of course...

...I wasn't going to remember to post after the Total Feast Extravaganza of Book Club. Darn. But I can try to make up for it with some food porn...

Seeing as it's that time of year, we did a Thanksgiving preview for book club. We read (or were supposed to read) The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent, but we had a shockingly low retention rate on actually reading the book this time. Oh well. Sometimes that's just not really the point. Because the food, oh friends, the food.

I dry-brined and roasted a turkey breast, which was a little bit out on a limb for me. I'm a champ with the full bird but I wasn't sure how to make the proper adjustments to this smaller fella. I did a full kosher salt and cracked pepper crust and left it in a big bag in the fridge overnight, and in retrospect this was probably too long for all that salt. The skin after I roasted it was very salty, not that I've ever had a problem with "very salty" before. I doubt anyone else noticed because this thing was picked bare by the end of the night, and that's saying a lot for a group of 10 girls, several of whom don't eat meat.

I also made my famous macaroni and cheese, which was voted a necessity. Pretty dang good this time, I must say. Evaporated milk is my secret ingredient; makes everything that much cheesier and gooier.

And I made Overnight Salad (or 24 Hour Salad, or Layered Salad, or any other name that applies to this nationwide potluck staple). I think I'll post the recipe when I get home tonight so I at least have five posts for the month, even after I missed last night. That will probably be my sole accomplishment tonight; Austin and I are both totally exhausted and have that terrible feeling that we're getting sick. We're going to mainline vitamin C and get at least 10 hours of sleep tonight in hopes of warding off the inevitable.

Here's the yums:

Clockwise from top left: Kim's garlic mashed potatoes (in the white casserole), several sticks of soft butter (for the rolls, obv), Trader Joe's stuffing (more on this later), my mac & cheese, Kat's empty wine glass and Stephanie's Corn Pudding. In the middle: Megan's roasted brussels sprouts.



From the top: Sarah's butternut squash risotto in the blue dutch oven, my layered salad, and in the middle there is Kat's Green Bean casserole. Across the bottom, from left to right, Casey brought THREE different kinds of stuffing. Because she's crazy. On the left is from Trader Joes, in the center is Stove Top (these were nearly interchangeable) and on the right is Apple, Sage and Leek stuffing, which was simply awesome.


Here's those rolls, delicious snowflake rolls from Whole Foods, yum. And Kat's cranberry salad, her mom's recipe. And then that turkey breast of mine, nicely framed by Julia, my Sexy Stand Mixer. Not pictured: Lauren's sweet potato and yukon gold gratin, YUM. And I didn't even manage to photograph the desserts: Kat's pumpkin cheesecake with bourbon whipped cream (I'm going to let you think about that one for a minute) and pear pie with gruyere crust, courtesy of our dearest Badness.

We're going to start auctioning off Book Club memberships to deserving foodies worldwide. Starting bid: $10,000. Come on, folks, can you put a price on glory?