Thanksgiving Menu

Thanksgiving is a day well celebrated in our house. For us, it's a day to cook and eat and drink and eat some more, and to share this over indulgence with friends and family. But both immediate families are so far (and Canadian Thanksgiving is long over), and what usually happens is we open our doors to friends, colleagues and acquaintances who want a place to spend the non-religious, family oriented, food focused holiday.

This year we had 16 people for Thanksgiving dinner - some ex-colleagues of ours, some very close friends and some classmates of Nino's. It was a great crowd and lots of fun. Highlights of the meal included the turkey, the mashed sweet potatoes with chipotle peppers, Tonia's green beans, the pumpkin cheesecake, Aaron's chocolate cake and Jen's bundt cake. We consumed about 7 bottles of wine and a bottle of Umeshu (Japanese pum wine) for dessert. Of note was the 2000 Cambria Bench Break Vineyard Pinot Noir.

Here's the entire menu:

Appetizers: Crackers and pita with curried tofu dip and butternut squash dip
Arugula, persimmon and fennel salad with olive oil and vinegar
Best way brined turkey
Chipotle mashed sweet potatoes
Baked yams
Vegetarian meatloaf
Tuscan white beans
Green beans with orange and rosemary gremolata
Dessert: pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate cake with chambord, amaretto white bundt cake, persimmon apple crisp, homemade mango ice cream, fruit tart