We had a very sweet and quiet Thanksgiving at home, and somehow, without any pressure, it all felt very easy. Maybe a bit too easy–the kids ended up half-naked, and I was too tired at that point to insist on decorum.  Oh well.  Next year.  (Christmas? We’ll see).

I threw the turkey in the oven in the early afternoon, bashed together a couple of old apples, some apple-juice-sweetened fig jam I had lying around, walnuts, onions and garlic, and that made a pretty smashing impromptu stuffing.

The kids helped to mash a head of cauliflower boiled in chicken stock together with a lump of butter and some cream–our stand-in for mashed potatoes.

The cranberries I picked up at one of the orchards down the road, and boiled them, as usual, with some lemon juice.  After they popped and luxuriated together in a mush, I added some honey–try to avoid cooking honey.  I always include it onc the heat has subsided a bit.

Our dinner was on Sunday, and we have been sleepy with turkey every since.  I was impressively on top of things, and I made sure to strip the bones, and make my stock.  And so today, we had a beautiful turkey soup.  Quite literally beautiful, too–a mosaic of rather shocking colours, for any soup other than a borscht.  What happened?  The most gorgeous garnet-coloured carrots from the Gagetown Fruit Farm, one of my all-time favourite independent businesses in New Brunswick.  More on the Fruit Farm later, I promise.