Thanksgiving 2013

OK, so I have some catching up to do... 

Thanksgiving was SUPERB. I must say, I blew my own socks off with how good the food was!!

I had roasted and pureed and frozen a pumpkin earlier this fall from our garden bust since I was making two pumpkin desserts, I knew I had to get more pumpkin. Since they don't sell convenient canned pumpkin here... the process is always the same. This time I used a "red kuri squash" or "Hokkaido pumpkin" as they call it in Finnish.

It was the most vibrant orange that I had to take pictures. 

I saved some seeds in case we can grow some of our own...

The table was festive. Thanks to my sister for lending her tablecloth! 

 

Green bean casserole. The mushroom sauce was delicious and the crispy onion topping even more so!

The recipe can be found here from smitten kitchen

 

Whole turkeys here cost more than anyone was willing to spend so I opted for a turkey roulade (recipe here from the cozy apron.

I was unpleasantly surprised at the grocery store when the turkey filet section was cleared out. So we went with good ol' chicken breast. I think because I wasn't able to buy skin on breasts, the chicken was a little dry. I could have and should have not had them in the oven for the full time. But hey, hubby and I didn't care as we prefer dry chicken. I know, weird. 

Anywho, the recipe made a really delicious main course and I would eat this and make it a 100x again.

(Didn't hubby do a good job of rolling those up?)

 

This got a little torched in the hub-bub of the last 30 minutes. But this is a sweet potato sage butter casserole. My sister and her husband went nuts for this and it's the one casserole I made two of because I knew it'd be popular. We love our starchy carbs in this family. 

Martha's recipe here. 

By the time everything was ready, we all charged at it ravenously so I forgot the picture of the stuffing but you can see it in the corner on the left of the plate there. And the cranberry sauce was orange scented and super yummy and fruity. I used frozen lingonberries since they were cheaper than cranberries and it turned out just fine. I also reduced the sugar somewhat. 

Martha's orange cranberry sauce here.

Martha's cornbread stuffing here

(I omitted the chestnuts and instead of baking a cornbread, I bought a nice loaf of gluten-free bread)

Dessert was the traditional pumpkin pie. My nephew has said many times that it's his favorite so I took it seriously. I don't think I mentioned it before in this post, but everything you've seen has been gluten-free because of my dad's celiac disease. 

Hence the pie crust looking so dark. I didn't burn it! It is made with half buckwheat flour and half gluten free flour mix. Gluten free pastry doughs have been my downfall many a time baking for my dad, so I was pleased to make a half way decent one! 

Finns can see the recipe I used here at pirkka.

It's tough to find a recipe without evaporated milk and canned pumpkin! (things we don't have here)

 

The grown-up dessert was a pumpkin creme brulee. I'm really into them right now since I splurged on a set of ramekins and a brulee torch a couple months ago. 

These were a SUCCESS and we all practically licked the ramekins clean. 

Recipe here at love and olive oil

All of these recipes and the ideas for the pie and table setting can be found here on my thankgiving pinterest board. 

 

And because no post is complete without a flower picture, here is my amaryllis that was in perfect bloom for the occasion. It's already wilted now. But it was glorious while it lasted!!!

 

Ah, now on to Christmas feast plans...

Cheese party!!

Decorating for fall with gourds grown at our garden.

(The garden is so severely neglected it breaks my heart. But at least my gourds are here to cheer me up!)

Sunday we had an out of control cheese party. 

I say out of control because we had a lot of cheese (6 kinds!) and only 4 people eating it. 

We gorged. 

It was yum. 

 

We had a Dutch gouda, some kind of swiss and a French Saint Morbier (or whatever it was called... it was the least favorite!)

 

Blue cheese, goat cheese, brie. 

 

The rest of the brie was encased in puff pastry along with apricot jam and walnuts. 

Super yum!!

 

We had so much fun and I'd definitely like doing it again! 

Especially the baked brie!

Entertaining

That cake = utterly fabulous.

If you like American style, dense, sweet, moist cakes with RICH frosting... you will love this recipe.

