Thanksgiving Feast West Coast Canadian Style

We had a marvelous thanksgiving feast a couple of weeks ago, West Coast Style! We do our best to buy local and eat organic.

It started with two bottles of champagne (Domaine Chandon Brut Classic, a non-vintage from California), Russ' parents, my mom and our kids, Athena and Sasha.The champagne was delicious! Yeasty and smooth with a clean finish. In my humble opinion we could have skipped wine with dinner and had more bubbly!

We served a simple appetizer of olives, my own crusty ciabatta bread, cheese and some great sugared almonds from a local roaster, Haerthe Confections.

We try to serve the veggies or salad before the main meal so the kids get their good stuff before stuffing themselves on bread. Sasha enjoyed the Caesar salad. It's the only way to get him to eat something green! Joanna, Russ' mom, prepped the veggie sticks, carrots, cucumbers, and celery which Athena happily gobbled up!

By this time the free-range turkey was roasting nicely, along with the organic squash from our friends' farm, Greenroom Organics. We stuffed the beast with simple mushroom stuffing. It's the way my mom always does it, with good crusty bread from my shop and without the liver.

 

Russ mashed up the local organic russet potatoes with butter and lots of whip cream. OMG! I'm never going back to milk in the mashed potatoes again. No wonder restaurant potaoes taste so good! Scary thought to have whip cream in the fridge on an ongoing basis. It was all topped with easy cranberry sauce and generous amounts of pan gravy! Dessert was a simple affair of pumpkin pie, almond pear frengipan and pear grape crostada.

Here's the crew!

Mother's Little Helper_1 - Easy Crumble Topping

Here's a great tip from my mom:

When making crumble use melted butter instead of cold. Saves you time and it's less work. Here's the recipe:

Blend 2 cup oats with 1 cup flour and 1 cup sugar. Melt 1/2 cup butter and toss with the dry ingredients until crumbly. 


Use as a topping for muffins, fruit pies, fruit crisps, coffee cake or sweet quick breads such as banana bread.

Easy Cranberry Sauce

It's kinda like salsa really. Super easy and super fast! Adds great colour to the holiday table. And the kids like it! Also great on turkey sandwiches the next day.

1 whole orange, peel & all, cut into 1/4's

1 pkg fresh cranberries

1 C sugar

put the whole lot into a food processor

buzz it up until reduced to a pulp

you can leave it more chunky if you like it that way

yum!