Happy Thanksgiving!

Well I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! We had a somewhat un-traditional celebration due to work schedules, which ended up with us eating at around 9pm! So I will apologize in advance for the lack of lighting and interesting presentation in some of the pictures to follow. We gobbled (haha!) everything up, and there was no time for staging!

Here’s what was on the menu:

Turkey (mostly Alton Brown’s brine recipe, I subbed apple cider for the vegetable stock and added an orange peel)

Stuffing (I used my favorite Rachael Ray recipe and adapted it to use a paleo “cornbread” I like – will post this soon)

Cranberry Sauce x 2  (loosely based on this one and another one based on this one)

Green Bean Casserole (adapted from Alton Brown, using these fried onions)

Sweet Potato Casserole (adapted from Saveur, halved the recipe and subbed a marshmallow topping to please the masses)

Apple Cider Glazed Roasted Veggies (from this month’s Southern Living magazine)

Pumpkin Chiffon Pie (recipe here)

Chocolate Walnut Pie (recipe here)

Do you think that’s enough for four people?? We barely made a dent in the turkey – a 16lb-er.

I’m calling it 98% paleo/primal. There was some brown sugar in the brine for the turkey (although since I subbed the cider for the stock, I realized after the fact I probably could have left it out), a splash of bourbon in the sweet potatoes, and a thin layer of marshmallows on top (requested by my brother). I did use heavy cream and butter in my preparations, but that is normal for our household. Everything turned out GREAT, I would not post the recipes if they weren’t yummy all paleofied. If you have any questions about substitutions I used, please ask!