HIGHLY recommend it. I like it more than the go-to "busy day chocolate cake" recipe I've been using for a couple years.

I like it more than the chocolate cupcake base a la Annie's Eats (that I've used for baking cakes before). 

It is spectacular!

And easy.

Make it!! LINK HERE for Hershey's perfectly chocolate chocolate cake via my missourikitchen.com.

Why make a cake like that?

Well we had a small dinner party! :)

Hubby invited his friend and family over so it was the perfect excuse to indulge in yummy food.

I made veggie stir fry and rice. Note how fun stir fries can be when you don't own a wok pan. Umm... why don't I own one?! I ask myself every darn time.

The stir fry sauce was pretty good, linky here. It makes A LOT, so you can easily halve it if you don't plan on making stir fry again the for the next week day.

The veggies we used: carrots, broccoli, onion, garlic, fresh new season cabbage, bell peppers, zucchini. 

 

To accompany the veggies and starch, we had protein in the form of Vietnamese Chicken Bites.

Well, the store we went to was out of ground chicken so we did ground turkey but they were AMAZING. 

Like so good we-need-to-make-them-once-a-week-good. 

As a dipping sauce, we just had Thai sweet chili sauce that they sell in the stores here. 

Yum!

This is the look of a kitty asking for you to drop her a turkey ball.

 

And this is the pink cover that my mama got me to protect cakes from that very face above. ;)

 

Dinner was great. The company was great. The evening was great.

But man, looking at those pictures makes me hungry!!

By the way, we usually never finish whole cakes around here just the two of us... but half that cake was gone once our guests left. And the other half only lasted a day and a half.

That's really saying something about how good it was, I think!

My Baby Shower

This past Saturday I had my baby shower. 

Wow, insane that I had a baby shower. OMG, I am having a baby?! :D 

Just kidding, but sometimes it's still surreal...!

The theme I came up with was girly tea party and I envisioned lots of prettiness and details. Here is what I pulled together!
(The pictures were taken by friends, how weird to see other people's perspectives via your own camera and memory card! Thanks for the photo help, Friends!) 

Well, for me food is pretty high up there with most important things at a party. It's gotta be good and there should be a lot of it!

I had some help from my Aunt who came to town for the occasion. She made this vegetable quiche seen below. Behind it is a pasta salad that rocked my socks. The recipe for it is here, Penne Fresca Salad.  I used fusilli and I doubled the recipe which was totally unnecessary, I could have easily made 1 1/2 and still had leftovers.

I had a "Salad Bar" with a big bowl of lettuce and smaller bowls and dishes of toppings. We had cucumber, tomatoes, bell pepper, broccoli, crutons, olives, cheese, boiled eggs, and salad dressings. I wanted to get fancy and make my own, but I just didn't have the time or energy in the end. 

To accompany the salads and quiche, the other salty option was fresh bread and flavored cream cheeses, as well as good old frozen garlic bread. 

I've yet to go to a party where the frozen garlic bread wasn't one of the first things to disappear. Stuff is delicious!

(And I got off so easy with it!)

Once the savory options were eaten, we started serving coffee and tea (from my pink fancy tea cups) with dessert.

My favorite were these sugar cookies. Which is odd, since I really have only ever liked store bought (if I am really particular Publix Bakery) sugar cookies and have been disappointed with many a recipe. 

This recipe: perfectly chewy and soft sugar cookies. 

Here is the link to the recipe at Novice Chef.

I decorated them with Wilton's pink sanding sugar. Ya know, since I'm having a girl. ;)

The cake was a huge disappointment for me.

Lemme just say... I prefer the flavor of Swiss buttercream, but when it wouldn't stick to my cake... I kinda lost it. I was only able to pipe the top and the sides were such a disaster that my mom had to take over since I threatened to throw the cake on the floor in my frustration.

Lemme just say, thank you Äiti for being there to help me set up!!

The cake itself was my go to chocolate cake recipe, Lucinda Scala Quinn's busy day chocolate cake.

