Thanksgiving dinner

As all of you know, I post to this blog for artistic creation. But the next most important thing in my life is eating well. My addiction to buying an using art supplies and a true love of it is well documented, following that and books (which are less often bought cause they take longer to read than an apple takes to eat) but the next best thing I create and every day is FOOD!  I think eating well is super duper important indeed! One of the great things my mom passed down onto me. Just try to cook as good as she does, just try! One of my closest friends KT also spent the whole long week-end working. So I thought I'd fix us up a delicious dinner tonight for Thanksgiving dinner.

DISCLAIMER:  The photos here may  DO NOT do justice to how good this food tastes!!!!

 This is a picture after cutting into the apple, smoke bacon and Italian sausage stuffed pork chops (far right) To the left is Sweet Potato poutine.

 Since it is Thanksgiving I had to make pumpkin pie, but instead of a pie I did up these little home made muffin tin sized pies so I could share them easily. The filling was light soft custard and all the herbs and spices were hand ground in my mortar and pestle.

 My theme was "P"...... Pork and poutine ;) This is the plate from above with Parsley garnish. I polished mine off but it was so much food, KT needed tupperware for her left overs.

 After searing each stuffed chop on each side I poured the remaining filling and covered to braise in some apple juices. It looks brown and mushy but it tasted heavenly!

 Yam fries being deep fried. I think this oil is spent. I soaked the hand cut yam chips for about an hour in ice cold water before spinning them dry in my salad spinner.

 Here is the start of the stuffing project, in the cast iron pan are onions, bacon, Italian sausage, thyme and my secret ingredient (not so secret anymore........... candied fennel seeds, to bring out the fennel flavor of the Italian sausage an ad to the sweetness of the apples). To the right are the apples to be added later and some shallots that I had to chop up for my special poutine gravy. I made a roux with whole wheat flour and butter and added the shallots and spices to chicken stock I made last week. I reduced it by half and it was packed with flavor. The cheese curds came from the cheese lady att eh Crossroads market. Sweet potato poutine = Yum!