Thanksgiving Celebrations



Ken, Cathi and ZiZi

Our Thanksgiving celebration was a smaller one this year of only ten people, but was fun and seemed less harried than sometimes Thanksgiving feels.  Joining us were Ken's oldest son, Sean Hatch, his partner, Troy Clark, along with Sean's mom, Renee Newitt and Ken's youngest son, Michael Hatch along with his wife, Alicia, and three young sons, Jackson, Spencer and Andrew.

Renee arrived bearing her traditional, delicious homemade pumpkin pies along with peanut butter cookies for the children, Sean and Troy brought the makings for a pre-dinner vodka and pomegranet cocktail which we named the Turkey Gobbler, and Alicia brought hot yeast rolls from her grandmother's recipe and sweet potatoes with cranberries and a citric glaze.  One and a half year old, Andrew, arrived with his hand well bandaged from a recent emergency room visit to take care of a burn he got when he reached up and put his hand on top of a hot stove burner.

Ken's job was to cook the turkey which he had brined the previous day while my job was to set the table (a job that I love) and make the celery and sage sausage stuffing, the caramelized fennel and onion potatoes, the curried pumpkin soup, the gravy, the cranberry-orange relish, the brussel sprout hash with bacon and mustard and the arugula, avocado and beet salad.

As you can see, we feasted on mostly our traditional Thanksgiving recipes, but it was fun to try an East Indian side dish called biryani which our friend, Chaitra Vedullapalli, had prepared for us as a gift.  I still don't know exactly what is in the dish, but Chaitra said that it takes ten hours to prepare and is layer after of layer of chopped vegetables along with Indian herbs and spices.  I could recognize that the top layer was rice sprinkled with whole cashews.  The biryani had a complex and interesting flavor which I could not quite place, which Ken absolutely loved.

As part of the celebration, ZiZi, the Yorkie, loved getting bits of turkey in her bowl frequently throughout the day and kept begging for more. 

When we celebrated with my daughter, Katie Laramore, along with her husband Kevin, and two sons Cutter and Bode a couple of nights later for our traditional homemade turkey soup, three-year old Cutter arrived with stitches in his forehead from his Thanksgiving visit to the emergency room following a run-in with a brick fireplace corner.

For our more casual dinner together, I made small individual servings of "Thanksgiving in a ramekin" as the appetizer course served with cranberry-orange relish on the side followed by our traditional roast turkey soup with pearl barley that we always serve with chopped green onions, hard cooked eggs and soy sauce.  We finished the meal with slices of chunky apple pecan cake served with apple cider glaze and whipped cream.  Yum!

Both dinners had that wonderful Thanksgiving aura of celebrating holidays with family.