Euro-Thanksgiving

Since Thanksgiving is on a Thursday, and Josh is busy with school on Thursdays, we decided to celebrate the Saturday after. I'm very much a holiday person. I get very into them. Especially being away from family, I find it important to honor traditions. 

So! Here's what I made, all by myself, my very first crack at cooking the Thanksgiving meal:

Spiced Brandy Wine 

Quiet a crowd pleaser.

Classic Cranberry Sauce 

Soooo good! I will use this recipe again.

Thomas Keller Roasted Chicken 

Turkey is not an easy thing to come by in the Netherlands, so we opted for three chickens. The challenge was that we have a single microwave oven. Translation: only one dish in the oven at a time. No matter! I don't know how i pulled it off, but i did. I've never cooked a whole chicken before. I'm kind of squeamish when it comes to raw meat, so I had to pretend to be Julia Child: "fearless!" Thomas Keller is a food genius and so I trusted his advice on roasting a chicken. It was super easy, once you know what to do. Make the chicken compact, so that all the meat cooks the same. Make sure the chicken is at room temperature so as not to mess with the oven's temp. Apply lots of salt. And some pepper. That's pretty much it. Chicken number one had fresh rosemary inside, chicken number two had garlic, and number three had lemon. Turns out we only needed two chickens to feed our crowd, so we had great leftovers. Now to make chicken stock!!!

Creamy Mashed Potatoes

Perfectly classic.

White Wine Gravy

Probably my favorite recipe of the lot. Ohhhh, the wine. Such great flavor.

Honey Glazed Carrots

I was going to make roasted carrots, but the oven was being used way too much. So I randomly found this recipe on Pinterest, and it was a nice alternative to candied yams, I'd say.

Kale and Pomegranate Salad

I read somewhere that Thanksgiving is no time for salad. I think I'll take that advice more seriously next year, as good as this salad was.

Apple Crisp

I didn't have a pie plate, so this was a good alternative. It was amazing. Served with whipped cream and ice cream.

Had some fancy apps as well, as you can see. Nadine brought stuffing. And Alex made something from his homeland of Canada: Poutine! It was an amazing first course. 

Our guests were a few of Josh's classmates: James (American), Slava (Slovakian), Hugo (French), and Nadine and Alex (Canadians). 

After dinner we played a rousing game of charades... Which turned into mostly impersonating each other. It was a memorable Thanksgiving. Thankful indeed. 

Thank you, Josh, for letting me play Martha Stewart for the day!

Thankful for this lady

So now it's officially Christmastime in my book. The person we're renting from had a stash of Christmas decorations, so we unpacked them yesterday. A lot of gold! She's really into monochrome themes. Not my style, but I appreciate having some holiday visuals. We watched A Muppet Christmas Carol while decorating the faux tree.

I hope your holiday was good too!