11/23/12

Our Thanksgiving Feast!


Hey everyone!  Happy Black Friday -- at least I hope it's happy for all the retailers!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.  Our son and sweet DIL hosted our family feast this year, and it was fantastic!  The Man and I contributed the turkey this year, which our son picked up on Tuesday.  
We ordered a 20lb. "Free Range" bird from Sprouts Farmers' Market.

   

Ours didn't look like this.
 



Our turkey got cooked in the wood-fired pizza oven.
Michael built this wood-fired pizza oven from his own plan after doing a lot of research.  He's still working on the facade, but the actual oven has been finished for awhile.  I'll share photos 
when it's all finished.

The bird getting his temp taken!

Michael removes all the dark meat from the turkey prior to cooking.  He perfected this technique several years ago in one of the restaurants -- he forms the dark meat into a roll and wraps it tightly in foil (also wraps the legs in foil) and starts cooking all of that first, because it takes longer to cook the dark meat than the breast.  This way, the breast meat doesn't get all dried out.

Okay, no one said it was pretty!

But it certainly was delicious!

These are all the sides that we had.  Everything except the Cranberry Salsa and Potatoes were cooked 
in the pizza oven.  

After 40+ years of always cooking Thanksgiving dinners, I have officially handed over the reins to Michael and Ally.  It's their favorite meal to cook, so they have asked to do the honors.  It was a bit strange not having those wonderful smells in my house, but I got over it! 

Ally's table was lovely, but I almost forgot to take a picture.  Her table runner was a painter's drop cloth folded and then layered with the lovely glass hurricanes and candles, some branches & leaves, and various, pumpkins and squash.

We had these 4 charmers to keep us entertained.  Our oldest, Riley and Taylor, and our youngest, Flynn and Avery.  Our other two grands, Parker and Phoebe, were with their mother for Thanksgiving.  It isn't easy, but we have to share.  

It was such a wonderful day for us, and I hope your day was the same.  Thanks so much
for stopping by.  Tomorrow I will be making a little announcement, so stay tuned.
It's going to be a good one!!!



6 comments:

  1. Oh everything looks fabulous and sooooooo good. Sounds like a wonderful day with family. Hugs, Marty

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  2. I need to know more about the pizza oven. Was there room in there for all the dishes to be cooked at one time? It all looks delicious, wish I could taste the squash dish. Lovely time!

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  3. I need to know more about the pizza oven. Was there room in there for all the dishes to be cooked at one time? It all looks delicious, wish I could taste the squash dish. Lovely time!

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  4. You are such a teaser..... That looks like a scrumptious turkey and all the fixings. Thanks for sharing. Hugs.

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  5. Look at that feast, y'all went all out! Glad you had a wonderful day with family! xo ~Liz

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  6. Would you look at that line-up! I am so drooling over your photos right now. :p The Swiss Cream Chard, also known as the Crema di bietole, is one of my favorite dishes during the holidays. On another note, adding the branches, dried leaves, and pumpkins on the table shout Halloween. ^_^

    Neva Modzelewski

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I truly love to hear from you and try to respond to each and everyone. If you have "no reply blogger," I will respond in my comments section and then visit your blog as soon as I can.

Make this a great day!
Carol

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