Thanksgiving Week

We returned from vacation on Monday night to a mostly messy apartment and an empty kitchen. We had just enough time to pick up a turkey and some other essential items at Trader Joes before David and Christianne arrived.

My 10 year old niece is such a sweetheart. Even though I had just seen her in June, I was surprised to see that she was nearly as tall as me, and wore a bigger shoe size than me. Before she even arrived to DC, she knew she wanted to go to the top of the Washington Monument, see the Jefferson Memorial at night, and go ice skating. We were sure she got to do all of these things. One night she decided to write a story. So she just sat down and immediately started writing, only stopping to give us paragraph by paragraph updates. Christianne amazed me with her descriptive accounts of being caught in a rainstorm - the clouds trembled, the lightning flickered, and she was safely covered under a blanket of trees... I loved it.

We spent Wednesday cooking and cooking, and cooking some more. It was nice, because there wasn't much to do on Thursday except clean up a little, which made the day more relaxing. We had David, Christianne, and several friends over for the following feast:

1. Mixed greens with apple, dried cranberries, candied pecans, and goat cheese

2. Roasted turkey with an herb paste rubbed all under the skin. We stuffed it with fresh herb sprigs, onions, celery, and fresh citrus fruit.

3. Dressing, which my brother called hippie stuffing. I made it with asiago sourdough bread, spicy italian sausage, dried apricots, fresh apples and cranberries, pecans, pine nuts, fennel, other regular veggies, tons of fresh herbs, and moistened it with spicy apple cider and white wine.

4. Spinach Gratin (which I could have added a little extra spinach to)

5. Roasted sweet potato and roasted banana puree with a nut streusel topping

6. Mashed Potatoes

7. Sauteed Green beans

For dessert, Lane made delicious Pumpkin Crunch, a recipe shared by our dear friend Malia, and I made an apple cranberry pie. It was a serious feast.

I truly thought I was going to pass out after I finished eating my dinner. Lane was in all his glory. We purposely got an extra big turkey so we could have tons of leftovers.

After running about 8 cycles in two days my dishwasher decided to crap out after Thanksgiving dinner, leaving us to wash all our dishes by hand.

The next morning, we put on the Christmas music, decorated the tree and the rest of the apartment. I just love getting a head start on the Christmas holiday. The rest of the weekend was spent checking items off of Christianne's list, in addition to visiting the American Indian museum, the Smithsonian visitor center (the castle) and the Botanical Gardens.