Thanksgiving Dinner

Cheese Ball
A surprisingly delicious dip combination with a secret ingredient.

Turkey
This year we used a combination of Alton Brown's and Emeril's brine recipe.

Brine:
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 gallons cold water
1 tbsp peppercorns

1 1/2 teaspoons allspice berries
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped candied ginger

1 orange, 1 lime & 1 lemon, zested and quartered

Roasting Prep:
Then we used Alton Brown's roasting recipe (watch the video for all the details) but omitted the cinnamon stick from the aromatics, and used 1 cup softened butter mixed with about 1 tsp minced thyme to rub on and under the turkey's skin.

Roasting:
Convection Roast with oven temperature probe in thickest part of breast: 500˚F for first 30 minutes for browning then 325˚F with breast shielded until temperature reaches 165˚ in breast.

Turkey Gravy
Followed Cooks Illustrated's Best Turkey Gravy recipe but omitted giblets and parsley since I didn't have any. Also forgot to add the drippings.

Vegetarian Mushroom Gravy
Courtesy of Martha Stewart, I skipped the portobello mushroom and used 3 cup veggie stock + 1 cup water. Also substituted Madeira wine for the Marsala wine because that's all I had.

Herb Stuffing
Modified this Cook's Illustrated recipe to be vegetarian though I think it would be excellent with the sausage.

Mashed Potatoes with Cream Cheese, Parmesan and Chives
Brought by Maxine and Loren. Excellent flavor.

Green Beans with Cranberries and Slivered Almonds
Brought by Kim and Brian. Simple and delicious.

Kale and Tomato Salad
Made with tomatoes from Phil's plant.

Butternut Squash Puree
Phil used a recipe from Real Simple that we've done before. We only did one squash because we had so much other food.

Rolls
Used my standard recipe. Dough came out too sticky this time so I had to add a little more flour during shaping which made the roll a little tough.

Buttermilk Pie with Rum-soaked Raisins
Our neighbor Richard brought over a beautiful pie with leaf cutouts and piped whipped cream and rum-soaked raisins lining the bottom. Delicious!

Pumpkin-Pecan Pie
We tried out an Epicurious recipe from Stephen Pyles. We used a full can of pumpkin (about 1 3/4 cups) and dropped the sugar to 1 tbsp in the pumpkin filling. We skipped the Whiskey Butter sauce because we ran out of time. The crust broke through and leaked in the middle slightly, and the flavor was okay but not the best.