Kicking off the holiday season

 For my friends who celebrate, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! It was really good at my my house. We got up early that morning and took George over to McLeod Park for a good walk. It's too bad we have to cross a very busy highway to get to it; otherwise we could walk over, it's so close to home. The drive only takes about 3 minutes. It's a pretty park with lots of space, and George loves it.

Then we came back home and I spent the next few hours cooking. I made a pretty good spread for two people, and it was all delicious, if I do say so myself.

Menu: Roast Turkey Breast, Hasselback Potatoes, Cornbread Dressing,

 Cranberry Mandarin Orange Sauce, Green Beans, Sweet Potato Souffle. 

A close up of the Hasselback Potatoes. This was my first time trying this recipe, and we liked it a lot!

And later, there was pie: Pecan (my favorite) and Cherry (Gregg's favorite). The cherry pie looks like hell but it tasted good.

The best part about cooking this meal was that I got to share some of it with our neighbor, Heather. She's single and doesn't have much family, so I sent her a text asking if she had any plans for a Thanksgiving meal. When she said she didn't, I offered to drop off some plates of food and she gladly took me up on it! I loaded three plates with enough food for two meals and took them over. An hour later she texted me and said, "OMG this is amazing! I can't stop eating!! The sweet potato casserole is just like I make it, just like my mother and grandmother would make it and with the marshmallows on top!! This has made me have a Thanksgiving Day!!" 

I can't tell you how happy that made me! My husband is a huge fan of my cooking and he always looks at me like I've worked some kind of magic when I make a big festive meal, but it's a lot of work to cook for just two. It felt so good to share our meal with a friend! Later in the evening when the pies were done I texted Heather again and asked her if she was ready for dessert. Within seconds she responded: "Yeeeeesssss!!" and walked over to meet me at my front steps. I gave her two slices of each pie and some more sweet potato souffle since she liked it so much. Another good thing about sharing our food was it cut down on the leftovers which we always tire of pretty quickly. We had some of everything again yesterday, and today there's just enough sliced turkey left to make a couple of sandwiches. Everything else should be finished off by tonight, too. Perfect. 

So that was our Thanksgiving and then yesterday we went back to the park, walked George a couple more times around our neighborhood, relaxed, and then PUT UP THE CHRISTMAS TREE. In November! We've never put up the tree so early, and I feel kind of weird about it, but it looks pretty. We started off by pulling out the tree and all the boxes of ornaments from the closet in the office/Marco's room. We'd already decided to clean out that closet and to start utilizing the attic for decoration storage, and since we had everything out we figured, what the heck. I took a photo of it this morning because the lights look so nice on this cloudy, gray, chilly day. 

Oh, and our dryer died this morning, because of course it did. It wouldn't be the holiday season without an unexpected expense popping up! So now I know what I'm getting for Christmas. Ho ho ho.

First day of fall break

I woke up at 6:45am this morning with pink light streaming in my bedroom window. The sky looked so pretty that I immediately got out of bed and snapped a photo from the front porch.

It's good to be on fall break, finally. Thanksgiving falls really late this year. Once we go back to school on Monday there's just three weeks left until Christmas break will be upon us.

Today has been nice. I drank several cups of coffee on the porch first thing and watched the progress next door. The house beside us that's been for sale for some months now has finally been sold and the new owners are moving in. I saw a (probably) young woman out back with two dogs on leashes, but I haven't been able to get a real sense of what these new neighbors are like yet. I went out to do some shopping today and picked up a box of assorted cookies from one of the local bakeries, and Gregg brought home a package of dog treats from the pet store. I plan to take them over tomorrow as a little "welcome to the neighborhood" gift. I do hope they're decent people; we're doing what we can to get off on the right foot with them. The jerk behind us is plenty as far as bad neighbors go! Wish us luck.

While I was out today I stopped at a garden center/gift shop to have a look at their year-round Christmas items for sale. Nothing I saw inside was of much interest to me but I enjoyed walking around the outside and looking at the plants for sale.

We still have a lot of color left in the trees around here, as you can see.

Oh! And Gregg's birthday picture is framed and hanging on our wall. I picked it up last night on my way home from work:

Tonight he's working late like he usually does on Wednesdays, but once he gets home it will offically be a holiday! I'm having wine while beginning to prep some of the food for tomorrow's meal. We'll be having roast turkey, gravy, cornbread dressing, cranberry mandarin orange walnut salad (the recipe I invented years ago), deviled eggs (I cheated and bought the pre-boiled eggs for convenience sake!) and canned corn and green beans. For dessert I'll be making some sort of apple dessert from scratch, most likely a crisp. Tonight I'll salt and season the turkey, make the cranberry salad, and bake a batch of cornbread for the dressing so that tomorrow our meal will be fairly easy to pull together. With a 16 pound bird we'll probably be eating turkey until Christmas....I'll have to be creative with leftovers!

And tonight makes 12 years that we've had our sweet girl, our Gingerbread. She showed up on our back porch the night before Thanksgiving in 2007.

Puppy Ginger....Thanksgiving Day 2007.

 My sweet girl!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog friends here in the USA! I hope you all are surrounded by good food, good company, and lots of love tomorrow.

Thanksgiving for two

Thanksgiving was quiet and very, very nice this year. Husband and I stayed home and spent a lazy day together. We wore our pjs most of the day, watched movies, and then in the early evening we had a small feast. (I did most of the cooking the night before, so I didn't have to spend all day in the kitchen).

Pretty autumn table for two.
 

 

The star of the show. It was the smallest whole turkey
I could find. We'll be eating leftovers all weekend.

 

Broccoli salad with broccoli, shredded carrots,
red onions, walnuts, and dried cranberries mixed with a
 creamy, slightly sweet coleslaw dressing.

This picture of the baked macaroni and cheese I made doesn't do it justice. This is a sinful recipe. There are literally pounds of cheese, butter, whole milk, eggs, and pasta all baked to a rich, golden, bubbling mass of decadent lusciousness. I call it a heart attack in a pan. We only eat this once or twice a year for that reason.

Husband's favorite: deviled eggs.
 Required at all holiday meals. And homemade
cranberry sauce is mandatory when there's turkey!

Isn't that pretty? Those are two dessert dishes of Watergate salad. It's a light side dish/dessert that consists of pistachio pudding, crushed pineapple, mini marshmallows, Cool Whip, and pecans. It may sound strange, but it's actually delicious and a vintage holiday recipe in the South. I also made a pecan pie and a chocolate pudding pie.

It was a great meal, and a fun and relaxing way to spend Thankgiving. Late in the evening we took Ginger for a cold, starlit walk (which we needed after all that food!) and then I cracked open a bottle of champagne. It was a perfect day.