Bootleg Thanksgiving

How have I gotten away without talking about Thanksgiving yet?!  It's kind of my favorite holiday.  Well, tied with Christmas for favorite.  See, I love the whole season from Thanksgiving to New Years because there's tons of good food and good cheer.  When the weather gets colder, we remind ourselves to love others and sing songs about playing in the snow.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful day for me.  Think:  Golden brown turkey (baked and/or fried, we have both at our meals), lots of luscious sides, soul-warming desserts, good spirits, good spirits (hard cider anybody?), and the grand-daddy of all parades.  Every year I watch the Macy's parade.  I even tried to watch it in the airport the one year I flew home Thanksgiving morning.

My sister and her little family will be at her mother-in-law's this year, so we had a mini-Thanksgiving last weekend with her father-in-law, Bob, who was also in town.  Um, it was kind of bootleg.  I mean that in the best way possible.  She definitely thought she had a gravy boat, but she didn't.  That's what measuring cups are for, duh!  Also, Rich couldn't find a regular turkey breast at the commissary, so we had a Cajun turkey.  Did I mention it comes with a gravy packet?  Ha!  I will say that I wholly condone the gravy packet if your other option is the powder stuff.  Um, gravy should not start out as a powder.  Just sayin'.

I made these mashed potatoes:

Cream Sauce? Check.

Well I had a most fun Friday!  My dear friend, Kaitlin, won tickets to the Rascal Flatts concert in Charlotte and invited little ol' me to go with her.  I have a bajillion pictures that I took at the show of Sara Evans and Rascal Flatts, but I have yet to go through them and edit; so they'll have to wait.

I do, however, have a sweet little pasta dish I made the same night as the pineapple upside-down cake.  It's fairly simple and mostly a one pot meal (except for the noodles that are boiled separately of course).  The point is, it doesn't have a million different components that all need separate pans.

I'm a sucker for pasta in a silky cream sauce.  I don't like it to be gunky and the noodles all stuck together.  I also don't mind if prosciutto and leeks are involved.

The finished product is salty and creamy, otherwise known as great comfort food.

Easy Leek Tart and My New Favorite Thing

Before I get into the feature food for today, I have to tell you about my new favorite snack.  As in, I just made this and ate it and fell in love.  Pardon my run-on sentence.  I've been eyeing the honey at Fresh Market the past few times I've been in there.  I caved today and bought some raw tupelo honey produced by The Savannah Bee Company.

The label says it never crystallizes and has a buttery taste and smooth texture.  Um yeah.  Honeys are sort of like snowflakes; no two are exactly the same.  The notes of honey are determined by the flower the bees decide to snack on that day. So this tupelo honey will taste different from orange blossom honey or clover honey.

I bought this almond butter packet the other day (also from Fresh Market) mostly because I thought it was brilliant marketing.  I've always wanted to try almond butter but didn't want to invest in a whole jar of it if it turned out I didn't care for it.  Enter this little squeezy pack of Justin's Almond Butter.  I'm pretty sure I saw him on the Cooking Channel the other day after I'd bought this.  Anyhow, it's enough for a sandwich or two, so I used some today.

So I made a half sammich with the honey and almond butter.  Remember those kind of gross sandwiches they served at school with peanut butter and honey that may or may not have been from 1995?  Yeah, there's no competition.  I don't have a picture of it because I ate it and then decided to tell you about it.  Oops.  Do yourself a favor and buy some good honey and a packet (or two...or a jar) of almond butter and make a sammich.

Now for the big to-do.  I made an easy leek pastry last night with goat cheese and prosciutto.  Yummm.  Truth be told, my mom and I probably could've eaten it as dinner, but we both ate two slices and a bowl of chili.  Overkill.