When it comes to the cranberry sauce, I feel like people at the very best just toss together some cranberries, sugar, and maybe some orange zest to be a little "wild". At the very worst, take a 79 cent can and dump it into a pretty bowl. I love cranberries, but have never actually made a holiday cranberry sauce. This is what I came up with:
I sauted the onions until caramelized and brown then added in the cranberries, Witches Brew spiced wine, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, brown sugar, cayenne, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Simmered it until the cranberries popped then let it cool. Must say, this was a nice deviation from the standard.
When it came to the turkey, we pre-ordered it from the local Crane Dance Farms. I've never roasted a turkey before let alone a heritage breed turkey, so this was an interesting experience. Sure, sure, I've watched my mom and dad plenty of times in the kitchen trussing a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. My husband even scoffed at me for never having cooked a turkey. I quickly explained that my college lifestyle had no room for roasting turkeys- too expensive and I'd be the only one eating it!
I kept it pretty simple by roughly following the Alton Brown recipe online. Which, ironically, is the same brine Matt always used with his turkey. Brined it in brown sugar, salt, vegetable stock, peppercorns, allspice and ginger for over a day. When it came closer to putting it in the oven, I did a dimple stuffing of apples, onion, rosemary, cinnamon and sage. It ended up cooking faster than anticipated...475 for the first 30 minutes, then down to 250 for another 2 hours. Took it out right at the 160 mark and let it rest for a while. People were still slowly coming to the party, so by around 8:30-9:00 everyone was here and Matt started carving the turkey.
A lot of people brought some really fantastic things! John baked a couple loaves of bread. Nate made a really great cornbread stuffing with sausage (I can only assume it's Lubber's Farm sausage). Rachael has been on a brussel sprout kick and so brought those to the table. Her mom whipped up a few goodies- squash and a green bean casserole. Josh and Kari also brought another green bean casserole which is good, because you can never have too much green bean casserole! Bethany brought over a simple sweet potato dish. When I say simple, I mean simple and amazing. I never understood why people cram sweet potatoes with marshmallows, butter and more sugar. Simply put, this was just sweet potatoes baked with cinnamon and pecans. Dale and Lynn brought over a pretty epic cheese platter with aged gouda, white cheddar, and 2 other awesome cheeses which I have failed to remember. To this, Bethany added a cranberry Wensleydale and I laid out the Cowslip Creamery's Brighid cheese. I believe someone also brought some bread from Nantucket Bakery as well. Greg made some pretty epic loaded mashed potatoes. Doug breaded up and fried some catfish tails for starters. Molly and Steve brought over some rolls from a farmstand in Lansing as well as a pumpkin pie from the Grand Traverse Pie Company. Dale and Lynn also brought a pear crumble with Chinese 5-spice.
Needless to say, everybody was stuffed and the food was amazing. I don't think we expected to have so many people show up, but there were probably about 20 people give or take a few that showed up! Hosting something like this makes me so glad we have the group of friends that we do. We all enjoy good, creative, and local foods which is why we probably have a lot of these kinds of get-togethers. The last one we had was a Legendary seafood "boil" at Doug's place over the summer. I say "boil" because a traditional southern boil consists of crawfish, shrimp, corn, Andouille sausage and potatoes. Which we all had...but we grilled it instead. Not to mention a plethora of other goodies that people brought from homemade pickles to garden fresh salads. Actually...here's a couple pictures from that:
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