A smoked ham that has been glazed in a series of dijon mustard, brown sugar, bourbon, and milled/crushed gingersnap cookies.
Pumpkin Mushroom stuffing, which isn't my recipe but I use a pumpkin bread recipe from a friend of mine that's somewhere finely between a cake and bread. I put the recipe on my cookbook somewhere.
Pumpkin Mushroom Stuffing with fresh chives, tarragon, parsley and rosemary And that's the stuffing itself. It takes 2 days to prep the ingredients (i.e. turning the cake into overly dried out croutons) but my family likes this combo of recipes so much I have to cook it every Thanksgiving and/or Christmas now, whichever one I end up home for.
Black Bean Brownies with Dark chocolate chips
aaand I make a great peachy apricot chutney out of four easy ingredients which is also in my cookbook somewhere. That chutney + some cheese + a dried sausage + crackers is like an appetizer before Christmas dinner. It's best when you let it all settle for a couple days before digging in.
I make an olive sable (sort of like a sweet/savory cookie that sort of wanted to be a cracker when it was a kid) as well that people really enjoy, and you can freeze the pre-made dough ahead of time.
Warm fresh chocolate chip cookies made by my mom are my favorite though.
This year for Thanksgiving (I made enough for Christmas too) I made a cranberry sauce. It was my first stab at it, and everyone liked it a lot if they happened to already like cranberries.
1 1/3 cup red port
1/3 cup orange juice
A little less than 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 vanilla bean cut down the center
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
8 dried figs cut into small pieces and de-stemmed
1 6" long stem fresh rosemary sprig, leaves attached to the branch still
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract or vanilla paste
1 12oz bag cranberries
3/4 cup sugar
All the ingredients before the last two get combined in a pot. Boil it until the sugar and everything dissolves and stuff gets nice and hot. Reduce the heat and simmer about 10-15 minutes. Take the rosemary out, mix in the rest and crank up the heat to medium, stirring occasionally until the cranberries burst open.. 6-10 minutes. Once they're nice and softened up, turn off the heat, and use a potato masher to mash the mixture up into a thicker, richer paste. Alternatively you can blend half of it and then return it to the pot. Or blend all of it if you want it super creamy smooth. Either way, let it cool off completely, stick it in the fridge, and serve cold. This can be made like a week in advance too.
