A Humble Thanksgiving

Due to a last minute change of plans, we celebrated our first Thanksgiving in our new home with just the three of us! It was a little quiet, but it turned out quite nicely. We relaxed all day, and I cooked an entire Thanksgiving dinner on my own for the first time! This gave me the opportunity to try out some new recipes. The turkey turned out awesome!!! It looked and tasted great! It was Giada's "citrus" version from "Everyday Italian" and was stuffed with orange and lemon slices...It's definitely a keeper. In keeping with that theme I tried a new sweet potato recipe from my Cuisine magazine. You bake the sweet potatoes, then hollow out some oranges, and mix the sweet potato puree with some orange juice, fresh pineapple, and a few other things. Stuff it all back into the oranges, then you bake them and candy some pecans for the topping! They were delicious!!! Yum...I'll definitely be doing those again! I tried a fruit salad with some fresh cranberries that turned out WAY too tart--even with the added sugar!!! Neither me nor Anthony will ever turn down any fruit, but WE couldn't even eat much of it!!! We ended up having to throw most of it out!!! Won't be making that one again! We also had some home made yeast rolls, some lima beans, and for dessert, of course a home made pumpkin pie! For some reason, the filling took FOREVER to set, so by the time it was ready, the crust was a little chewy. It tasted amazing with the home made whip cream, and the crust was flaky, but the texture just made you want to scrape off the filling and leave the crust on your plate! Bummer, because usually the crust is the best part!!! I tried a crust from one recipe and the filling from a different one, so I'm thinking maybe the two just weren't compatible? I'll try again, as it was my first time making pie crust from scratch! Let me know if anyone has a good but easy recipe for home made pumpkin pie.

Here's Anthony at lunch time chowing down on some toasted bread with a veggie spread! Can you tell he enjoyed it?

Here's our Thanksgiving dinner...wish I had taken some close up pics of the food so you all could see my handiwork! But we were starving, so I'm sure that's why we didn't!!!

Anyway, hope the rest of you had a Happy Thanksgiving as well!!!