Thanksgiving 2011 - Highlights

As you know each year Thanksgiving tends to create some concern as I try to become more accustomed to our gluten free and dairy free lifestyle.  I search out recipes and try to make it a wonderful time for all of us.  This year we decided to have our main meal at home and join friends for dessert which would ease my dietary nerves.  Unfortunately our farmer was not doing turkeys this year, so I had to go with someone else.  It was still a local bird, but not a heritage breed.  I noticed the change in the bird shape that I never noticed before.  The bird had smaller drumsticks and wings.  I was unable to manipulate these into the formation I prefer to hold the breast side up higher (the wings) and pull the drumsticks together to hold extra stuffing.  It did have a lot of breast meat, but it just was not the same.

Once the stuffing and bird were in the oven, with breakfast and morning chores all completed, Karl and the kiddos decided to get some old wood chopped up and burned.  Since we did a huge garage cleaning recently, Karl had some scrap wood he wanted to get rid of, so the kiddos helped him out.

Several hours later, having basted and turned the turkey every 30 minutes, it was done.  Karl assumed his usual job of carver.

While the kiddos took great care to set the table very nicely!

The apparent effects of the meal were spotted in Isabella.

But then we needed to head out to visit with friends.  I made a peanut butter cake with chocolate frosting.  I decided to try a trick bakers use to make tortes to make the cake lighter as most gluten free cakes tend to be dense.  I whipped the egg white and folded them into the rest of the batter before baking.  The results were amazing. 

My only change to the recipe is to use dark cocoa next time in the icing instead of regular cocoa to really emphasize the chocolate flavor.  It was so wonderful!  I had to give a lot of it away to keep from eating too much of the cake.