Happy Thanksgiving and Let The Holiday Season Begin!

A very happy thanksgiving to everyone who celebrated. Our thanksgiving was a quiet affair spent talking and eating and sipping wine with friends at home lazily over the course of an afternoon! 

For me there is so much to be thankful for this year - from family and friends to work to our house to my daughter's wonderful teachers and of-course all of you readers!

Thanksgiving is officially a home cook's holiday - a time to celebrate every home cook laboring over the stoves or ovens to put a warm and delicious food on table for their loved ones day after day. Thanksgiving always puts me into the gear for the upcoming holiday season and for emptying that recipe bookmarks I let build over the year.

The menu this thanksgiving was a set of simple oven heavy dishes. I love oven only recipes in winter, you avoid the wait and watch and stir phase next to the stove which just means extra time for sipping tea or playing with daughter.
Pumpkin Pie

We had a turkey free dinner so chicken was the star of the table instead. I cooked NYTimes Sam Sifton's roasted chicken provencal - which is a super simple roasted chicken seasoned with liberal amounts of herbs de provence (blend off rosemary, thyme, majoram and other French herbs) baked with lemon slices, potato wedges and whole cloves of garlic. It's a dish that fills here
Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup
your kitchen with warm heart-warming aromas and really could not be any easier to make! I'll snap a pic next time we make it. But do visit the recipe

Holiday Pinwheels
For starters I made holiday pinwheels again - a super simple dish - just needs puff pasty and a blend of pestos (or one, whatever you have at hand). No matter how many pinwheels I make, there is always someone asking for more - and that's a sign of a successful appetizer :)

There were three sides - my daughter, now an almost 5 year old, whipped together a cranberry chutney from Trader Joe's crushed cranberries.

We made some roasted red peppers and tomato soup with garlic bread to go-along with it and some roasted sweet potatoes seasoned with local honey, olive oil and S&P.
Vegertable Biryani

For vegetarian guests there was a veg biryani made with cauliflowers, potatoes and carrots; topped with roasted cashews, saffron and fried onions.
Cranberry Chutney & Honey Roasted SWeet Potatoes
And the dessert was the quint-essential thanksgiving dessert - a home-made pumpkin pie! I used this Allrecipes. Pie turned out wonderful - I increased the seasoning and added some fresh grated ginger for additional perk of flavors. We enjoyed the pie with some home-made whipped cream.

Hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving and let the holiday season or eating or shopping or whatever it is that you do -  begin!