Thanksgiving for two

With only the two of us eating, we tried.

But try as we might we just couldn’t cut anything from the traditional list of Thanksgiving dishes. At one point, Aron suggested that we could ixnay the mashed potatoes, but that just seemed like crazy-talk!

Our offices closed early on Wednesday, so I worked from home in the morning and then went about grocery shopping—which seemed to take over the entire rest of the day. Extra vendors show up to the Greenmarket for the day before the holiday; I was able to get just about all of our produce from there. Carrying it home was another thing. I barely made it with arms intact. By the time I went to Whole Foods to pick up our turkey breast, I had taken note of my physical limitations and decided to forgo a five-pound bag of flour in favor of other weighty staples (which translated to another grocery run later on).

On Thanksgiving morning, after blueberry pancakes and the Macy’s parade, Aron and I went for a walk about town. It was such a gorgeous day! Warm and sunny…

Our original plan was to eat around six but we spent the day outside and we spent the evening cooking. It was late by the time we sat down to dinner–almost 9:30–but it was a lovely holiday (and a well documented one at that!) It all went down something like this…

We found these beautiful stems of cotton in Tribeca.
Instead of pumpkin pie this year, we tried a new recipe–gingerbread apple upside-down cake–that we found on Smitten Kitchen and started with that. She had modified it from a Philo Apple Farm recipe (found in the New York Times)* and we think the original might have been slightly better with more pull between the molasses in the cake and the sugary apples, but it is as moist and delicious as it looks!

Aron roasted chestnuts for our stuffing. They smelled wonderful, just like the holidays.
I found one of the last purple carrots at the Greenmarket for our rosemary-glazed carrots.
Our turkey breast took a bit longer than we anticipated, so we kicked back with cocktails before opening some special Chardonnay from California.
I carved a pumpkin–it had been neglected at Halloween.
I just loved how it all came about–it was a beautiful night. And among the many things we are thankful for, we can now count leftovers.
*Update: We made the ginger apple cake again for a dinner party a few weeks later, using the NY Times recipe rather than the Smitten Kitchen adaptation and found it to be the better of the two versions: the apple topping is sweeter while the cake is less so (it has more molasses, instead). Serve it warm with whipped cream!
As for the chestnuts, we cut them in half and then roast them for 15min at 350 with the cut side down. When pealed while they are still hot, the shell comes right off!

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