Yesterday was Thanksgiving and we spent the day cooking and eating. The result of all of the cooking was a wonderful Thanksgiving feast. I captured the menu, which my sister cleverly scribbled on the refrigerator door, but I also tried to capture some pictures of the food. Below, is what we had for our Thanksgiving feast

Appetizer: Deviled Eggs

The Deviled Eggs was a very last-minute suggestion that I made, when I recalled that I also made them last year. The result of the last-minute decision, was only a small number of eggs, in part because 3 eggs that we thought were already hard-boiled turned out to be bad. So we ended up with only 4 good eggs that I hard-boiled. The result was delicious, naturally since there wasn't very many eggs. I made them differently this year, adding some chopped shallots to the mixture. This was the result:

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Dip

This is the one thing that I didn't get a picture of. We had a delicious pumpkin cream cheese dip and some pretzels for dipping.

Pear & Parsnip Soup

Before the main course, we had a light, warm pear and parsnip soup:

Apricot-Glazed Turkey with Onion & Shallot Gravy

The turkey we had was delicious. I'm not sure how big it was, but the glaze on it was amazing and the meat came out tender and juicy. But the skin–I could have eating that all night long! Here is the turkey when it was finished:

I'm hoping to have some time this morning to make some turkey hash for sandwiches for lunch later today.

Apple Shallot Stuffing

We didn't stuff the turkey with stuffing, but made it separately. Shallots were clearly a theme this year and the stuffing that we had was a delicious homemade apple shallot stuffing.

Green Bean Casserole

It's not listed on the menu, but my second contribution (I made the deviled eggs) was the green bean casserole. I used a simple recipe, and then improvised a little, adding some peppers to give it a little more color and layer of cheese to hold the crispy onion topping a little bit better. I think it came out pretty good:

Sweet Potato Cups with Marshmallows

I think this was the “featured” item of the evening and it was certainly everyone's favorites. Instead of mashed potatoes, we had mashed sweet potatoes, mixed with marshmallow and stuffed to “cups” of orange peels. (The oranges were sliced in half and the orange pulp scooped out and replaced with sweet potato.) They were delicious, more like a dessert than a side dish.

Cranberry Ginger Chutney

I don't think I got a picture of this one, either, but instead of just the plain traditional cranberry sauce, we had a cranberry ginger chutney that was very good.

Grasshopper Pie

We had not one, but three different desserts after that massive meal. The first was grasshopper pie:

Chocolate Whisky Pecan Pie

Also on the dessert menu was a creative twist on traditional pecan pie, the chocolate whisky pecan pie. This could be topped with the third dessert option, pumpkin pie ice cream:

I should mention that the chef behind most of these delicious foods was my brother-in-law, Jason Ashlock (not the agent, the copywriter). I think everyone managed to contribute something to the meal and in the end it turned out to be an excellent Thankgiving meal for all eight of us.

What did you eat for Thanksgiving?