100-Mile Thanksgiving

pot full o' spuds

Here's the menu. Even though these big family meals take a lot of time, nothing on the menu is hard to make. Really. With D-average cooking skills, you can easily put together a fabulous Thanksgiving meal. Things in italics were not local; things in bold are grown here in our gardens. Of the whole meal, I would say that 95% of the items were grown within 30 miles of our house.

Salad: arugula, pak choy, garlic greens, tatsoi, some mixed greens and romaine with shallot/balsamic dressing
Soup: cauliflower with tarragon, leeks and carrots
Turkey stuffed with wheat bread stuffing
beets
parsnips in brown butter and thyme
Brussels sprouts with shallot/mustard butter
garlic turnips with horseradish
Hubbard squash
roasted garlic mashed potatoes with yogurt cheese
cornbread dressing with apples, onions and carrots
wheat bread dressing with leeks, onions, parsley and celery
giblet gravy in pan drippings
mushroom gravy with homegrown porcini
raspberry applesauce
pumpkin pie
apple pie
cider from local mill
Tabor Hill classic demi-red, chardonnay and classic demi-sec
coffee from Guatemala via Minnesota


So, our flour came from Michigan, slightly outside the 100-mile radius. The butter which figured so highly in all dishes but especially the piecrusts came from Wisconsin. The milk was from Iowa. Honey was used to sweeten things, and it was local, too. I will try growing sweet potatoes next year. I made all the bread and cornbread, as well as the yogurt cheese, from scratch. We have entirely too much food here now, and the carcass is stinking up the kitchen making some fine soup stock.

Especially noted was the raspberry applesauce. My brother made it from fruit from his home.

The turkey, which I had such hopes for, was really good, but not excellent. I had hoped that it, like its free-range organic chicken farm mates, would be over the top (the chickens we get from our milk lady are otherworldly according to the carnivores in my family). SO I asked my mom this morning about the turkey. She said, "Oh honey, turkeys are always a let-down. All that work, and how wonderful they smell? It's the reason why we have all those side dishes."