>>On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 00:44:35 GMT, TonyP > wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Thanksgiving is comming up soon, what's your typical menu.
>>>

>

Just did a Thanksgiving-esque dinner (a run-through?) for sixteen
"farmworkers," friends who picked apples and helped us bring home 175
gallons of cider from the local cider mill -- 100 gallons of it is
happily burbling into hard cider in 55-gallon drums on our kitchen
floor. Here's the meal:

appetizer of chopped liver (made with home-rendered chicken fat from our
own chickens -- or should I say "ex-chickens"?) on baguette slices
served with our own bottle-conditioned "Champagne" cider

turkey brined with lots of salt, a bit of sugar, bay leaves, and
peppercorns; roasted under a butter-dipped "blanket" of cheesecloth,
cavity stuffed with garlic cloves, cut-up lemon, and apple;

giblet gravy

home-made cornbread dressing with loads of hot-pepper sausage, onions,
celery, and turkey stock

smashed homegrown German-yellow potatoes with garlic and chopped
scallions and altogether too much butter and half-and-half, but nobody
complained

apple/squash/leek gratin with breadcrumb and pepper-cheese topping

collards and kale from the garden, simmered for hours with a smoked ham
hock

cranberry/red-onion compote (try finding a fresh cranberry around here
in October -- hadda use canned)

home-made pear chutney

Finger Lakes wines: Leidenfrost Baco Noir, Dr. Frank Chardonnay, and a
bottle of great bubbly made by our winemaker neighbor. Nearly
everything goes with turkey!

home-made pumpkin pie and vanilla ice cream; cornmeal/pumpkin cake with
orange sauce; fresh apple cake; a great store-bought coffee cake with
blueberry and cheesecake topping.

Wanted to make popovers, but there just wasn't time or oven space.
Definitely do it for Thanksgiving this year.

I'm still exhausted, and still full. Burp. But I'd do it again in a
heartbeat, and look forward to the Thanksgiving debacle.

Cheers!
Peg (in the Finger Lakes, where the trees still seem to have a good grip
on their color-changing leaves, and where it SNOWED this morning! Time
to get out the crock pot.)