Thanksgiving China Style

I'm not a traditional Thanksgiving meal kind of girl. I don't love turkey. Or mashed potatoes. Gravy can be good, but if it's not, no thank you. Stuffing is usually good. Sides are questionable. I don't love pies. So yeah, me and the Thanksgiving meal have had issues for a lot of years. In the pandemic year when we stayed home, and I saw my chance to go nontraditional. We had a 9 course meal.

We had cranberry brie bruschetta, fish packets with fregola, creamy leek soup with maple bacon, macaron (made by the masterful Danielle Braithwaite), stuffing with roasted carrots, Cornish game hen, charcuterie board, mini pie and grapefruit fennel salad. We loved it.

In 2021 our menu featured food from around the world:

Again, a hit--if you were off spring; if you were a progenitor, you had other feelings....

This year we would have loved to do something like unto those. But pulling into town a few days before Thanksgiving didn't give me much prep time (especially since we had Tessa's birthday and that took up a day of cooking). The girls decided that they wanted to repeat the Svickova from last year. That I could do. You serve that with cranberry sauce and whipped cream and bread (I did not make the traditional Czech bread this year). I also made a fresh green bean casserole (Alton Brown's recipe is especially good) and a chocolate cream pie.

How did it turn out? The Svickova is very good; the green bean casserole was delightful (the girls couldn't remember me ever making it; Tessa nearly refused to eat it because of the name 'casserole') and the pies were mediocre. I should have not done the pie crusts and stuck with just the dark chocolate pudding and whipped cream. But the shells held the pudding nicely and made us feel all Thanksgiving-y. (Greta doesn't like whipped cream so she just enjoys the chocolate pudding.)

Our black table is not photography friendly, so to avoid the bad reflections, we turned the lights off for pictures. So you get food in the dark. There are real reasons photographers do not shoot food in the dark! But this should be sufficient for the girls' memories--which is the real purpose of this blog.

And while being a very different year, we were nonetheless thankful for many, many things. One of our most cherished blessings is you, our dear family and friends. We love and miss you.

This is from last year, but it still encapsulates my feelings:

Life is good. I'm very thankful!

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