Thanksgiving. A time of good friends, good family times, and hopefully some good eats. My Thanksgiving was absolutely lovely this year and very luckily was spread over a few weeks. Yes I said it, a few weeks.
It started out a couple of weekends ago at Slow Food’s 4th annual “Renewing America’s Food Traditions” dinner. The event every year is put on to raise awareness and raise money for the 4H Heritage Breed project. For seven years, 4H kids have raised heritage breed turkeys to sell at Thanksgiving time. It helps not only bring our community closer by bringing the consumer back together again with the producer, but helps preserve heritage breeds from disappearing from our tables.
This year,
Slow Food Russian River teamed up with bio-dynamic and very sustainable winery
Quivira, to put on a wonderful event. Quivira is nestled quaintly in the Dry Creek Valley, among Sonoma County’s most beautiful vineyards and hills. The dinner was skillfully put together by Chris Cosintino and the rest of his crew at
Incanto in San Francisco and included some turkey that had been raised by the kids.
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| Chris, browning the Confit Turkey wings |
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| Chris and one of Quivera's freshly picked onions |
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| Loading up the cooker with the turkey and lamb |
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| Chris and Tony in the kitchen |
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| Live music |
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| Quivira's Gardens |
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| Heritage Turkey Dinner for 100 |
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| Turkey Breast, Turkey Thigh, Confit Wings along with Quivira''s Carrots and Parsnips |
Towards the end of the meal, Sonoma County native, Rex Williams, auctioned off nine of the beautiful turkeys that the kids had raised.
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| Auctioning so fast you can't even see him! |
The event raised a lot of money for Slow Food Russian River and most importantly the 4H kids and their projects. Last week, the fun continued with the “transforming” of the turkeys and of course, the distribution for Thanksgiving. Dad’s office was distribution center and we spent two days distributing and delivering 225 Heritage Turkeys, with the 4H kid’s help again. These kids work hard and take pride in what they do, staying involved in the whole process.
For more information about heritage breeds in general, check out the
America Breeds Livestock Conservancy.
Tradition seemed to be in the forefront of my own Thanksgiving, celebrating at our dear family friends house. Our job? Bring a pumpkin pie. I was very lucky this year in my harvest
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| Planted seeds, Go to Europe for three months, come home to this!! |
I planted pie pumpkins specifically, in anticipation that I would hopefully be making a pie. So Thursday morning, I roasted, pureed, and made a pie out of that pumpkin.
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| Roasting |
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| SO proud of my homemade crust! |
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| I tried the dough press for the middle decor, but took it off mid-cook because it lost this shape. But it looks good for this photo! |
I think it turned out ok, especially since I brought home an empty pie pan! You can find the recipe
here. The rest of our meal was very traditional, very beautiful, and most importantly, very good.
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| The boys |
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| One of TWO turkeys for the 24 of us! |
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| Maggie's fantastic butternut, pomegrante salad |
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| The Spread |
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| The plate of plates! |
I have to give my thanks to my friends and family. I have been very lucky and very fortunate to have amazing experiences this year and none of it could have been done with out them.
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