Thanksgiving 2011

I'm a little late to be posting about Thanksgiving, but I still wanted to tell everyone what I made. This was the first year that I'd cooked a whole holiday meal. My plan was to keep it simple and small, but still keep all the family favorites. I wanted to pick dishes that I could prep or make the day ahead so that I wasn't glued to the stove all morning. The menu was:

Blue Cheese and Caramelized Onion Crostini

Red Pepper Cream Cheese with Crackers

Homemade Ranch Dip with Crudite

Tossed Salad with Homemade Ranch

Brown Sugar and Honey Glazed Ham

Sweet Potato Crunch Casserole

Macaroni and Cheese

Southern Green Beans

Creme Brulee

Coconut Cream Pie

This may seem a little all over the board, but one of my family's traditions for holiday meals is that we make what we really want to eat. My sister and I were not big on typical holiday fare when we were little and my mom got tired of cooking stuff that was not going to get eaten. I remember one Christmas the meal consisted of tacos and all the fixings for me and fried chicken and mac & cheese for my sister. So this year I took everyone's requests and threw in a few of my own ideas, and this is what I came up with.

Here are some pictures, and I will post the recipes over the next couple of days. These recipes would be great for any holiday meal, not just Thanksgiving, or special occasion.

Not the prettiest presentation, but this is the easiest munchie to set out to keep your holiday crowd at bay until the meal is ready. Just a block of cream cheese and a jar of pepper jelly. You could use both red and green pepper jelly to get a little more Christmas-y. Serve with crackers!

I know this looks a little silly, but half of my family does not eat nuts and the other half does, and I am a very accommodating cook :)

I've got to work on my food photography! I envy all of the other food blogs I read with their almost professional looking food portraits. Any tips??