• A Progressive’s thoughts
  • postaday
  • postaday2011
  • postaday2012
  • Uncategorized

laurieanichols

~ Just another WordPress.com site

laurieanichols

Tag Archives: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving hangover

27 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2015, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

hungover, postaday2015, Thanksgiving

   
    
 I suppose hangover may be the wrong word for how I feel because I don’t drink, but between all of the work, the aromas, the constant focus and calculations, the coordination and the heavy lifting, I feel hungover. lol But like many a day after, I don’t regret it because I had fun, I love cooking  and creating, so even if the next day I may feel like crawling, I never say never again, I just say give me a minute, I mean a day or two to recover and then we can go at it  again. lol

My husband took most of these pictures and he did all of the decorating and the presentation, he has a lot of talent in those areas, much more than I do and I am more than happy to have him take over because that takes all of the pressure off me and allows me to concentrate on what I love best, poking around the kitchen, making sure that everything comes out alright.

  
 
   
   
  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I know how fortunate we are, I try to never forget that, it is something I want to be mindful of each and every day. 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

26 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2015, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

postaday2015, Thanksgiving

   
   
I want to wish all of my WordPress friends a very happy Thanksgiving! It’s early for my post, but I still have much more chopping, roasting, sauteeing and coordinating to do, so I thought, while I am enjoying my breakfast, why not wish some happy thoughts to my friends while I can.

I am thinking of those who are without and I hope that somehow, today is a little better for them and they encounter some holiday kindness and generosity, and hopefully it’ll last throughout the holiday season. Days like today does drive home the fact that my family is so very fortunate and we try to remember that way beyond this one day of celebration and thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Decorating for Thanksgiving

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2015, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

decoration, postaday2015, Thanksgiving

  
This is one example of my meager decorating skills, I hadn’t gotten around to cutting down my beautiful ornamental grass, however I was cutting down the beautiful remnants of my errant Bittersweet and then inspiration hit me, why not bring some Bittersweet inside and perhaps drape some Bittersweet outside as well. So voila, my little stab at decorating outside in preparation for the Thanksgiving season.

  
The Bittersweet I brought inside the house is now in a large white bowl in the dining room, it’s the only Thanksgiving  ornamentation in there, but I did do an orange linen theme in the breakfast nook and the kitchen, it might just be a tablecloth and a few kitchen dish towels, but they look nice, warm and inviting, perfect for the Thanksgiving holiday. I envy those who have decorating skills and talent, however I do try and that should count for something.

Food critic in residence

28 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2014, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

food critic, postaday2014, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was very lovely and intimate, just us. We all gave thanks and ate from early afternoon and then later in the evening. Jack was sitting patiently waiting for morsels from whomever to fall to the floor. He is so cute.

IMG_0391.JPG

I have to be honest, I was a little disappointed with the turkey, it came out gorgeous, but the breast was dry; I got thrown off by getting a smaller bird than usual and I miscalculated how much less I had to roast it, I should have taken it out at least a half hour sooner. Aside from that, everything else was pretty good; I am a stuffing hound and it’s always my favorite part of the feast so I was really happy with the stuffing which is my mother’s recipe. In keeping with my parent’s cooking tradition, I am the only one taking my cooking apart, it is a holiday and traditions should be honored after all. LOL

Desert was seriously good, you can’t beat my cousin’s recipe for chocolate and pear tart. You either make your own pie crust or buy one and after you roll it out and put it into your pie dish, you melt a semi-sweet or bitter-sweet chocolate bar in a double-boiler, I use Ghirardelli chocolate, once it is melted you spread it out over the uncooked pie crust. After that you take a large can of pear halves in either its own juice or syrup and lay out the pear halves over the melted chocolate. This is when you prepare the custard, you mix a cup of heavy cream, with 4 eggs and 5 tablespoons of sugar and pour it over the pie, bake it for about 40-45 minutes in a 375 oven. It is delicious room temperature, cold or warm. Everyone will love it!

Thoughts of menus

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2014, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

postaday2014, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is fast coming upon us and my mind is shifting through various dishes in the hopes of settling on a menu. Right now I am vacillating between to turkey or not, if not then maybe a pork roulade? I don’t know. Either way I choose, it doesn’t change the stuffing so that at least is decided, I always make my mother’s stuffing (wild rice and sausage stuffing), but would my choice of fowl or porcine impact my vegetable choice? I am not sure. I do know that I would like to make a risotto with winter vegetables and shaved Parmesan cheese. The dessert has been ordered by our son, it is going to be a pear and chocolate tart.

There are many recipes to look through from now until next Tuesday simply because Wednesday will be both shopping day and preparation day.

I am getting excited about the coming days of food and cooking 😀

Happy Thanksgiving!

28 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2013, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

postaday2013, Thanksgiving, writing

I am sitting with a big belly having just finished eating with the family. It was a very lovely meal, we laughed and talked about so many different things. The baby girl’s friends from overseas have just had their first Thanksgiving and they seemed to have enjoyed it a lot, not just the funny conversations but the food as well. Our baby boy invited his special friend and she is very lovely, polite and adorable, she fit right in. Jack is a very happy camper today, between acting like a food vacuum while I was prepping and cooking to wandering amongst the chairs and underneath the table, he is at last satiated, I think.

