As I would in any typical year, I started cooking our Thanksgiving meal when the Macy’s Day Parade started.  Courtney got up just in time to see the start of it.  She was being cute: she had established a tradition of watching the Parade on TV while cuddled in a blanket with her favorite childhood stuffed animal.  It was her own personal tradition; I liked it because I saw her regress back to an eight-year-old.  Stuffed animals are no longer her thing, now that she’s in High School, but she still maintains this.  She also has other personal traditions for Christmas, starting with Black Friday tomorrow and then the setting up of the Christmas tree.  She doesn’t need to buy anything tomorrow; she just likes the holiday environment.

Today, unlike previous years, there would be no turkey.  The family wanted me to cook a full-on French meal, and so I did.  In the morning, I cooked the desserts because they needed at least three hours to set.  I then pretty much cooked the courses in progression.  As with a real French meal, the meal would be served in courses over a two to three hour period.  The first course started at noon, right in the middle of the first football game.  It was the cheese plate with some figs, nuts and baguettes.  Next up was the appetizer: pruchetta wrapped figs.  They were very tasty and popular.  For the next few courses, we sat down as a family at the table.  We had French onion soup followed by a cheese soufflé and green beans with garlic and Fontana cheese.  We were too full for the main course, so we opted to save that for dinner.  The family did want one of the desserts now, so I served the mocha mouse.  In between lunch and dinner, we played tennis.  Dinner was fillet mignon in a green peppercorn sauce served with a 2005 Francis Coppola Cabernet.  Delicious!  Dessert was a berry torte served with a coffee and orange flavored dessert wine that we had bought from a recent trip to some Gilroy wineries.  Again, it was pretty good, though I did learn earlier in the day not to add lemon to a custard (the middle part of the torte), as it will curdle.  The consistency of the torte was wrong, and the wine did not match up perfectly with the torte (berries & lavender versus coffee and orange).  An ice wine would have been better.  On the whole though, it was a fantastic dinner.  Perhaps this will become a new family tradition!