Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has to be my favorite holiday. I have always cherished the idea of a crisp cold sunny day, autumn just hanging on and all of the family together at Stump Ridge Farm. Aunts and cousins in the kitchen preparing the last minute details that Aunt Karen and Julie need before everyone sits down to a wonderful table filled with love, thankfulness and the best dinner of the year. I thank my mother for always keeping this family tradition, as well as many others, so present in my life. Now that I am grown and far from Wisconsin and my family, I seem to nostalgically yearn to be with all of them today as they gather for the great feast.

My last Thanksgiving in Wisconsin was very special, it happened to be my 24th birthday and I couldn't have asked for a better way to celebrate it then with all of my family at the farm. The following year I had just landed in Spain and decided that I would host Thanksgiving for my new friends and family so they may share in the wonderful tradition and understand a bit of me. It was a complete success, sometimes I still wonder how the hell I pulled it off without my Mom and my Aunts there! I did have many a phone consultation with mom and Erin, and oh how the Joy of Cooking saved my butt!

Since that year, 2002, I never did take it upon myself to prepare Thanksgiving again and I have really truly missed it these last 7 years.

Seeing as this year we are in a new place I felt it time to start new traditions, or pick up the old ones again, and I decided one day last week in the supermarket that this would be the year that Thanksgiving made its comeback. I was nervous, wondered if I still had it in me to pull it all together and sure enough.....I still have it!

We enjoyed a fabulous dinner on Sunday to celebrate my birthday and have sufficient leftovers for the week to be able to join you today around the same time you will all be feasting! What an amazing treat, I cannot believe I let myself miss out on this for so many years.

I must say I am thankful for so many things in this life and I cherish such a holiday that brings friends and family together over one of the most basic and simple pleasures of life, good food.

Happy Thanksgiving!