thanksgiving

What a great day! We had a lot of fun. My parents and brother and his family and dog Bannor visited with us. Our menu was very traditional this year: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. With some special highlights. My husband grilled a fantastic turkey that had I brined in bourbon and orange slices. The recipe was from "Grill It", a Schlesinger cookbook. The stuffing, a Chez Henri recipe with fennel and dried apricots (recipe link) was excellent. I was able to pick even more fresh lettuce from my cold frame than I had hoped. And my mom made the most fantastic candied sweet potatoes from my home grown potatoes! We ate and talked all afternoon. Skippy and Bannor enjoyed themselves too. What a very nice day.




I thought I would need to pick all the baby lettuce in my cold frame to fill our salad bowl, but it was over filled with maybe one fifth of the lettuce. I left most of it still growing. I hope it will stay warm for a while and we will work on eating the rest of the lettuce soon. Since its my first fall with a cold frame, I don't yet know how long the lettuce will last. Our temperatures have been getting down to 30*F outside, 34*F inside the frame so far this fall. I have lettuce, escarole, spinach, kale, and broccoli still growing in the frame. I picked all of the dill, as I think its less hardy.

The other homegrown Thanksgiving item was the sweet potatoes. My mom has made candied sweets every year for maybe the past 30 years. As long as I can remember. They're always delicious, but this year they were exceptional. Maybe because I grew them. It was my first year growing sweet potatoes and I have a mix of yellow and orange varieties. Or maybe it was because we added "a bit" of rum to the recipe. My mom stirred the sauce and said the aroma was great.




Candied Sweet Potatoes

(I will try to find Mom's recipe and add it here soon.)