happy friendsgiving!

New favorite holiday: rather than watching relatives get sloppy drunk on kahlua and eggnog (well, that’s what I’ll be doing on Thursday), we had Friendsgiving, a celebration of the people you invite into your life, rather than those to whom you are genetically bound.

Basically, Steve thought it up and I suspect it was just cause he loves playing with turkey carcasses so much.

I made roasted veggies. Farmer’s market turnips (yum!), baby carrots I took from a staff meeting (we also got the leftover booze, see below!), salt, pepper, allspice, cinnamon.

 

Slow roasted at 300 for an hour, finished at 400 for a few minutes, drizzled with balsamic pomegranate reduction and a bit of honey.

Just okay, actually.

We had our usual extremely high booze-to-guests ratio. We work with children and seem to just basically want to drink all the time.

This was before Steve’s lovely friend Emily brought Malbec (!)

Erin and her best friend, who is visiting from out of town, posed with the vino.

 

My best friend also attended, but did I get a picture? No. Apparently I photograph food, not people. Yikes, Leels.

We began with that traditional Pilgrim appetizer, edamame. (Actually Steve had originally planned full on Thanksgiving sushi, but as he put it, there was a battle with the sushi rice and the rice won).

 

We also chowed down on cornbread. This was leftovers from our work Thanksgiving dinner with the kids and families we serve. I did another of my cooking projects with the kid and we made jiffy cornbread plus an extra can of corn (one amusing and highly picky child tried a bite, said “It’s good!” then chewed and went “THERE’S CORN IN HERE”. Yes, Claudia, sometimes there is corn in cornbread).

T(h?)eresa made highly gorgeous lasagna. Counterspace was at a premium so we stored it in the microwave, which made for nice overhead lighting. Let the record state we did not operate the microwave with aluminum foil in it.

  

Erin, whose cooking abilities are flourishing, made homemade cranberry sauce with the inspired, antioxidant rich addition of blackberries.

Patricia brought mashed sweet potatoes, which I inhaaaaaaaaaaaled.

 

And of course, then the turkey, which Steve cooked with a great deal of gusto and then carved with, basically, a butter knife and his bare hands.

This picture captures the confusion/amusement/awe when he realized he had neglected to take out the liver.