Thanksgiving

I’m British. My husband is British. We live in the UK. We’ve never lived in the US. We have no American connection whatsoever (well aside from a few lovely friends who originated on the other side of the pond). We did not, however, let this stop us from celebrating Thanksgiving. Any excuse to get lots of our friends together in one place at the same time to eat (hopefully) tasty food should not, in my opinion, be passed up.

So, 13 of our friends and their children came to our house this weekend. And we fed them a giant turkey. Smoked, of course, in the smoker, following the very detailed instructions found on Ed’s new favourite website, www.amazingribs.com. Here’s a picture of the beast, resting:

To accompany this we had an array of amazing side dishes, most of which were made following old family recipes that a friend of ours was kind enough to share with us. Said friend made her great-grandmother’s cornbread stuffing (or dressing – what’s the difference?) I took on the sweet potatoes with bourbon and pecans (my obsession with bourbon is quite strong at the moment). Another friend provided a delicious green bean casserole. The mashed potatoes with sour cream and melted cheddar on top were also a big hit – with one of our guests calling them the most amazing thing they had ever eaten.

And it didn’t stop there. For dessert, we had a selection of pies: apple, pecan, pumpkin and cherry, with vanilla ice cream. Delicious. And all baked and brought along by our guests. Fantastic. Although I was a little sad that I didn’t get to practise my pastry skills. To make myself feel better, I baked some bread rolls.

I followed a Martha Stewart recipe. I got out my measuring cups, converted the sticks of butter into grams and the fahrenheit to centigrade, and with a little bit of help from Bobby, produced some really rather lovely buns:

Apparently, the same dough can be used to make cinnamon buns. I need to try this, but not right now. We need to get through the leftover turkey first.