Thanksgiving 2013

I meant to blog a pre-Thanksgiving post on Wednesday to link the dessert recipes I was working on but I was too busy baking them to get to my blog.  And now Thanksgiving has come and gone and I hope all those who celebrated it had a good one and are suitably stuffed.  I stopped eating around 3:30 pm yesterday and didn't break my fast until 17 hours later this morning if that gives you any indication on how much I had to be grateful for yesterday.

But pictures say a thousand words so here's the pictorial of our Thanksgiving feast yesterday

As a whole, we're not really big on turkey in my family so we had a relatively modest 10-lb turkey.  Based on a tip from Martha Stewart on how to keep the turkey from drying out, my sister wrapped it in parchment paper for most of its baking time.  Towards the last 30 minutes of roasting, she peeled back the parchment and laid strips of bacon over it. It worked because the turkey was pretty moist.

The rice stuffing my mom and my niece made

Below is my mom's mashed potatoes - I don't have the recipe but I was in the kitchen when she and my sister were making it and I was listening to the ingredients that went into it which included sour cream, milk, mayonnaise and butter.  I had to ask "are any potatoes going into that?" LOL. It's garnished with the bacon crumbled from the slices that went on top of the turkey. I didn't have enough room to try them but everyone seemed to like them.

Mashed potatoes

Gravy made from the turkey drippings

My mom also made crab-stuffed chicken breasts.  I didn't have room to try this either at the time but I took some home as leftovers and will have it later this weekend.

Crab-Stuffed Chicken Breasts

My uncle brought lechon and it was really good, very tender and moist.  I haven't had lechon in awhile so I think I ate more lechon than turkey.

Lechon (roast pork)

My mom also made Shrimp Pesto Pasta, a family favorite.  You can't tell from the picture but there's a lot of shrimp underneath the noodles.

Shrimp Pesto Pasta

The ham is from Honeybaked.  My poor mom stood in line for an hour just to get inside the shop then had to wait some more to buy it.  I'm not normally a big fan of ham but it was pretty good.  Even better as leftovers the next day with scrambled eggs.

Honeybaked Ham

This was my plate and I'm only posting this one because I forgot to take an individual shot of my Caramelized Sweet Potatoes, the post that has gotten the most hits over the past few days so I hope other people were able to give them a try as well.  I remembered to add the orange zest this time and it did make the sweet potatoes more orange-y.  They were good that way but I also liked them without the zest.

I will post the desserts separately later on.  I have 14 family members coming to my house this afternoon for dessert so I'd better get off my computer and get ready for them....