Post Thanksgiving

It's nice and quite here in Cambridge. Yesterday we slept in until 11 and then I spent a leisurely afternoon in the kitchen whipping up our Thanksgiving dinner for two. Trying to evoke my family Thanksgiving table, I set ours with some candles and autumnal flowers and encircled them with the dishes I prepared. For our own touch we lit a fire in the fire place and put on some bluesy music. For cooking my first Thanksgiving meal on my own things came out pretty well.


I loved the new recipe for cranberry salsa- the lime juice and cilantro are some of my favorite flavors in guacamole, corn salad and other Mexican dishes that we often make at home. The pepitas gave the dish a good crunch and the bright pink cranberries paired beautifully with the green herbs.


This dish actually inspired a last minute cocktail for our meal - I boiled down some cranberries with water and sugar in a saucepan and then mixed it in a blender with fresh lime juice, tequila and triple sec to make a cranberry margarita.



My stuffing came out a little dry - I would add another cup of stock as well as an egg next time and cover it while baking (I've edited this in the recipe from my last post). I also heard a neat trick on npr this week from Alton Brown - put your turkey wings on top of your stuffing while cooking to add flavor and moisture. Too bad we ended up without any turkey wings.


That's right, my bargain turkey was actually a turkey breast and back. I didn't notice anything was missing until Sam came into the kitchen to help me prep the bird and he said - where are the legs? Huh. We looked at the package and peeled away the Shaw's supermarket label that said turkey to find another label that said turkey breast. Oh well. I still was able to stuff the bird with lemon, sage, thyme and rosemary and I cooked it breast side down which made the meat very moist- even palatable to Sam who normally prefers dark meat.


Dessert was a hit -a combination of pumpkin topped with candied pecans a la mode with surprisingly creamy non dairy mocha fudge ripple ice cream. After all was eaten, and we'd rested on the couch we went out to see Harry Potter in IMAX with our friends Oren and Tamara. I won't spoil anything for you - I'll just say that I had to hold Sam's hand a lot and that Tamara and I were glad that we bot have husbands who like to stay until the very last credit has rolls off the screen - it left no need to explain ourselves.


This morning we had leftover turkey and cranberry salsa with scrambled eggs in a warm tortilla! And now our house smells like chocolate from baking this cake to take to our Shabbat dinner hosts tonight.