A Charleston Thanksgiving

Because so much has happened over the course of Thanksgiving break, this will end up being a series of posts, so stayed tuned over the next couple of days!

To start, Mom and Dad arrived Wednesday afternoon, and it was really nice to have them here both to spend time with them and to have them help out on the many home projects that we tackled over the break. This was actually our second Thanksgiving in Charleston, but our first one in the new house... and it was so nice to have room to spread out when preparing Thanksgiving dinner (all four of us could actually work in the kitchen comfortably).

Here are a couple of shots from the preparation:




This was the centerpiece. It consisted of small pumpkins with a couple of pillar candles. Since our table isn't very wide, this was an easy way to add color without taking up a lot of space.

We had the traditional Thanksgiving menu (but with a bit of a twist):

• Tofurkey (yes, that's right a "turkey" made from tofu) with mushroom gravy
• Daniel's homemade cranberry sauce
• Cornbread dressing
• Sweet potato casserole
• Green beans
• Strawberry pretzel salad
• Rolls
• Pumpkin pie

Everything was absolutely delicious! I initially had some slight apprehensions about the tofurkey, but it was great. We basted it and roasted in the oven, so it was really flavorful (and tasted nothing like eating a big slab of tofu if you were wondering). Not to mention clean-up after making a tofurkey is much easier than dealing with a turkey remnants (no icky bird carcass for one).

And just in case you were wondering, here's what the tofurkey looks like fresh from the oven: