Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, and I was the hostess with the mostest having my mom, mother-in-law and father-in-law over for supper on Sunday. As Tim and I have been attempting to reduce the amount of processed food in our diet, we decided that this year we would barbeque our turkey a la Roy Evans. What this means is that the bird was stuffed with pickled hot peppers and sliced mushrooms, rubbed all over with butter, salt and pepper, put in the roaster and covered to bake it. Once an hour we would uncover the bird, drain off the hot pepper juice and drippings and baste the bird. The result was amazing. A moist bird with a mushroom/hot pepper stuffing which added a sweet hot flavour. Really good! And it didn't take that long and because I used one of those lovely foil pans from the grocery store... no greasy clean up!! Love it!!!
Mom brought snack appetizers, two shrimp rings... of which Connor ate one, multigrain gluten free tortilla chips and some fig chevre and cream cheese with rice crackers. Super nummy! That is what we had for "lunch". Because traditional is more how our family rolls, I did make a semi-traditional stuffing but without bread. It was a pecan cornbread stuffing casserole with the traditional seasonings in it and was it ever good too. I used the last of our garden tomatoes to make a tangy tomato, cucumber and onion salad and steamed some potatoes to rice (no added milk or fat but the texture of mashed... joy!!!). I made gravy from a packet (total sell out!) but you didn't need too much because the turkey was moist and tasty. Just a dab on the riced potatoes was all that was required. I also purchased a number of exotic olives from the Italian Centre Shop for us to sample (almond stuffed California olives, Sicilian Olive salad, garlic stuffed olives) and some fantastic pickles. The cranberries were sweetened with agave syrup since Norm is on the GI diet and mom is diabetic, but no one noticed! Mom Filtz brought the pumpkin pie and I supplied the light whipped cream.
After supper, we went down to the home theatre and watched the movie "Dad". It was funny and sad, and is about a son dealing with his parents getting older and his relationship with them and re-evaluating what is important in life. Pretty good movie. Norm and Sophie left shortly after the movie and mom stayed over. I didn't over eat and I felt great, albeit a bit tired from slaving over the hot stove for two days!! LOL!
