Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays! All the feasting and none of the other stresses of the Christmas holidays. We had two awesome Thanksgiving dinners – if I do say so myself. On Thanksgiving day we had a pretty traditional dinner – made easy with the make-ahead gravy recipe that I love from allrecipes. This time I used turkey thighs instead of wings and it made enough for two separate dinners plus leftovers.

Our second dinner was made more special from a surprise visit from my son, who drove all the way home from North Carolina to make our family gathering complete. I put together particularly good blend of flavors! We served smoked turkey breast from our favorite Strongsville restaurant, The Brew Kettle (is it true I have not yet written a dining out review of it?). The meat tasted awesome and was perfectly complimented by the dressing recipe I got from the New York Times Sunday magazine a few weeks back – Three Pepper Sausauge and Cornbread
Dressing. The recipe included chorizo and both red and yellow bell peppers, plus poblano and Portugese hot peppers so it was colorful and tasty.

The wine to compliment the meal was from our east coast vacation. We had gone to Truro Vineyard on Cape Cod (see post). They have a cranberry wine in a lighthouse shaped bottle that is pretty special.

The evening was topped off with a family game of Michigan rummy – an old family tradition from my father’s family.

My daughter was home for her first long weekend from college and she was on a quest for “real” food. I’m not sure what the expensive meal plan we had to opt for is treating her to on campus, but her first request was for spaghetti and meatballs. To my pleasant surprise, not only did she want to eat it, but she was genuinely interested in helping to cook with me. My favorite recipe is from Ina Garten and is simply called Real Meatballs and Spaghetti – doesn’t get any more real. The recipe calls for a mixture of beef, pork and veal. Over the holidays when I make this, I usually double the veal.

I also usually stash left over garlic bread in a ziplock bag in the freezer to use as bread crumbs in this recipe. We rolled the balls, browned them and followed the sauce recipe to a T.

Even the dog thought the house smelled wonderful!

The empty plate says it all. Today my girl returned to campus with containers of spaghetti and meatballs and a recipe she could describe in detail – although she is not sure she is going to mention the veal. Hope her dorm friends aren’t reading this!

This morning’s New York Times Sunday magazine supplied our recipe for dinner in an article title “How to Burn Dinner“.

We started with a nice piece of pork butt that the butcher up at the corner butterflied for us.  The recipe called for a paste of olive oil, fresh rosemary (which is growing nicely on the deck) and garlic.  I added in some Black Dog Belly Rub from local spice maker Mom’s Gourmet .

The recipe called for cooking the pork in a cast iron skillet on the grill.  Since we only use a charcoal grill here, that meant David got the coals going while I worked on our side dish – ratatouille!  This past week would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday!  I wanted to cook something from Mastering the Art of French Cooking in honor, but I went with a recipe I found on the Saveur website.  I had a basket of peppers, eggplant and zucchini we got at the Quarry Hill Market last weekend, so I got things cooking stove top in the Dutch oven, which was put into the oven to bake while the pork cooked.

The final step was to add the fresh Quarry Hill peaches for the last 5 minutes.

A little fresh basil and goat cheese atop the ratatouille and dinner is served!

Any other year, this would have been the last official dinner of summer – but not this year.

I love the end of summer when local farm stands are full of fresh produce.  But I have had a tough time finding roma tomatoes recently, so when I found some it was time for the best tomato sauce recipe I have ever tried.  About last year this time I discovered the awesome food blog The Smitten Kitchen.  The photos and simple preparation for her Naked Tomato Sauce inspired me.  It is easy and so delicious made with fresh local tomatoes.  So dining in tonight we had lovely spaghetti with eggplant stacks with an additional sprinkling of chopped tomatoes and basil on top of fresh mozzarella.

See here for the tomato sauce recipe at Smitten Kitchen.