Given that it is Thanksgiving… what are y’all making for dinner?
Ours is pretty traditional – fruit-stuffed turkey (no bread stuffing, because I hate stuffing and I do the cooking) roasted on a bed of apples, carrots, grapes and small potatoes, with rosemary-suffused olive oil rubbed under the skin. Candied yams, because… Thanksgiving. Mashed potatoes (I don’t like those, either, but husband and younger daughter love them) with gravy (using the pan juices from the turkey, with broth from Penzey’s chicken soup base). Butternut squash soup, made with butternut squash (reasonably enough), roasted tomatoes and roasted garlic (I bought a thumb of ginger this morning; debating the wisdom of adding just a tinge to the soup). Devilled eggs. Fresh berries. Olives and sliced peppers with a small antipasto platter (ham, deli-sliced roast beef and provolone, because younger daughter and I love roast beef sandwiches). A dish of pickled green asparagus and lightly salted white asparagus.
Pumpkin or apple pie for dessert, with home-made whipped cream. Oh, and champagne, of course. <g>
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
-Diana
Please note that the Excerpt below may contain SPOILERS…
Social Media Hashtags: #DailyLines, #BookNine, #GoTELLTheBEESThatIAmGONE, #flashback, #Williamisseventeen, #WhataboutWilliamsThirdFather
The upper gallery at Ellesmere. A broad, square open staircase led upward to the second floor. Here the roof soared high overhead, and a gallery surrounded the stairwell on three sides, with tall windows on one side and various portraits on the other three walls.
“Isobel told me this was painted soon after her marriage,” Lord John had said, nodding to the portrait of a very beautiful young woman. The painter hadn’t been particularly skilled—the woman’s hair was simply dark, some color between brown and black, and her gown clumsily rendered—but William recognized her face; the same face he’d seen every day for years, in a miniature he’d carried with him from home to London, to school, and now would take with him to the army.
He thought the painter had loved her, perhaps; the face was done with both care and feeling.
“Someone told me I have her mouth,” he said, softly, as though not to startle her.
“You have,” said Lord John, raising a brow. “Who told you that?”
“Mother Isobel.” He turned away from the portrait, feeling suddenly unsettled. “It seems strange to see her—Mother Geneva—here, alone.” There were several portraits of her at Helwater—but always portraits done with her younger sister, with her parents. Even the portraits of her by herself were always side by side with similar portraits of Isobel.
“So it does.” Lord John spoke softly, too. It was hushed as a church here on the landing, an illusion enhanced by the tall, quiet windows with their stained-glass borders. And by the fact that everybody in these pictures is dead…
He turned restlessly away, toward the opposite wall, across the open well of the staircase. The wall was dominated by a large portrait of an elderly man in a formal wig and the robes of an Earl. Not bad looking for his age, William thought. Bit of a tough, though, from his expression. The thought made William smile.
“That’s him, is it? My father?”
Selected Social Media Comments:
…about this excerpt from Book Nine, with my responses… <g>
Wait…didn’t William find out Jamie was his father in book 7 or 8? Editing to add that I was so excited to read the daily lines that I missed the hashtag.
#Thatllteachyalltoreadthehashtags!
Love the snippet. Can I ask what the yellow plant in the image is? A bottlebrush?
Beargrass!
Click here to visit my BEES (Book Nine) webpage.
These “Daily Lines” (or “excerpt”) and comments were first posted on my official Facebook page on November 20-21, 2017.
I’m glad William finally saw his parents. This has the feel of a flashback (yes, I know, I know, wait and see).
As for our dinner, since we have two vegetarians in the family, and one family member who will NOT be talked out of having turkey on Thanksgiving no matter what, I do two main dishes on Thanksgiving (Christmas is all vegetarian and a lot less work). We have, however, reached a compromise with the turkey-lover, in that she buys a smoked turkey from Whole Foods and brings it to our house to be heated up. That and the gravy made from its drippings are the only carnivore foods on the menu.
My vegetarian daughter-in-law sent me a new recipe that she thought sounded good. It’s a roasted pumpkin stuffed with a mixture of cornbread, kale, Gruyere, onions and two kinds of mushrooms, with an egg-custard filling that glues everything together. I do not like kale or Gruyere. Putting the dish together was time consuming but not particularly difficut. I didn’t particularly care for the finished product, but everyone else ate it with every indication of pleasure, so that was good.
The rest was standard issue. My own stuffing recipe (with pecans and raisins and NO GIBLETS), the mashed sweet potato recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, and glazed carrots made in the Instant Pot.
My daughter’s mother-in-law, who lives alone, is always invited and always feels guilty if she doesn’t bring dessert. This year it was low-sugar pumpkin cheesecake and it was delicious.
I won’t mention what the scale said at Weight Watchers today.
It is now late November 2017. The last book was published in 2014. I do not watch the TV version. Please, I know you are very busy, but PLEASE finish BEES. I hope it is not the last one. Yet 4 years is a long time between publications.
Your Thanksgiving sounds delicious!!! Wine is essential to my Thanksgiving too – I brought along a bottle of one of my favorites to my parents’ house, telling my husband “If I’m going to handle my whole fan-damily today I’m drinking.”