Thanksgiving Menu

As a native Californian, I never get to fly home to my family for Thanksgivings, since plane tickets are so expensive. For the past three years I have been spending my Thanksgiving break with my boyfriend at our Philadelphia apartment. Each year we try to cook something new. This year we bought all of our ingredients from Trader Joe’s, so everything was healthy and organic. For our menu we cooked turkey breasts, sweet potatoes, heirloom carrots, heirloom tomatoes, and green beans.

Because we can’t afford to buy or eat an entire turkey by ourselves, we opted to buy regular turkey breasts. My boyfriend was in charge of cooking the turkey, sweet potatoes, and green beans, while I was in charge of the carrots and dessert.

For the carrots I drizzled them in olive oil, rosemary, salt, and pepper, and then baked it in the oven for 25 minutes. For dessert I baked banana pudding that had a crunchy graham cracker base, a vanilla pastry cream and sliced banana filling, and a whipped cream and dulce de leche topping.

It only took us 2 hours to cook everything, and to top it all off we paired our dinner with a glass of white wine.

This was my boyfriend and mine’s third Thanksgiving in together, and we still managed to not burn anything. It was a truly peaceful and relaxing Thanksgiving, since we both prefer private dinners, rather than large chaotic family gatherings. Our main goal is to keep improving our cooking by trying more gourmet recipes each year.