Our blessings are plentiful and I love the opportunity to “Give Thanks” on Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful break after such a busy school season and a blessing for my family to be together enjoying the company of one another as we work together around the house, out in the yard and in the kitchen. We appropriately take inventory of our physical blessings when the harvest season is over and look at the abundance of simple beauty present in the world all around us. I try to make sure that I feel thankful and show gratitude for the plenty that we have been given each and every day of the year, for we truly have been given much and our lives are blessed so much by our Father in Heaven. He is the one that gives us what we have and the jurisdiction over it all. Thanksgiving is a nice gesture as it gives us a day to set aside for this purpose of giving thanks.
A Thanksgiving meal in our home means preparations take the entire week. First there is the cleaning and planning and last minute runs to the store. Then there is the baking. After kids left for school on Tuesday we turned the kitchen into a bakery using the table for countertop space in our small kitchen. Vertical space is created with stacking wire racks both in and on the warm oven for raising six dozen rolls. Nathan gave me a hand early in the week as we began making rolls and roasting vegetables. Nathan really enjoyed helping to roll out dough and “painting” the dough with butter before it was cut and rolled into crescents.
The smell of rising dough is heavenly. The children had the simple joy of being together inside our cozy home after a chilly day of yard work with their dad on Wednesday.
Crescent rolls were made and sweet potatoes at just .17 per pound were roasted and made into two dozen biscuits. Butternut from the farm was steamed and mashed in with potatoes until it was creamy. We kept the skins on the potatoes that we purchased at just $1 a bag last month and added a little bit of left over cream cheese and sour cream to give flavor and counteract my skim milk before we added butter, salt and pepper. Sweet potato casserole was also made, my Mom’s recipe and my favorite, with sweet potatoes we picked up at the farm stand in October.
There were pies. Originally narrowed to “just” 5 pies I ended up making a 6th pie. We had a Peach Pie made with home canned peaches and cinnamon, New England Apple Cranberry made with home canned apple slices and fresh cranberries, Pumpkin and Pumpkin Surprise made with fresh roasted pumpkin and Chocolate Chip pie. There was too much pie.
And finally we had a peanut butter cup pie. I had one extra turkey and figured he’d look pretty cute atop this pie. I had no peanuts to add to this but I did have crunchy peanut butter and so I just used that instead of creamy and it turned out great. While I do subscribe to the idea of not “trying out new recipes” on guests I realize that serving chocolate at Thanksgiving goes against etiquette rules. However, the two pies with chocolate are the first pies to get finished off every single year I’ve made them. Admittedly they are a “heavy” dessert to serve after such a large heavy meal.
Yes, we can get at least nine of us around the table which sits in the almost 8x7 foot area at the end of my kitchen but I think next time we have Thanksgiving at home I will add more to the party maybe expanding it out to the living room. We accomplished this seating arrangement by moving the dishwasher over between the fridge and the back door so that the back door was just half blocked and we could still get out of it if we needed to. In doing that we also had to move the fridge to the left so that the hallway to the bathroom was just half blocked but we could still walk through that way too. It worked out really great and we could get in comfortably though we did have to single file in and around the table in order of the seating arrangement. And the seating arrangement was helped along by Lindsay who kindly sat with the pen, paper, toothpicks and glue gun to finish our turkeys turning them into cute edible place cards. Nathan even agreed to eat turkey when he saw these guys! Smiles!!!
Our beautiful table was set with harvest colors, candles and a small clean pumpkin for the centerpiece with our best plate ware, glassware and silver. There was herb butter turkey with gravy, sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, cranberry fluff, homemade applesauce, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes with butternut, steamed green beans with garlic, lemon and parsley, sweet potato rolls and crescent rolls all served on the plates or passed around the table. Our house smelled wonderful and even our kitty cats enjoyed the turkey feast that Rick made for them before they fell into a turkey coma. As the evening darkened and the candles gave off light we felt thankful to be in our cozy home with our family.
And while generally I like to “pull off” Halloween with 5 kids first before giving much thought to Thanksgiving it has been years since we went on a Thanksgiving adventure to somewhere else… ANYWHERE else. And so I’m already working on the plans for 2013! It’s time. Happy Thanksgiving!
