Happy Merry Holidays

I love Thanksgiving and Christmas! Something about being thankful, spending time with family and Christmas songs make me happy and cheerful. I gain a higher tolerance  for crazy unexplainable traffic (most of the time I suffer from slight road rage) and large throngs of people wandering around Union Square. Puppies and Kittens in the Macy's window display help a lot with this good cheer I'm speaking of. I only wish there wasn't such a rush between Thanksgiving and Christmas. M and I had so much going on I completely neglected my blog. We moved in early November, I studied for and took an exam, and we made it through a few holiday parties before traveling back to the cold midwest. Since it's been so long I have so much to share! (I promise not to cram it all in this post)


I had great intentions of sharing our Thanksgiving meal and first-time-turkey-success with you long before now, but all of those I mentioned before kind of took over. Since my table looks like it could be transported directly from Thanksgiving in to Christmas, I'm going to show you how it turned out. When M and I moved, we doubled our square footage (I'm very thankful for this) and gained a dining room. After a long and patient journey, we bought a new dining table! We happened upon a great sale on the Industrial Table from West Elm, and picked it up this past Saturday. Since we had no table for Thanksgiving, we rented one. Who knew you could rent just one eight foot table for less than $10? Well, it's possible, and you can include linens and dinnerware all for under $40 (see below).

I may have acted like a giddy child when I came home to find our rented table, and I may have postponed brining the turkey until after I set it up, but it was totally worth it! I haven't had a table in almost five years. M and I really enjoy having people over for dinner. It was difficult to crowd around the breakfast bar at the old place (we managed 6 a time or two and M and I had to share the piano bench) so the rented table brought me joy. There is nothing special about a table, but friends around a table sharing food together is definitely special, and the perfect way to spend our first Thanksgiving in the new apartment!

I never hosted Thanksgiving before this year, and never roasted anything larger than a 3-4 lb chicken. I found some great instruction from Bon Appetite and used their recipe for a dry brine. It's strange holding a 15 1/2 lb turkey in your arm washing and patting it dry - almost like it was real baby.... Mr Turkey turned out well and very brown and juicy just like he was supposed to. Our friends contributed to the meal with some great sides. Like I mentioned before, it was a fantastic way to spend our first Thanksgiving in our new home. Whether or not we get to host another Thanksgiving in the near future, we are going to make great use of that table. I'm really excited to have our first dinner guests in the new year. 

Now, we're back in our hometowns' and hanging out with family. Living out old traditions and creating new ones (like the 10 cracker challenge). I've just made two types of creme fraiche with M for our Christmas Eve dinner, and am looking forward to cooking new recipes tomorrow. I hope all of you are enjoying your holiday. What are your traditions? 


For those of your curious about my $40 dining table rental, here are the details. We rented from a catering company (usually for weddings and large parties) and were surprised by how cheap it all was. We had place settings for 8 with table linens and the table. All available for as short of a rental as you like. We had our table for 4 days or so and there is no charge per day. It seems like a great way to accommodate a large group if you don't have the room to store a large table. Here is the company we used if you live in the Bay Area and are curious.