Eating Well

The Menu

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Appetizers

Roasted bleu cheese and leek crostini with walnuts on sourdough

Proscuitto wrapped medjool dates stuffed with herbed goat cheese and fresh basil

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The Meal

Herb brined Turkey stuffed with wild rice dressing

Blackened sweet potato spears with chile cream sauce and green onion garnish

Roasted Brussel sprouts with grapes and walnuts

Garlic herb biscuits

Cranberry sauce

Mashed potatoes

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Dessert

Apple Pie

Mocha Pecan Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Cranberry Pie

Maple Syrup Pie

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Thanksgiving is kind of a big deal hereabouts.  With three women in my family who live their lives out of the kitchen, we relish the excuse to go overboard.  And while we generally prepare enough food for two to three times the number around our table, that is not precisely what I meant.  We go overboard in the planning, the preparation, the menu-conceptualizing.  This year, I contributed the pies and the bird itself (courtesy of my boss who ordered fresh turkeys for each of his employees), my mother prepared the bird and our family tradition wild rice stuffing and paired the wines, while the meal itself was the brain and love child of my sister.  This is her last year in Fairbanks, as she's going to grad school next year, and so probably the last Thanksgiving we'll get to co-cater unless one or the other of us visits in future years. 

 

Two weeks ago now was Thanksgiving.  This weekend, I made gallons of stock with the turkey carcass, and we've been eating soup all last week and this. 

Thankful Thursdays

I live in a country, where once a year, on a thursday, we all are reminded to take a moment to be grateful.  To express our thanks.  To celebrate the abundance that is already (that was always already - for my english geekery friends) present in our lives.  On the third Thursday in November, most Americans gather around a table with friends and family to give thanks (and to gorge on turkey as well.  Speaking of which, I have a forthcoming post on the feast my sister cooked.)

As a student and a teacher of yoga, I am intimately aware of the power of cultivating a practice.  The conscious practice of gratitude in my life, has the power to be transformative.  There are plenty of studies and well written persuasions I could quote, but suffice it to say that cultivating a gratitude practice, or writing a gratidude journal, can help to heal many upon many of life's stresses, ills, traumas, and aches and pains. 

And so, stealing the name (Thankful Thursday) from a dear friend, I would like to try my hand at one of these weekly blog themes... 


Today, I am thankful for being so closely in contact with my electrical power source.  There is a generator and a battery bank and solar array within feet of my house.  And so, unlike the many who have been living, unexpectedly and unprepared, without power for many days on the East Coast in the wake of Sandy; when my power system goes down and leaves us without electricity, it is immeninently manageable to fix.  And I don't have to wait on some nameless person from a faceless company to figure it out. 
Today, I am thankful for my Darling man who tends to such electrical failures with a love and patience I find it hard to muster for that which is not animate. 
Today, I am thankful for the ease and convenience of electric lighting and refrigeration and watching a decades-old taped Nutcracker performance on VHS.

Today I am thankful for my students.  And for my teachers.