Thanksgiving Tradition and Thanks (featuring Tina the Turkey)

Thanksgiving is all about showing thanks, honoring tradition, enjoying the local bounty, and staying balanced.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for:

• my fam
• my friends (both new and old)
• health
• an abundance of food (both local and non-local)

In honor of the abundance of food thankfulness, I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner! Yesterday, I prepared some dishes to make today a breeze.

First, we have a brown sugar yogurt pie with pears in a walnut crust. This recipe was adapted from Debora Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, a must-have for any cook, vegetarian or not. It's my culinary bible.

Of course, I felt obligated to make a small ramekin of this pie for myself. Since I have never made it before and will be serving it to guests, I felt I needed to taste test first. My first try ended up all over the inside of the oven door, because when I picked up the ramekin with the oven mit, it flipped over. All of the brown sugar yogurt filling when a-flying. Try #2 went better, but it was a big ol' mess to clean up.

I also threw together some homemade cranberry sauce, made from local Westminster-grown cranberries. Who knew they had bogs off-Cape?

Add 1 cup fresh cranberries to 1 cup boiling water + 2/3 cup sugar.

Voila! Cranberry sauce that tastes EXACTLY like the canned stuff, minus the ridges from the can. (Served in a CLEAN red ramekin.)

We are also honoring tradition by making some very traditional dishes like my grammy's Boston cream pie and we'll be using her old coffee serving sugar bowl and milk pourer.

And then there's the fact of creating new tradition. Like, having everyone to my house for turkey. Oh, turkey. So as y'all know I'm not crazy about preparing dead meat, but in honor of tradition, I ordered a fresh turkey from Stillman's Turkey farm and picked it up Monday. The poor sucker has been sitting in my fridge and was ready for its big day today. Someone at work told me the smaller turkeys were the hens, the larger ones the Toms. Well, mine is 15 lbs., so he affectionately named my turkey "Tina."

When Tina came out of her neat little plastic coat today, I realized there were some interesting items inside (CAUTION: If you are easily grossed out by animal parts, skip to the bottom):

A neck, a liver, and a heart. I know Julia Child is rolling in her grave, but I threw these in the trash. (Gagging was going on in the background.)

Gross part is over.

So I buttered and salted this lovely lady up and stuck her in the oven, meat thermometer and all.

Later this morning, I'll be making maple glazed carrots, Brussels sprouts and broccoli in a maple-soy glaze, and will bring out the butternut squash soup, fresh bread, and other yummies!

And I'm balancing it all off by taking a morning walk and probably an afternoon walk, too.