Thanksgiving - 2008

This year's Thanksgiving was pretty awesome! I started the day at CVS and K Mart. I got there early to get my deals and I actually had competition. LOL. Then, I went home and jumped right into the kitchen to finish up my cooking and baking. We had to have an early dinner since Esteban had to work at 4pm. While I was messing around in the kitchen, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was on and I enjoyed it as much as ever. It was really cool this year, I though but I could barely get Jayden interested. When Santa finally came through, I couldn't even get him to pay a bit of attention. Grrr.

Now, Esteban doesn't really understand traditional Thanksgiving Day Fare. He doesn't care for turkey. "Can't we make a chicken instead?" He doesn't like cranberry sauce. Mashed potatoes aren't his favorite and he's not fond of stuffing. And when it comes to sweet potatoes, he's emphatically against them. Well, there goes Thanksgiving! So I always have to find a way to Puerto Rican it up a bit. You know, mingle the cultures and flavors.

My sister and her family came over for the feast. She made her cranberry sauce from scratch and a sweet potato casserole. I love sweet potatoes. I made the turkey and I used a recipe from a Puerto Rican cookbook, which required I marinate the bird for a couple of days before. Yum! I made arroz con gandules or rice and beans. Then I decided to try a stuffing recipe I found by Aaron Sanchez. He was an Iron Chef contender, but he didn't make it. Sorry Aaron. Anyway, it was a chorizo cornbread stuffing and it was delicious! I also made a corn souffle which was a big hit and surprisingly enough, I got the recipe from 160,000 Recipes, an iPhone application. I also made roasted butternut squash and a green salad topped with dried cranberries and pecans. Very tasty! Besides being rushed to get everything on the table, all went well.

For dessert, I made a pumpkin pie and fall themed cupcakes using the sprinkles that I picked up when I was in the Amish country in September. I also prepared a sugar cookie dough, thinking the kids would enjoy decorating them sometime after dinner, but it never happened. That's ok because the cupcakes were a huge hit! And believe it or not, we didn't have seconds like most people traditionally do on Thanksgiving, but we sure did re-visited the cupcakes!

My sister spent the night and the next day we hit the Black Friday sales. We were focused and smart with our shopping and spending. I was happy with my finds and deals. Now, I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping, plus I picked up a couple of gadgets for myself! Yeah!