Thankful Thanksgiving is Over!

On Thursday afternoon, I left work a little early (with permission) to finish the last minute shopping, cooking, baking and decorating for my big dinner. There were butterflies in my stomach the whole time. 

My lovely friend, Neave, was luckily on-island for the event, and proved to be an incredible co-host. She cooked, mashed potatoes, cleaned and washed dishes, and generally just kept me alive and sane. I don't know how I would have coped without her!

My final project was making these place settings. This was a pretty simple task, as I'd had my guest list finalized for days, and had printed out the names earlier in the day. 

 

I also made some last-minute additions to my centerpiece. The herbs are fresh from Kazuno's garden. Aren't they lovely? This pumpkin has been around since early October but is holding up really well. Maybe the candle wax sealed the freshness? :) 

At around 6 p.m., the mad flurry of preparation died down and my apartment was actually pretty peaceful. Neave was putting the finishing touches on the cranberry sauce and made me go take a shower and get ready (bless her). The lamp and candle light glowed happily, Christmas music played happily, and Neave and I breated a sigh of relief. 

Then, the guests arrived. Chaos ensued as the bell rang, rain started to pour, guests arrived dripping, some friends tried to cook their food last minute, people started to mill around my smallish apartment, and I tried to figure out what to do with allll the amazing food the guests were bringing. 

Kazuno supervised the cooking of our turkey, Timu. He was delicious. 

Neave was, once again, a God-send. She saw everything that needed to happen and asked me about it, made sure people had pre-dinner drinks, and then ushered everyone to the table to start the meal.  As I asked everyone to sit, I realized that I, as hostess, should give some sort of speech or toast or something to get started. A bit shaken by the chaos and the sheer number of my guests, I mumbled something about being thankful and then ran off. Note to self: prepare for that moment in advance, next time!

 Overall, I think the dinner was a success. Once everyone was seated and happily passing food around, conversation started to flow. I had carefully planned the seating so that people were sitting next to others they knew or who I thought they should know, and I am pretty proud of how things turned out. :) There was PLENTY of food, as well. Everyone pitched in with a side or a drink, and my fridge is still packed to the brim! AND I made everyone take stuff home!

In the end I was only slightly exhausted but incredibly happy, and since everyone pitched in to help clean up (especially Kazuno and her sister Rino: my heroes.), I was able to fall into bed around midnight.

It was such a fun process to plan this whole party from start to finish, to brainstorm with my friends, and to watch it all happen as if by magic. I had the best time, but I am so glad it's finished! :) Yesterday I cleaned and re-arranged some more so my apartment is almost back to normal.

Now to start planning for Christmas... Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

Subtropical Christmas Part 2: Food!

(If you are receiving this in email form and don't want to receive it anymore, please let me know. I promise not to be offended. :))

This next installment of the Christmas Party story is about the food. We had SO much food! We were eating leftovers for DAYS! I still have some stuffing left!!

I can't type much because of a small fingertip injury, so I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

Truffle pasta by Max.

Amazing cake by MaryAnne.

Japanese Christmas cake from one of my coworkers. They love to eat cake on Christmas. :)

Cocoa with marshmallows and candy canes! Aren't these jars sweet?

Green salad by An Yang.

Cheese platter by Max.

Cookies by Julie (who also made yams, pecan pie, pumpkin pie, and more!

Gingerbread house! (Group effort. Mostly An Yang's creation. :D)

And the turkey!! Now this one I have to talk about a bit more. This was my first attempt at making a turkey (which I bought frozen from Costco), and I was so happy with the turnout! Sarra coached me through the preparation process where we removed all the nasty insides and then coated the thing in butter and fresh thyme and rosemary. Then we baked him (we named him Takumi the Turkey) until he was crispy, juicy, tender, and incredible. We had to borrow a confection oven from Julie, and it worked out perfectly.

I can't believe my turkey turned out so well! I already told my mom that I would make the turkey at home from now on. ;)