Week 20: Happy Thanksgiving

Recipes to Go: 507 310

Weeks to Go: 52 32

Recipes Made This Week

Turkey Enchiladas

Apple & Herb Roasted Turkey

Double Corn Dressing

Rosemary Mashed Potatoes

Texas Pecan Pie

Simple Lemon Pie

Eggnog Pumpkin Pie

I included the Pre-Thanksgiving Day Feast recipes in the count this week, so you don't start questioning my math skills.

We were lucky enough this year to be close enough to family to spend the holiday with them. It was still a 6 hour drive, and The Husband didn't have any days before Thanksgiving off, so we left in time to make it late Wednesday night. For me this meant that I wanted to have all my recipes made before we left. So rather than getting to relax after the feast, I charged ahead making pies and enchiladas.

Actually, I made those Tuesday so we could have a nice dinner before we left. And lucky me, it made a ton, so we stuck them in the fridge and voila! dinner was waiting for us when we arrived home at dinnertime on Sunday. It was marvelous. And the dinner was great, too.

So I made pies and pies on Tuesday. I didn't eat much of the pumpkin pie. I tried it, but it wasn't nearly as amazing as the streusel-topped one from our feast, so it mostly sat around feeling sorry for itself.

The pecan was really good. I'm glad I didn't use all 2 cups of corn syrup. I was planning on it, but I only ended up with 1/2 cup of light. And I figured there was enough other sugar in it that no one would notice. And no one did. In fact, I would venture to say that the missing half cup contributed to its success. Pecan pie is normally so sweet and rich that it's hard to eat a lot of it. This was wasn't as bad, so it was gobbled up.

The lemon pie was my favorite. And it was disgustingly simple. Plus it was from the Eating Lighter section, so it wasn't stuffed with sugar like most pies. I found the light lemon flavor and the light texture of this pie was exactly what I craved after all the heavy Thanksgiving food. So I ate most of this pie.

The stuffing was nice because it was pretty easy as well, and despite my normal ambivalence towards stuffing, I was drawn to this again and again because it had really good flavor. Plus, because it called for red and green peppers it was very colorful and looked great on the plate.

This turkey was much more successful as far as appearance went. And we got enough drippings to make gravy. It was very tasty, but I didn't notice a huge difference between it and other turkeys I've had.

The mashed potatoes were great, probably because I used Alton Brown's method rather than the recipe's. And despite the fact that I don't really like rosemary, I loved these. Go figure.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I was in a turkey comma all weekend. So here are some pictures from my niece who stole my camera instead. I call this series "The Bag"