The menu was fairly simple; chickens from a French breed that I had ordered online from JoyceFarms.com, they were very tasty and I felt good about serving them, the chickens are allowed to forage outside, they live longer and their feed is GMO free. I also made roasted winter vegetables and quinoa with roasted garlic and balsmic vinegar for those who are vegetarians meaning our foreign visitors, I made a spinach gratin and mashed potatoes as well. But before all of this we had a ton of oysters, I believe that the first Thanksgiving had oysters as part of the menu so we kept with tradition.

For dessert I made two pumpkin pies and a galette de pommes or apple tarte. We haven’t gotten to dessert yet because we are all digesting the oysters and the main fare.

I am thankful for everyone in my life, I am thankful for my health and I am thankful for being.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

20131128-194223.jpg

20131128-194234.jpg

42.179998 -72.925816

Thanksgiving and the bird

22 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2012

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

family, feast, postaday2012, spinach gratin, Thanksgiving, turkey

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Can you believe that a turkey takes fours hours to cook. This bird came in weighing 16 lbs, I know that there are many families that go even larger, such as twenty-two pounds or even higher than that, those birds must take all of six or seven hours in the oven. The kitchen in those houses must be steam baths by the end of the day.

I was feeling the heat myself in my kitchen, but it has been very mild outside for the past two days, of which I am not complaining. I think that I lost an ounce or so between all the chopping, peeling, stuffing, sauteeing and basting.

The meal for our family of four was fairly simple. The baby girl made a request for the first course; smoked salmon with a dill cream sauce layered between potato pancakes and the main course was the turkey with wild rice, long grain rice and sausage stuffing both inside the bird and the extra was baked in a casserole dish, and the baby boy asked for spinach gratin. We had salad just in case for any who wanted it after the main course (no one had any) and there is the pumpkin pie for dessert. For the moment we are still too full from the smoked salmon and the turkey and its fixings to think about dessert for the moment.

All in all I am very happy with how everything turned out, Martha Stewart’s technique for the perfect turkey has not failed me in the four years that I have been following her directions. It’s actually very simple; you pour a bottle of good dry white wine in a pot, melt three sticks of butter in the wine, let it cool and put a big section of cheesecloth in the buttery wine so that it is completely drenched and after you have prepared your turkey for the oven, you drape the cheesecloth over the entire breast and if it covers the legs, that’s fine. The oven has been preheated at 450 in the meantime and you put the turkey legs in first, in that hot oven for 30 minutes, at the 30 minute mark you lower the temperature to 350 while you are basting the cheesecloth with the buttery wine. Every half hour, you baste it until the last hour, when you discard the cheesecloth and you flip the bird and point the breast towards the back of the oven. When the juices run clear at the thigh, you know it is done. This will give you a wonderful turkey each and every time.

The spinach gratin was easy also, I got the recipe from the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten and it is basically creamed spinach with grated Swiss cheese on top and put in a hot oven 425 for 25 minutes or until the Swiss cheese turns golden brown on top.

We gave thanks at the table for each other and for everything in our lives. It was a very nice and quiet family time, just the four of us.

Gearing up for Thanksgiving

21 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by laurieanichols in postaday, postaday2012

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

cooking, family, postaday2012, pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving, turkey

Today I was busy, busy, busy. I was non stop until 6:00 this evening. Jack and I woke up at 7:00, I had my oatmeal and my pot of coffee while reading all of the publications that I receive on my e-mail and then I wrote a comment on Huffington Post regarding Grover Norquist and his anti-tax pledges and the impact that has on negotiations in Washington D.C related to the “fiscal cliff” and I cross posted the comment to my political blog A Progressive’s Thoughts. I then answered a prompt from Plinkie and published it on WordPress. After finishing my writing for the day, I took Jack for his mile walk and emptied out the fireplace, reloaded the living room, the library and the garage with wood. The front yard needed some sprucing up so I trimmed back the wild grasses and the spent chrysanthemums. I took Jack back out for his second walk, prepared his dog food bowl for later and made the long list of groceries needed for the feast for tomorrow. I also made enough pastry dough for two pies and put it in the refrigerator to rest for later this afternoon.

This got me to 11:30 which meant that I was running almost late. I ate lunch fairly quickly because I wanted to leave before twelve, I had quite a bit of food shopping to do besides other errands and I wanted to have everything done before my doctor’s appointment at 2:30 this afternoon. My pumpkin pies were going to be baked this afternoon after my doctor’s visit so I didn’t want to dilly-dally after the doctor’s, I wanted to get home and bake. The house needed some good smells, especially the ones that start drifting out of the oven door; cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger and pumpkin. It’s a mixture of fall, warmth, home and family; all the things that mean Thanksgiving.

Right now writing this, I am happy to report that the pies came out wonderfully. I got all of my errands done with more than enough time to be punctual for the dermatologist, who was on time himself. My visit lasted all of five minutes, he took a picture of a troublesome mole with the plan to revisit it in six months. I got home unloaded the groceries, fed Jack, walked him again, made the pies, stripped the beds, did the laundry and kept an eye on the pies and welcomed my hubby and the baby girl home. Like I said busy, busy, busy and tomorrow will be no different.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,208 other subscribers

a work in progress

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Dec    

Archives

nanowrimo

2012 Blog of the Year Award

Blogroll

  • Discuss
  • Get Inspired
  • Get Polling
  • Get Reading Now
  • Get Support
  • Laurieanichols
  • Learn WordPress.com
  • Rebecca Franklin
  • The Laughing Housewife
  • Wee Scoops
  • WordPress Planet
  • WordPress.com News

business of blogging

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Top Rated

Member of The Internet Defense League

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • laurieanichols
    • Join 768 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • laurieanichols
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar