Belated Thanksgiving, Canadian Style

During this year's Canadian Thanksgiving we were soaking up the sun in Jamaica. Therefore, we were forced to celebrate this year. Since most of the other Canadians we know (well, one of the other Canadians we know) were also in Jamaica at the time this worked out perfectly.

I won't bore you too much with the details but I will bore you with the menu. That's kind of what I do.



For starters we had:

A Trio of pates including duck liver and cognac, Mousse Imperial, and Rustique. Also we had a cheese slate with the names hastily written in chalk: Grafton cheddar, cranberry cheddar, Metropolitan brie, Danish blue, Port Salut, and Manchego.

Also there was a giant bowl of green, red, and black grapes (not pictured).

The sleeper hit of this year's thanksgiving were the rolls that Jen made. Had I known how big a hit they were going to be I wouldn't have bothered making as much other food as I did. Instead I would have simply put a bunch of butter in ramekins to serve alongside them.



For the main course we enjoyed two types of cranberry sauce, one made in a mold with gelatin, the other made from the skins with a little orange and ginger; roasted shallot, rutabaga, turnip, sweet potato, carrot, and butternut squash; traditional stuffing, sausage and sage cornbread stuffed roast pumpkin based on the recipe that I created last year; a vegetarian version of the same recipe with no sausage; roasted brussel sprouts with bacon, apples, and caramelized onions; creamy polenta with ricotta and Parmigiano-Reggiano; mashed potatoes; and a gigantic 30 pound roast turkey which I brined overnight.



For dessert we had all the favorites including Jen's Canadian-themed pumpkin pie, Jennie's famous apple pie with cheddar cheese, a delicious pecan chocolate pie, a strawberry rhubarb pie (which friends from Rhode Island brought with them from The Big Apple in Wrentham, MA), and a number of macaroons, and cookies of various makes and models.

This year may possibly be the most obscene showing of excess we've pulled off to date. Now, like most years, we just need to find friends brave enough and try to help us eat a path to our fridge so that we can carry on about our normal routine.

Coincidentally our normal routine is also one of excess and obscenity. I'm okay with that. I have embraced it.