Happy Thanksgiving, one more time, friends!  I hope that my American friends had a wonderful long weekend and you had a chance to celebrate however you like to celebrate.  I love Thanksgiving – what’s not to like?  A holiday to celebrate food, togetherness, and gratitude – sign me up.

I don’t have many pictures to show you of the day itself, as I spent most of it cooking.  ‘Tis the season of my current state of life.  But I did snap some pics of the food.  Which is the important thing, right?  (Kidding.  Maybe.)

I started with “three generations of appetizers” – a concept I came up with when it occurred to me to see if google had any recipes for “nuts and bolts,” a party mix I remembered my Grandmama making for Thanksgiving when I was a little girl.  No surprise here, but of course there were recipes online.  I picked the one that I thought came closest to my Grandmama’s, and my mom said she thought I did well.  To represent my mom, I made artichoke dip – of course.  We’ve been making and serving artichoke dip at every family gathering since I can remember.  I’ve been making it myself since I was about nine.  And for me, a new recipe for pesto and sundried tomato goat cheese spread – I need to come up with a catchier name – that I just recently dreamed up.

Gather ’round, turkeys!

After dinner, we went to our next-door neighbors’ house for dessert.  There was Persian tea, two kinds of pie, and my contribution:

Cranberry-apple spice cake with cinnamon maple buttercream and candied cranberries.  It went quickly.

As I mentioned on Monday, we chose to #OptOutside (thanks, REI!) on Black Friday – something we’ve done for several Thanksgivings now.  My parents were in town until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we took the opportunity to show them Great Falls Park – they’d never been, can you believe it?

Our first stop, naturally, was the overlooks above the roaring rapids – the ‘rents were suitably impressed.

After the overlooks, we split up – Peanut was complaining about being cold (perhaps she should try pants sometime, #justsaying) so Steve took her to the visitors’ center while the rest of us hiked.  It was chilly, but so beautiful.

We spotted a little blue heron drying his wings out in the winter breeze.

Altogether – a beautiful, if cold, way to spend the day after Thanksgiving.  I felt very grateful, indeed.

How did you celebrate Thanksgiving this year?