Thanksgiving Bento!

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I decided to beat all of my holiday events to the punch with the first turkey meal of the season! All those potlucks and holiday meals, if you don't get in first then you're meal is just another one in the long line of holiday meals. :) This also gave me a reason to fire up my tech. (more on that in another post). We're also coming up to the holiday season where I won't have much more of a chance to cook until the new year (the company goes on an extended 2 week holiday). I admit, I relied heavily on my food blogs this time around, but this time of year folks really show off with some amazing recipes and I can't help but try them out.

We start everything up with, you guessed it, the bird. I fired up my orion smoker/cooker (I'll do a post dedicated to the review of that in the future). I first brined up this bad boy overnight (it's my first attempt at brining), then I fired up the smoker with some cherry wood. The result was *amazing* such a moist and tender turkey and the flavor from the smoking process was simply delightful.

One of the food blogs I followed had a great recipe for Mustard roasted potatoes that they adapted from Gourmet magazine. The pictures looked great, for some reason the potatoes came out a lot more "tangy" than I had imagined it in my mind's eye. By no means was it a bad dish, simply different than expected.

I'll admit for this last dish, I had to find a filler and so it's not quite in the theme of Thanksgiving, but it does give a nice healthy light filler that eases up from the heaviness of the turkey and potatoes. I know it looks like eggs, but this is actually crumbled spiced tofu with asparagus. It's a great dish, and a great way to introduce tofu to folks that might not normally eat it. Lots of tofu haters usually don't realize tofu can be used in various forms rather than the usual tasteless bricks they might see in a bad asian buffet. (or some other venue that paints tofu into a poor light)

Finally, dessert, someone posted a spiced carrot cake, I thought it would be a perfect light dessert rather than an over sugary pie. Very yummy, the cardamom really makes this cake special. It's great the way it is, but there was a suggestion for a simple sugar glaze that I splashed on which might give it some more satisfaction to the holiday sweet tooth.

Thanks for dropping by. Happy Thanksgiving folks!

Box Contents

• Cherry wood smoked turkey
• Mustard roasted potatoes
• Asparagus with spicy tofu
• Spiced Carrot cake