The Annual Pre-Thanksgiving Meal

When Mark and Allison moved back to Savannah, they decided to take on Thanksgiving as their holiday.  It made sense: no more arguing over where to go and no more hurt feelings when one family gets picked over the other.  Everybody comes together in one place and it is a beautiful thing.  However, with combined families comes combined traditions.  Two families worth of food traditions is just too much to fit on any Thanksgiving table so a few things had to fall by the wayside.

My family always had a fried turkey and a ham, but when we combined the fam, we wound up with a regular turkey, a fried turkey, and a ham and we decided that was a little too much meat.  (No way was I going to give up my fried bird and Allison is partial to her Dad's brined gobbler that he makes particularly well.)  So, Porky got the old heave-ho.  Our new tradition has become a smaller pre-Thanksgiving dinner where the honey baked ham gets center stage and it was goooood.

In addition to the ham (which I am still eating in sandwich form with good Swiss cheese), we ate Allison's trial batch of stuffing (a good indication that today's real thing will be great), some broccoli, and soup (my contribution to the meal).  I found a soup recipe in the most unlikely of places: In Style magazine.  A fashion mag is the last place I would think to look for recipes, but there it was: a rich cauliflower soup right next to all the super skinny models.  The soup (cauliflower, bacon, onion, celery, garlic, and broth - all pureed) was smokey and autumny but the best part was the garnish of crisp bacon and a drizzle of truffle oil.  It was easy and definitely helped give Pre-Thanksgiving (which I am deeming a holiday all its own) a wow factor (thank you, truffle oil). 

The dessert also contributed to the "wow" portion of the evening.  As I may have mentioned, I am not much of a baker.  Thankfully, the same can not be said about my Mommy who churns out scrumdilliumptious baked goods all the time.  Her chocolate cake with fudgy glaze topped off the meal perfectly.

The whole meal was good prep for the eating orgy we about to embark on a little later today.  I'm already loosening my belt.