Thanksgiving Menu 2013

Have you picked out your Thanksgiving menu this year?

In Martha’s Entertaining: A Year of Celebrations, Martha Stewart (or M. Stew, as my sister calls her) says, “I approach each holiday during the year as a pleasant challenge. I certainly am not of the “do it the same exact way” school of entertaining, …whereby every Thanksgiving is identical to the last and the one before that…. I am an enthusiast for change, for subtly altering the traditional to make it more interesting, more creative, more inventive. I am a firm believer that there are almost infinite choices for a single thing, such as the turkey.”

While I enjoy traditions and having a few of the same things each Thanksgiving, trying new recipes and new food is easily one of my favorite things. I’ve opted to swap some of the traditional Thanksgiving foods for a few festive alternatives.

Rather than mashed potatoes, I’ll be making goat cheese croquettes. Anthony and I had goat cheese tater tots at our rehearsal dinner, and fell in love with croquettes at the tapas bar we went to in Spain on our Honeymoon. Instead of cornbread, my husband has requested savory madelines.

When putting together the menu, I found it most difficult to control the carbs. Do we really need croissants, rolls, cornbread, stuffing, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes?

Some of the recipes are hand-written in family recipe collections, and I will make up others  up as I go along, but here are links to recipes for a few of the items I included in my menu.

• Apple Sausage Macaroni and Cheese
• Bacon and Sage Pumpkin Soup
• Savory Madelines

I’ll also be serving up mulled wine and cider. Desserts are still T.B.D. I am sure (well, not entirely sure) someone in the family will want pie. I am not much of a pie person myself and will probably opt to make a pumpkin cheesecake or a chestnut trifle. Roasting mallows in the cold and making s’mores also sounds perfect.

Look for some Thanksgiving tablescape ideas, from yours truly, on Hello Homebody next week!

What’s on your menu? What are some of your Thanksgiving traditions?