "only allowed on Thanksgiving because it's so unhealthy" specialty - sweet potato gratin. Layers of thinly sliced sweet potatoes, cream, brown sugar, dried cranberries, and pecans.
We even managed to put a more local spin on the green jello salad, by using local cream and pecans. We talked about skipping the jello salad this Thanksgiving (to go totally local), but it's Tim's grandmother's recipe and he loves it dearly. Wouldn't feel like Thanksgiving without it. My non-local "must haves" for Thanksgiving were black olives and whole berry cranberry sauce.
Thanksgiving local ingredient breakdown:
- Sweet potatoes (gratin), potatoes (mashed potatoes), onions (stuffing), pumpkin (pie) - Bugtussle CSA
- Bread for the stuffing - Twin Forks Farm
- Pecans (jello salad) - Nashville Farmers Market
- Cream (jello salad, gratin) - Hatcher Family Dairy
- Milk (mashed potatoes) - Rock Springs Dairy
Thanksgiving non-local ingredient breakdown: Celery (stuffing), Pineapple (jello salad), Green jello (jello salad), Sage & thyme (turkey and stuffing), Sour cream & cream cheese (mashed potatoes), olives, cranberry sauce, pickles
I was actually really surprised and happy to see how much of our Thanksgiving dinner could be sourced locally. The highlight? Making Dorie Greenspan's Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie using fresh pumpkins from our CSA. We roasted the pumpkins in the oven and then pureed them. The pie needed extra cooking time because of extra moisture in the pumpkin, but it was so delicious that it was worth the extra work.
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