Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving dinner was a big hit!  We had 17 people (including ourselves), with my sisters and their kids coming up from San Diego (my brother and his family couldn't make it because of work), and then two families from up here joined us too.  It was a lively day!  The company was great, the conversation was engaging and the hike after dinner was much needed!

I managed to take a few shots of our desserts...but not one shot of the entire meal.  Oh well, some things are better left to memory anyway!

Here's the main table...before eating.  One of my sisters made the wonderful centerpieces for all the tables.  They were quite beautiful!

We had this amazing Bordeaux with dinner...a gift from our French friends that we brought back from France.  It was earthy and deep and beautiful and when I closed my eyes, I felt like I was right back in the French countryside.  Thank you Johanna and Laurent for this wonderful bottle!

And now for the desserts!

Caramel Pumpkin Pie (with "Good for almost anything" pie crust), both from Dorie Greenspan's Baking, From my home to yours.  This pie had a deep caramel flavor that worked so well with the pumpkin.  And the crust??? Don't get me started.  It is an amazing pie crust and I may never use another pie crust recipe again...ever!

Pumpkin Cream Pie with a graham cracker crust.  You can get the recipe right here from The Pioneer Woman.  This is an unbaked pie, creamy, light & fluffy...with just a hint of whiskey.  

Can you say YUM!

Then we had this incredible Dreamy Apple Pie, also from The Pioneer Woman (but with Dorie's crust).  St. James gave this pie two big thumbs up!

Our final dessert (because you can just never have enough dessert) was an incredible Heath Bar Crunch Trifle with white cake, chocolate pudding, whip cream, Kahlua, and crumbled heath bars.  Cynthia made this delightful dish and it really is an amazing experience in your mouth!

I have to say, dinner was so darn good that folks didn't have a lot of room left for dessert.  I have some amazing leftovers that we are trying to work our way through.  Pie for breakfast is not a bad thing.  I hope everyone had a great holiday and here's to a fabulous December!

PS...no pictures of people...when I was taking pictures, everyone was complaining saying that the photos were going to end up on my blog and that I really needed to get permission from people (ie...they wanted to review and approve the photos) before I post them...so...rather than go through an entire process of obtaining each person's blessing on any photo that they happened to be in (which you know I'd never be able to get)...I decided...no people pictures (unless you count the person's arm next to the wine bottle)!!!!

PPS...I completely forgot to mention the oven mishap!  Three weeks ago, my lower oven went out.  St. James called a repair person who came out and said that the circuit board had gone bad.  So he ordered it and said it would take 5 - 10 business days.  I had St. James call and make sure it would be in and installed before Thanksgiving.  Finally, the part came on Monday and the service guy came out on Tuesday (yes, cutting it close)!  When I walked in from doing errands, the service guy and St. James were shaking their head.  Now, not only was there a bad circuit board...but there was a bad clock too.  We needed another part that was going to take many days to come.

I was not amused....I was so not amused that St. James told the service guy he'd better leave and St. James would handle me...and boy did I need handling.  Many curse words left my lips...but since my nieces and nephews (oh, yeah and my son) read this blog...I won't share them with you.

Interestingly, as I had been doing my errands that morning, I'd heard a couple of people on the Martha Stewart radio channel talking about doing their turkeys in an electric roasting pan.  The first time I heard this, I thought...gee what loser would do their turkey in an electric roasting pan?  Of course, this was before I knew about my loser oven.  I was at Target and had seen these pans, but walked right by them.  After finding out about my oven, I then heard another person talking about this roasting pan, and the chef who was answering questions on the radio said he uses one all the time and explained how to do it.  Aha...I thought....I'm going to go get an electric roaster pan.  And, I did.  It was on sale for $22 and it was perfect!  The turkey came out great and the it was really no fuss.  I recommend it to all you other losers out there who can't get their broken ovens fixed in time for the holidays!!!!