Thanksgiving 2015

My Thanksgiving was perfect.

Mr. Louisville and I traveled up to Cincinnati the night before and stayed at the Hilton downtown which worked out wonderfully.  We ran the Cincinnati Thanksgiving 10k in the morning and I had personal best time of 1 hour 31 seconds! It's a great tradition to feel better about all of the great food later on and I hope to keep it up.

After the run we cleaned up and headed downstairs for lunch with my family at Orchid's.  It's the most wonderful buffet and my favorites were the seafood (crab legs, crab claws, cold shrimp, freshly shucked oysters) and the cheese plate I made for myself in lieu of too many desserts.  It's arguably my favorite family tradition!

I miss my little BFF!

Group photo minus baby Caroline.

After lunch M and I headed back down to Louisville to stop by his Uncle's for an Italian feast.  Sauce, spaghetti, meatballs, rolled beef, pork, bread, salad.  It was a nice change of pace and absolutely delicious!

Following dinner we stopped by Tia's for a visit which was a perfect ending to our holiday.

Swanksgiving

On Saturday my friends, Katie and Lyle, hosted Swanksgiving!  A spin on a Friendsgiving where a bunch of friends get dressed up and eat and drink! 

Gimme dat turkey!

I offered to bring a few appetizers since the Thanksgiving staples were taken care of.  They included a turkey (of course!), mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, mac & cheese (with avocado and basil), crescent rolls, brussels sprouts salad and sweet potatoes.  A feast!  I've already emailed Katie to rave about her brussels sprouts salad and beg for the recipe.

Anyway, for appetizers I made a jalapeno-cranberry cream cheese dip which I thought was good, not great.  But the real show stopper was the amazing artichoke-olive spread I made.  It was a huge hit and I'll definitely be making it again.  I've said it before but Smitten Kitchen never lets me down!

To wash everything down I brought a few bottles of wine.  I also made a big batch of Cranberry-Ginger Cosmos to share.

3 parts vodka
2 parts cranberry juice
1 part lime juice
1 part Cointreau (or triple sec)
4 large pieces of ginger

I muddled the ginger a bit and poured the rest of the ingredients in my carafe, then viola! 

The evening was a huge success!