I made two cakes and cut each in two to make a four layer cake. I filled it with Finnish vanilla "rahka" (like a sweetened flavored sour cream/creme fraiche) that I added a liberal amount of Bonne Maman cherry jam to. 

So it was a chocolate cake with vanilla cherry filling.

Yum.

My Aunt made some super tender "marble cake" although I like the Finnish name of "tiger cake". 

In the left corner you can see the macarons I slaved over.

Um, good thing the pictures not the best to showcase them because they didn't look at all like they should. People raved over them though and I guess the flavor was ok. I filled them with orange or raspberry marmalade.

But I was not a huge fan. I don't know if I liked them enough to attempt making them again.

But they are one of the ultimate baker challenges in my mind that I might have to one day, just for the challenge.

I used Martha Stewart's French macaron recipe and I think next time, I might stick to the more detailed Annie's Eats version.

This is a Finnish style blueberry pie. Again, used that rahka to make it. :)

After food, the other important design element of a party: decor.

This was the most liked idea, hanging a clothesline across the living room and displaying all of her pretty dresses.

I also made a paper doily banner like this one from pinterest, and we had some store bought shiny pink "it's a girl" decorations hanging. In some of the food pictures you could see the pretty table cloth and felt runner my mom brought. And like I said, we had the nicer pink china out for use.

We played some fun games at the shower. 

This was a guess the baby in the picture game. I had each guest bring a photo of them as babies and they had to guess who was who and the winner won a prize (chocolate bar and a face mask). 

Not everyone brought a picture (I kinda let people know last notice), but it worked well as a kind of ice breaker because there were a lot of people from different groups of friends so they kinda got to know each other's names and stuff.

I'm #5. :)

We played the traditional "guess how big Mama is" with pink yarn. It's a hard game but we had two people who were so close I had to go back for a re-count! 

And pictured below is the little card idea for her baby book. Each guest was asked to fill in the blanks and people came up with really cute answers as well as funny ones. 

E.g. "I hope you laugh at bad jokes, because it's polite". :D

Mama's midnight diapers were fun too!

Each guest could write me a message for midnight diaper changes. 

I got a lot of encouraging ones "you're a great mama" etc.

As well as advice: "wake up the hubby"

And phone numbers for people who are willing to babysit. :D

I also had a friend record hubby answering the questions from  link below. We played the video on the TV and paused after each question and I had to guess what the ol' hubster said. 

I got most of them right. :) And he got some of his answers wrong. ;)

The ideas for the games were found from this blog Driven by Decor via pinterest.

I don't have a picture of it, but we also had a calendar template on the fridge that I decorated, where guests could guess the baby's birth date, weight, and height. 

FOUR people guessed she'll go slightly over her June 11th due date and come June 13th.

Other than that, dates varied from June 1st (impatient me) to June 19th. 

Fortunately no one put her as a full two weeks overdue!

You can find the free template here.  

I got lots of presents, even though I had said we were really only missing diapers and children's books. People went nuts with diaper cakes (we got 3!) and I felt spoiled and special. :)

Many thanks to everyone!

My friend's 5 month old son picked this out for Baby Girl, his future girlfriend. ;)

Isn't that creative? Baby spelled with the sparkly star wire! :)

Lots of cute details.

Love the thought people put into their gifts. And the effort, I know those diaper cakes aren't easy!

And at the bottom you can see our Beatrix Potter book. :)

Like I said, spoiled and special.

My parents got us (another) pretty dress and the car seat (which was awesome!). 

We also had a baby shower in a box that my mother in law threw for us. She sent out invites to family and friends stateside and we got so much (much needed) stuff for the baby, it was awesome!

It's wonderful to be so supported by loved ones. ♥

So after the party was over, I took the camera out myself and took pictures of the design element no party is complete without: the flowers.

We had hot pink roses in several small vases.

I'm still enjoying them today. 

So thank you to everyone who was a part of welcoming the little one into the world!!

Kissa was happy the party was over! ;)