Happy Thanksgiving! (The Food Post)

When it comes to Thanksgiving, I'm a pretty traditional girl.

I like to use hand-me-down dishes. These are Terri's mother's. They are so beautiful; we have a small set and I'd love to get a full set for Terri. They're Lenox Princess.

I like to make traditional food, even if it's updated. Here we have some lovely Brussels sprouts, which I never had as a kid, but I love now. This is the lovely 101Cookbook version. My brother gave me her cookbook and we've loved everything we've tried by her. (The pretty Thanksgiving table runner was made by my mom)

We always had homemade, from scratch, rolls for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I like to do this too. We almost never have bread at home -- we just don't eat sandwiches or toast very often (except for the occasional cinnamon bread) -- so homemade bread is a treat. I made these pretty butter roll-ups. They were soooo good.

We used Terri's grandmother's dishes for the serving. Terri made the stuffing and mashed potatoes. The gravy is a yummy vegetarian gravy I've modified a few times.

A special salad and some vegan chickpea cutlets (which didn't photograph well, although you can see them, little brown patties, here) round out the meal.

Of course for dessert we have two kinds of pie, a sour-cream apple pie and a banana-cream-without-bananas pie (Terri doesn't like the texture of bananas, so I just used banana flavoring, but the rest of the filling is 'real'). I happened to have some frozen pie crust (I don't know why, usually I'm a make-from-scratch kind of gal) so I just took the easy way out and used those.

I was a bit off my game today. A little tired and having those once-monthly issues, not thinking very straight. The cream pie turned out a little lumpy and didn't set quite as well as it should, and I nearly burned a couple of things because I wasn't paying attention. Still, it all turned out pretty well. The full menu:

Homemade rolls

Brussels sprouts

Salad (romaine with broccoli, a crunchy topping, sweet-and-sour dressing)

Mashed potatoes and gravy

Stuffing

Chickpea cutlets

Sparkling water

Pie for dessert

Although I felt a little wobbly all day, it was a really good day. Last year was not so good (although it was fun to have my mom here). The year before that was also not good, although I certainly didn't mention it in my post. So this year, the fact that we are nicely settled and happy in our home, and not going anywhere, and we have the rest of the weekend off, is really really nice. We have a lot to be thankful for, and we are. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.