see.pre.turkey.day

The day before Thanksgiving, November 25, my kitchen saw some serious action. We had plans to eat at a friend's house about 1.5 blocks away. This was our official 'first Thanksgiving' together sans-family. Same for our friends. We bonded together and were going to eat in style. After about 5 calls to my mother for cooking advice, I started... let the cooking begin!

The line up:
1. Homemade Dinner rolls
2. Carrot Souffle
3. Green-Bean Casserole
4. Fresh Cranberry Sauce
5. Apple Pie
6. Homemade Cinnamon Rolls
(I was going to head over to my friend's house early to help with the bird- nothing like fresh cinnamon rolls to get people in the mood to cook)

I had never eaten carrot souffle until one Thanksgiving at Mike's Mom (Jeanette's) house. From that Thanksgiving I learned 2 things: 1. Carrots mixed with sugar, eggs, and butter are really delicious 2. Mike is really attached to a carrot dish, he is obsessed.
Thanks to Google and several helpful internet sites, I managed to find a recipe for Piccadilly's Carrot Souffle. Then I made Mike help prep the carrots.

Next, came the apples and the apple pie. An amazingly helpful apple pie tip from one of my favorite chefs:
Once apples are peeled, cored and cut into slices, set them in a strainer with a bowl underneath. Let them sit for 1.5 hours. The apples will drain their juices into the bowl. Before you bake the assembled pie, take the juice from the apples and heat them in a pot. Since most of the juice is sugar, the juice will cook down to a nice apple glaze, that you can brush onto the top of your pie.

Dessert :)

This pose is for my sister, Jen.
I call it the cooking pose.

Next up, Cinnamon rolls!!!
You have to roll it out, then roll it up!

Always a hit!

I have to admit, this is a cookbook I checked out from the Library.
Southern Cooking... come on, is there any other way to cook?

Some pics of the fresh cranberry sauce. I just love the color of cranberries.

Cranberries, port wine, sugar, orange zest, and vanilla beans. YUM!