Better late than never

Thanksgiving came and went this year.  It was a little strange and didn't really feel like a holiday.  But, to keep the spirit alive I did cook up a turkey dinner with all the fixins yesterday for a few friends.  I was able to secure a turkey a few weeks ago through the butcher from the farmer's market and had it delivered on Friday.  It spent all day Saturday in the brine waiting to be cooked off. 

It turned out that the turkey was the easy part of the meal.  Walking through the grocery store last week I realized just how few "American" products that I'm used to relying on weren't available.  The store didn't have any sort of french fried onions or cream of mushroom soup so there wasn't a green bean casserole.  I was planning on oven frying some onions and making a type or green bean casserole but when push came to shove, that seemed like a bit too much work on Sunday morning.  So instead I just blanched off some fresh beans and fried them up in a little chili oil. 

Stuffing was the other difficulty.  There wasn't any bagged stuffing to mix in so I had to pick up a loaf of bread early in the week and let it get stale through the week.  Since the bagged stuffing usually has a far amount of seasoning in it, I added some fresh pork and fennel sausage to the mix for a bit more flavor.  I cooked that off and it turned out quite well.

The gravy was pretty spot on as well.  The and the potatoes were pretty standard.  I couldn't find any sort of frozen hash brown so there weren't any cheesy potatoes.  But I did make some corn bread from scratch which people seemed to like.  All in all, it was a pretty good meal with plenty of left overs for the week.  I'll just have to find a few creative ideas for them so it doesn't get old after a day or two.

I've also been trying a little experiment to see if I can go without a microwave.  For the most part it's been going pretty well.  Day to day I don't use one that much and it's not too much of a hassle to re-heat items on the stove or in the oven.  But this morning was probably the first day where I would have like to have one.  A little stuffing and gravy would have been a great way to start out the morning, but since I didn't plan on firing up the oven early enough I had to go without.  Oh well, just more for dinner.

Hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving.