As a child, Thanksgiving was never one of my favorite holidays. I didn't fully appreciate the chance to have dinner with loved ones and celebrate "the harvest" until well into my twenties.
We began our Thanksgiving celebration on Tuesday this year. Why? Gingerbread cookie making!
Gingerbread is one of my favorite holiday flavors. Pecan and pumpkin pie aren't among my favorite desserts, either, and I wanted to make sure I had a sweet treat to enjoy after dinner.
Originally I had planned to use the recipe my mother introduced me to through Glass Jar Goodies. But the jar of molasses had an interesting one on their label. We'll be making more cookies for Christmas and we therefore thought we should see what the molasses makers think cookies should taste like.
It took a good three hours to bake the cookies. With a limited area upon which to roll dough and one measly cookie sheet, the process extended itself far beyond a normal length. Between cutting shapes and removing the sheet from the oven, Chris and I worked on a Beatles puzzle. A "vegetarian gourmet" pizza from Papa Murphey's while watching The Hours came next.
Frosting the cookies came the next day. Making icing from scratch was especially fun. I highly recommend using orange juice instead of milk. The result is a creamcicle like icing that would also be divine on orange cupcakes.
And Thursday was the day! We packed up all of our cooking ingredients and headed over to Chris's sister's house. Her mother had made crumb cake. There was a pot of coffee. The Philadelphia dog show amused Chris and I much to the chagrin of our family!
As vegetarians, our main course was Tofurkey, one of my all time favorite meat substitutes. We went with a soy sauce, olive oil, and sage baste as recommended on the box and "shaved" off pieces as opposed to slicing it.
Delicious.
We also brought green beans for a side dish and mead to drink. Wine is not my thing, it's way to strong for my taste, and mead is a great substitute for it. It's very similar to white wine but is made from honey instead of grapes.
The day was very nice and fun. The two of us introduced the kids to Beatles Rockband and were excited to see one of them really getting the hang of it. My brother called. I called my mother. She called me. I phoned dad, too.
We ended the night with several games of Buzz, a trivia video game.
I genuinely have so much to be thankful for and spending the holiday with Chris's family was one of them.
