culinary school flashback: thanksgiving
Well, this post isn’t quite timed perfectly, but at least it is fall already, right 😉.
Also, in this post, my mother-in-law’s centerpiece caught on FIRE right before dinner 😂🙈 AND a squirrel helped himself to our pies while they were cooling outside. HAHA. Has anything crazy like that ever happened to you on Thanksgiving!?
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thanksgiving
I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving. Mine was fabulous, and filled with family and lots of food! This year’s list of things I am thankful for include:
- A wonderful supportive husband
- An incredible family, although we are scattered all across the globe The opportunity to follow a longtime dream and attend culinary school
- Good health
I will warn and apologize in advance that my new camera cord has not yet arrived, therefore I took all of my photos with my iPhone over the holiday. The pictures are not always the best quality, but I promise they will show some delicious food.
We headed up to see my in-laws right after school on Wednesday and were surprised that we did not hit any traffic at all – hooray! On Thursday morning, we started this incredible food holiday with Challah French Toast. I had made the Challah in school earlier in the week and thought it would be a perfect breakfast.
After breakfast, my mother-in-law (S) started prepping the 23 pound turkey. YES, you read that correctly, 23 pounds!!! Because Thanksgiving leftovers are one of the best things about Thanksgiving, I was secretly pumped about the turkey sandwiches ahead of me for the rest of the week!!!
She stuffed the turkey with some delicious stuffing and popped it in the oven for about 4 ½ hours.
I was put in charge of making mashed potatoes, which I loaded up with cream, milk, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. They were so creamy, my mouth is watering just thinking back on them.
Then, as opposed to the traditional green bean casserole or sweet potato pie (which no one in the family really likes anyway), S suggested tossing corn and peas in a sage butter. The dish was a perfect substitute!
S of course also made cranberry sauce, which was the perfect combination of sweet, tangy and sour.
Once we were ready to eat, I was asked to carve the turkey. While extremely honored, I was a bit nervous that I would mess up and incorrectly take off the legs and breast (aka, leave too much meat on the bones). Ultimately, I think I did pretty well
And this is what a perfect plate looks like:
Wouldn’t you agree?
After the meal, we needed a looong break before we could dive into the desserts, and even then, we could only have a very small portion of pumpkin pie and apple tart. Good thing, because a squirrel had helped himself to part of the pie earlier in the day, when the pies were cooling outside! If only I had caught a picture of him, but you can see where he ate the edges.
S had also set up the table very elegantly with a homemade centerpiece!
Funny story about the centerpiece … just as we were sitting down to eat, one of the candles got a little closer to the centerpiece and it caught on fire! We tried to put it out with a napkin, which failed, so D tried to blow the fire out, which blew ash all over the table and the food we had not yet had a chance to eat. As a last resort, my brother-in-law threw open the window and the centerpiece was tossed outside. I should be completely honest and mention that while everyone was worried about the fired, I was more worried about my perfect plate (pictured above). I took the plate and moved it to a safe location so I could take a photo of it! Haha. I still crack up just thinking about this.
I love spending time with family and we had a very relaxing few days off. Tomorrow I start week 10 of culinary school, which is absolutely nuts. Only 3 more full weeks before I move on to Phase 2.
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Now that I cannot wait for Thanksgiving!!