Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner

Homemade cranberry sauce... the white
chunks are pears...

I'm definitely no fan of Thanksgiving dinner... I never have been... too much food... not even all that satisfying yet far too much work... even more work to clean up... and, as far as I'm concerned, turkey is really only good for a club sandwich paired with tons of bacon. 

Every now and then, however, I do get a craving for mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, corn and some chicken breasts. Earlier today I had one of these cravings.

The grandchildren are coming over for dinner with us tomorrow night so I decided we should have this pre-Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow evening. In order to ease the cooking burden tomorrow while the kids are here (and so I can play with them for a bit), I decided to make the homemade cranberry sauce this evening. 

One of my sisters sent me a recipe for cranberry sauce a few years ago and it was pretty good... a little too 'orangy' for me, but it was good. As always, I tried the original recipe and then immediately changed it up to suit my own tastes (I've always felt that recipes should live, breath and evolve changing with the times as well as changing with food pairings). The original recipe started out with less than half a dozen ingredients but I quickly changed it to more than a dozen ingredients for added depth.

So, this evening, I spent some time making a new batch of homemade cranberry sauce and making a mess of the kitchen. On the positive side, now the house smells like Christmastime... with the aromas of cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg.... and, we have a big bowl of cranberry sauce ready for dinner.

We're looking forward to tomorrow night's pre-Thanksgiving meal...