Meal No. 1426: Thanksgiving 2015

I love Thanksgiving. It's such a great holiday, focused on food and friends and fellowship. Those are pretty essential ingredients to the life of the Roediger House. That might help explain why "Thanksgiving" meal gatherings actually occur several times a year.

The tendency around here is to expand the celebration of food and friends to also encompass the evening before as well as the days following, so it was a full house and a full table for three days in a row.

The centerpiece of it all, of course, is the Thanksgiving meal, served at the proper dinner hour of 8 o'clock. And it did not occur to me until I was drafting this post (while sipping coffee and waiting for the rest of the household to begin stirring) that this was the first true Thanksgiving meal to be taken in the dining room since 2011. I "lost" that space when it became storage for items brought home from my mother's estate, starting in 2012, and then there was also the plaster restoration and floor refinishing that took place in the fall of 2014...and shifting all the rooms about left me with a horrible junk problem in there until this past July. It felt so warm and cozy even though it might be considered sort of formal by some.

Then there was the food, and plenty of it. The menu really doesn't change, although this year's last-minute addition of an unexpected gluten-free guest necessitated some tailoring of the dishes, where possible. Overall, I think we were all well-satisfied and full-bellied by the meal's conclusion.

I was not shy about loading up my own plate, but I could not muster the strength of character or will to return for any seconds:

Clockwise, from top:
apple & bacon stuffing, turkey with gravy, sweet potato casserole,
layered green bean casserole, beef tenderloin in wine sauce,
creamy horseradish sauce.
Center: corn pudding

Rest assured...I am thankful for these kinds of good times with great friends:

Addendum: a vote was taken at meal's end to determine whether or not corn pudding should remain on the Thanksgiving menu. I like it, but the vote was 2-6 against it.

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"Oven-Roasted Turkey Breast," Betty Crocker: Holiday Entrées, Sides, Brunches, & More, November 2001, p. 22-23.

"Beef Tenderloin in Wine Sauce" (p. 296) and "Spicy Horseradish Sauce" (p. 295), from The All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Compiled and Edited by Julie Fisher Gunter. Oxmoor Press (2006).

"Layered Green Bean Casserole," from my sister Allison in Rossville, Indiana.

"Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping," from Southern Living Slow-Cooker Cookbook,  (Oxmoor House, 2006), p. 234-235.

"Cornbread Stuffing with Apples and Bacon," from David Venable. Found online.