Thanksgiving II

Thanksgiving II was held by our surrogate San Antonio family, Rick and Doris Brown.  The weather was fabulous, the food delicious, the company delightful!

At the Browns'

In Doug and Carolyn's incredibly lush and beautiful backyard; she made lemon meringue pie from the fruit of the tree to our right; it was the best I've ever had.

Luke and Doug discuss speakers

Boots belonging to Country, Kat's fiance

Ah, autumn.

Gang on patio until turkey-time

Stormy

Luke's boots

Oma!  She is hilarious, hilarious, hilarious.

Beautifully browned turkey.  Brava, Doris!

Oma and Luke

Doris' enviable cookbook collection

Carolyn makes the gravy

Luke and Oma look up the provenance and language of Celts

The hosts!

Someone got the turkey leg.

Sweet potato casserole.  So delicious.  As soon as the recipe is e-mailed to me I will share with you.

Turkey leg, post-Luke.

Pies

My contribution, ice cream

Rob tried all five flavors.

A lovely afternoon and many thanks to R & D for including us!

As we were out of town beforehand I wanted to make something that would keep for a week to serve as my contribution to the Thanksgiving table.  It was the perfect opportunity to make a bunch of ice cream from this book:

I only have one bowl for the ice cream maker, and it must freeze overnight, so this step is rate-limiting; I made 5 pints of ice cream in 5 days (plus one on Friday night):

The Darkest Chocolate Ice Cream in the World

Salty Caramel

Vanilla

Banana Ice Cream with Caramelized White Chocolate Freckles

Roasted Pumpkin with 5 Spice Powder

Cranberry Royale Sorbet (Cranberry-Grapefruit)

We taste-tested them Friday and all but the salted caramel made the cut - it was acrid (overcaramelized?) and too salty.  The banana received the most positive reviews, especially from Luke, who does not usually like banana flavor.  It tastes like frozen banana pudding--> scrumptious.

Get Jeni's book and this ice cream maker and never purchase ice cream from the store again!  (The recipes all call for light corn syrup, which always makes me think of this SNL spoof commercial, but oh well).  Set-up and cooking the milk-cream mixture takes about 20 minutes, then the mixture is chilled in an ice bath for 30 minutes, then spun in the machine for ~20-30 minutes; the hands-on time is minimal and the results so much better than storebought (read: more milkfat, more flavor, more deep-sense-of-personal-satisfaction-that-comes-from-making-something-yourself.)

I wanted to share the banana recipe but I returned the book to the library this morning (will purchase, along with the Ciao Bella book).  The vanilla ice cream recipe, which is the basis for almost all of her recipes, is here.  Enjoy!