Thanksgiving Dinner

It was George Washington who started the ball rolling on Thanksgiving as an eventual national holiday. It has been several minutes since I last read his proclamation, so the details are a little fuzzy, but I think he said something to the effect of: "Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the copious preparation and consumption of the bountiful provisions of the harvest provided by the Almighty God." Even though I just made the last part of that up, it is an accurate description of what happened.

In any event, my parents were visiting for a couple of days, so all four of us did some cooking for dinner, turning our nicely set table:

into an ephemeral repository of food:


In the above picture, you can see a Butternut Squash and Apple Soup served with some croutons.

The next picture shows the bulk of our food waiting to be served, including Twice Baked Potatoes; Kale, Spinach, and Collard Greens with Garlic; Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Bacon; Sweet Potato Biscuits; Sausage, Mushroom, Corn Bread, and Chestnut Dressing, and of course a turkey:

I think it is cool that you can see the steam coming off the Brussels Sprouts in that picture... but then again, I am a dork. Your mileage may vary.

Finally, for dessert we had some Berry Trifle, although we used Cool Whip instead of whipped cream and Mascarpone: