A Rooklicious Thanksgiving Feast

This year's Thanksgiving was one of the best. It's truly one of my favorite holidays--good food, warm fires, conversation and laughter, and eating, eating, eating. I'm still full from Thursday.

Seriously.

This year we started off in the afternoon with bowls of mulligatawny soup, meat, cheese, crackers, shrimp, and veggies as the fragrance of roast turkey and mulled wine filled the air.

When dinner was served we indulged in fennel salad, cranberry sauce with pears and oranges, ambrosia, rosemary and garlic smanging mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts with walnuts and garlic, and stuffing muffins.  

The turkey was one of my best yet--I think I've really perfected my technique. The skin of the turkey was golden and crispy after being coated in butter, sage, rosemary, and thyme (cue singing now), and the flavors of apples, onions, garlic, celery, and carrots flavored the turkey from the inside out. I also made a killer gravy from the buttery drippings to accompany the turkey.

And of course no meal is complete without a nice glass of wine. Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving this year. Cheers!

Maine Memories...

Don't get me wrong, the grilled cheese sandwich I devoured for dinner before heading back to the library for mass amounts of lecture writing and reading for seminars was very good. I make a damn tasty grilled cheese sandwich. But the solitary cooking of the sandwich, not to mention its lack of complexity and the quickness in which it was eaten, has got me reminiscing about the last family dinner I had in Portland with my Maine family--potatoes au gratin, empanadas stuffed with fresh Maine lobster, fish tacos made with local fish, avocado-mango dip, and grilled Maine shrimp complete with a specialty tequila cocktail to accompany the fantastic meal. A grilled cheese simply cannot compare to the company of friends and family and the leisurely cooking and consumption of delicious food on a quiet Sunday evening.  

While I can't be in Maine tonight, at least these photos captured some of the culinary joy of that meal...

Lobster Empanadas     

Tequila-Marinated Grilled Maine Shrimp

Tequila Cocktail with Freshly Squeezed Juices, Ginger Simple Syrup, and St. Germaine's Elderflower Liqueur 

Potatoes Au Gratin

Look at that burbling...

Fish Tacos

Mango-Avocado Dip