I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! It's now the appropriate time to break out all of Christmas: the music, the movies, the decorations, the cookies, everything! I am a stickler for that kind of thing. Not until Thanksgiving is over will I indulge in the Christmas spirit. For me it is a matter of tradition as well as giving Thanksgiving the respect it deserves. 

It may be a holiday commemorating the slaughter of native peoples due to our own stupidity and ignorance, but it is also a holiday about giving and sharing, and about spending time with your loved ones. Oh, and food. Lots of food. 

Reid had to work on Thanksgiving day, so we did a little Thanksgiving-for-two the Monday before. We had everything a Thanksgiving meal needed, just for the two of us! We spent all day in the kitchen cooking, then devoured our meal, and spent the rest of the night recovering, all side by side. 

And that was what I was most thankful for this year: my husband, Reid. We've been married almost six months now, and I am grateful to have him in my life everyday. He is an incredibly caring, generous man, who gives me everything I could ever want and more. He cooks breakfast for me whenever I ask, and does the dishes, and sometimes laundry. He takes out the trash and recycling, makes fires for me in our fireplace, and drives wherever we need to go. And he keeps me warm with his abnormally high body temperature. I love him and I am looking forward to spending the rest of my life with him. And, of course, cooking more and more elaborate Thanksgiving feasts! 

This is our herb-butter rubbed turkey, which we bought fresh from one of the great markets here in Tacoma. 

All of Reid's prep laid out! I will admit that the balance of labor was not quite equal. I made the turkey and our dessert, and Reid made literally everything else: the cranberry sauce, the gravy, the potatoes, stuffing, green beans, and cocktails. 

Hopefully in the near future I will get this apple galette recipe up on the blog for you. It was really easy to make and very impressive! It was nice and light and not too sweet. I served it with a lemon zest and goat cheese butter, which was the perfect topping. 

And finally we had a wonderful cocktail Reid made using his new cocktail cookbook, The Bar Book. It was a Spanish Coffee, complete with a brûléed sugar rim, which you see above. Please ignore the super ugly 80s tile our kitchen came with. 

~Thank you to all my friends and family who read this blog! I love sharing with you. I am not very good at keeping in touch individually, so please take this post as a little note to you all; Thank you for all your love and support! I cherish your hearts and souls, and think about them often, even if it is never said. Happy Thanksgiving!~

I realised as I was going to write this post that I actually had very little involvement in the making of this recipe. Lis made the pastry dough, the pastry cream and the filling. I basically just stood around taking pictures of the process and giving my input on ingredients when needed. 

The quince was another of my Mom's "secret ingredients" and it took us a good 20 minutes of googling and searching amongst other food bloggers' sites to figure out how to cook with one. Basically unless it is a very specific type of quince you must peel them and cook them, because they are bitter and very hard at the start. 

We cooked ours twice and it still wasn't quite long enough. So if you're going to buy quince, just know that you should probably cook it longer than you'd expect. Lis simmered the quince and the pears in a cider and spice mix (which she can't for the life of her remember but she thinks it involved brown sugar and vanilla) until tender. Then she arranged the fruit on top of the pastry cream inside a pre-baked pastry shell and baked the whole tart again until the fruit was golden brown and caramelized. 

It was a fantastic fall dish and I would highly recommend making up your own recipe for one. And if you want to learn more about quince I recommend Wikipedia (of course) and David Leibovitz.