Happy Thanksgiving!

Greg and I decided to make a thanksgiving dinner at Erika's apartment. It was a simple menu but filling. I got to Erika's at about 10am to make the cranberry relish and to check the turkey to see if it was thawed. (Didn't want a repeat of last year). I couldn't get a hold of Greg on his phone, and not wanting to wait, I decided to do the bird myself. I put our 12 pound turkey into Erika's roaster for a little over 3 hours at 325 degrees and it turned out beautifully.


We had the traditional Goss appetizers of shrimp and spicy cocktail sauce and caviar with cream cheese on a cracker and cocktail onion. We had sparkling cider, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, rolls, cranberry relish and gravy as our meal.


Neither of us was feeling any type of dessert, so we were content with the cranberry relish. The recipe is below.

Cranberry Relish
One bag fresh cranberries
One can mandarin oranges
1/2 cup - 1 cup of sugar
Half tub of cool whip
Grind the cranberries in a food processor. To keep some of the texture, don't over do it. Empty contents into a bowl and add the sugar and then the cool whip. Taste to see if there is enough sugar to your liking. Fold in the mandarin oranges. Put bowl in the fridge for about an hour so the flavors can marry and the sugar can be absorbed by the cranberries.


I was going to bring my camera but forgot so I had to settle for using my phone, hence the poor quality of the pictures.

While the bird was cooking, Greg and I had our appetizers and watched 'Evolution.' During dinner we watched the movie 'Juno.' Nothing exciting happened but it was a nice relaxing day. It was weird to think though that this is already the 2nd Thanksgiving since Julie's been gone. Her favorite part of the meal was definitely the rolls. I only had one, but Greg had 3. I'd like to think he ate some in her honor. :)

Kofta Kebabs

What is kofta kebabs you ask? 'Kofta is a Middle Eastern dumpling. In the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat — usually beef or lamb — mixed with spices and/or onions.' (via wikipedia)

Tonight Greg and I made our version of this dish. It is a modified recipe from allrecipes.com. Along with the kebabs we had a green salad and rice.

Our Version of Kofta Kebabs
1 pound ground turkey
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 small onion
2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of black pepper
3 tbs of Italian seasoning (recipe called for parsley but we did not have any on hand)
1 tbs curry powder (recipe called for coriander but we did not have any. I figured there's coriander in curry powder so it would work nicely)
2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp all spice
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground ginger

First place the garlic and onion in a food processor to grind it up finely.
Then mix the garlic and onion in with the meat and other seasonings.
We rolled out 'cigars' from the meat that are the length of your index finger, but twice as thick. (very technical, I know)
We placed it on a cookie sheet and into a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Since rice takes the same amount of time, the rice and the kebabs cooked simultaneously.

It is a pretty easy meal if you're looking for something different to do with ground meat. I'm sure this would taste great with beef or pork or any other ground meat.

Enjoy!