American Thanksgiving

Celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving on October 9^th was a bonus, and it is finally time for American Thanksgiving!  I have six hours of class this Thursday (which is pretty typical), so we decided to celebrate on Tuesday this year.

The pumpkin pie recipe on the back of my pumpkin label

Since we enjoyed the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes (the usual meal my family celebrates with) in our other Thanksgiving, we decided early on to change it up for this Thanksgiving and prepare the Nelsons’ holiday meal.  I’ve had the privilege of sharing it once at Chad’s family’s home, and it was fabulous: a juicy boneless pork loin roast basted with apricot sauce, and delicious mashed potatoes loaded with all sorts of goodies.

For Canadian Thanksgiving, I made a batch of homemade pumpkin muffins.  The cans of pumpkin I used have a picture of a beautiful pumpkin pie on the label, with the recipe on the reverse side.  As soon as we discovered this, Chad was inspired to bake his first pumpkin pie on for our American Thanksgiving dinner.  We almost forgot about all of his ingredients patiently waiting in the cupboard for a month and a half, but remembered just in time to get the pies in the oven when the roast came out. 

Chad measured out his dry ingredients while I ran to the
store for more eggs -- good Mise en Place!  Chef would be
proud.  

The pie-making process was fun and easy.  We used homemade crust dough that I had prepared in an early class (that had been waiting patiently in the freezer), and accidently made enough filling for two deep-dish pies.  I showed Chad how to roll out the dough and transfer it to a pie tin (a skill which he was basically born with – he was such a pro!), and how to press on the edges of the dough with a fork for a traditional decoration.  I fashioned a funny little turkey out of dough scraps and put him on top of one of the pies, and they baked beautifully.  I tried one small bite of Chad’s first piece (which was magically and uncommonly beautiful, not maimed and crumbled like most first-out-of-the-pie pieces turn out), only to remind myself that I definitely dislike pumpkin pie.

Making sure we get every last bit of the
pumpkin-y goodness

Cutting the crust to the right size

My funny little turkey, fit for a South Park Thanksgiving
special

They're beautiful!

Our yummy roast!

In our excitement and anticipation for this dinner, we bought canned apricots at the grocery store about a week ago without first checking with the recipe.  It turned out to be a mistake, as the recipe calls for dried apricots…but not to fear!  “We’ll just dry our own apricots!” we said.  So we looked up instructions, dipped the juicy little halves in water and lemon juice, arranged them neatly in a casserole dish, and closed them up in the oven to dry.  Six hours later, they were almost ready, but still not quite there.  Though they took a long time, they were fun to play with when we flipped each apricot over, and they eventually did turn out beautifully.

The roast, though we over-cooked it a little, was every bit as delicious as I remembered it being.  The apricot sauce was thick and sweet and a little spicy (with a few spices we mixed from our cupboard to simulate cardamom), and it contained a magical secret ingredient that neither Chad nor I would have guessed (and which will remain a mystery on this blog).  The potatoes, also, contained a little magic that we wouldn’t have thought to add without the recipe that his mother graciously shared with us. 

Basting the roast with a tiny rubber spatula...too bad I left
my knife kit at school!

Mashing the potatoes in one of the aprons Mom made for me!

The rest of the day, before and after dinner, was filled with laundry, a quick run to the department store (where I was sure they sold my the pods for my espresso machine), and a late-night snack of chips with salsa and homemade guacamole made from the biggest avocado with the biggest pit I have ever seen, while we watched five episodes of Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom."

What a HUGE avocado!

Overall, it was a great Thanksgiving.  We didn’t get to meet with family, and there was no football or playing catch or cousinly hijinks (though we did get a rather thick Christmas catalogue in the mail, so I spent some time paroozing gift ideas), but it seemed to fit, in our tiny little home with our tiny little Christmas tree, to have a tiny little Thanksgiving.

Dinner was a success.  A super-delicious success.