Last year we hosted Thanksgiving for our friends and this year we went to their house. It was nice to use their beautiful kitchen! We all contributed to the day, they provided lots of snacks, nuts, & veggies and I made hummus for appetizers.
We arrived around lunch and we ended up breaking our feast into two meals so that we could enjoy it all. My friend made her delicious portobello mushroom & pistacio soup and I made whole-wheat bread. We also had a spinach salad with strawberries and rasberries with the first course. I completely forgot to take a picture of that meal, it was too good and I was looking forward to eating that soup since last year! After I ate it all I remembered that I forgot to take a picture.
I did, however take some pictures of our second course!
For dinner we made Almond Butter Noodles and Lentils & Rice (Mujadara) with caramelized onions and hummus. I make two changes to the Lentils & Rice recipe as stated in the above link - I add a cup of chopped celery to the lentils while they boil and I leave out the parsley. If you think you hate tofu, I would challenge you to try this...When I woke up on Thanksgiving, instead of getting the turkey in the oven I put the tofu in the marinade. It was able to marinade for almost 10 hours before it was fried and it turned out really well.
For dessert we had blueberry peach smoothies....this is something I came up with years ago. It has plant milk, cashews, flax seed, frozen blueberries, frozen peaches, frozen banana and dates in it. It is a very thick smoothie and it really puts the Vitamix to the test.
It was a fun day, full of excitement...for example, Sister wanted to put her feet in the pool and she ended up falling in and soaking her clothes. No harm done, she was rescued immediately - but she had to run around in our friend's shirt for a while without any other clothes while hers were in the dryer! Before that happened we took a walk to the park and my friend's leg was peed on by a neighbor's dog! Additionally, the kids made art...here is a sample by Sister. They loved the huge pieces of paper!
In the evening we sat outside by the fire - it was a beautiful evening. Brother was allowed to sprinkle copper chloride on the fire to change the color. A very fun day.
I probably don't even have to say this, but today, "Black Friday" we did not shop - actually we observed Buy Nothing Day. This morning we went for a walk at the Tempe Town Lake, which was very nice and we stayed home the rest of the day. I got out my guitar for the first time since moving into the Hideout. I played until my fingers were raw and painful - it was fun. The kids started making Christmas decorations for the Hideout. I will post some pictures when they have finished...it's going to be pretty cute and thousands of times more meaningful than anything that can be purchased. It was a very relaxing couple of days. I am so thankful for Husband, the kiddos and the life we have together.
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