Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Blueberry Lake Resort: Thanksgiving 2010

I've been to the Blueberry Lake Resort twice in the past month. The first time was with some friends during Canada's Thanksgiving (the weekend of Oct. 30th). While I went away during the holiday weekend with some friends, the family had an unusually quiet Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 2

We arrived at the beautiful cottage on Friday and had a whole wheat pasta dinner. The next morning, we made bacon, scrambled eggs, breakfast smoothies and bruschetta.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 1

To make the bruschetta, tomatoes and garlic were diced, then simmered for about twenty mintutes with a few herbs from the spice rack. A sprinkle of salt was added to adjust the flavour and then the marinara sauce was taken off the heat to cool. Slices of baguette were toasted, topped with the marinara sauce and slices of prosciutto before consumption.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 3

Thanksgiving 2010 - 4

For the breakfast fruit smoothies; milk, orange juice, bananas, strawberries, and some ice cubes were blended up. This was such a brightly flavoured smoothie - perfect for breakfast. The bananas weren't too ripe so the banana flavour didn't overpower the strawberries. I don't know why our family doesn't make breakfast smoothies. It's so simple and delicious!

For Thanksgiving dinner, we made everything from scratch - which was a first for me. Before this Thanksgiving, I helped chop stuff up for my mom and help with little things here and there, like making the garlic bread. VN had made Thanksgiving dinner before so the two of us were making the whole dinner based on my experience with cooking and her experience of making the turkey dinner a few times. I wasn't worried at all. We'd be fine.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 6

Mashed potatoes from scratch. Boiled potatoes, butter, milk, and a bit of chicken bake.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 5

Asparagus with garlic and red wine. A believe there was a bit of lemon juice, too. This was grilled on the BBQ.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 7

Stuffing from scratch. Celery and onions were diced up and sauteed with butter and oil. We dried out some bread in the oven and ripped them into larger chunks so that the end result of the stuffing wasn't a paste, but rather something solid. The bread was added to the sautéed vegetables and then poultry seasoning and other spices were added with some hot water. The main spice in stuffing is poultry seasoning. The rest is up to you. I can't remember what I put, but it turned out real well. Just taste and season as you go.

When my family makes Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, we bake the stuffing separately in a baking pan. We've stuffed the stuffing into the turkey once a while back, but it didn't turn out as well as we had hoped. We had to scoop out the stuffing out of the turkey because it wasn't cooking. We ended up scooping the stuffing out from the turkey cavity and into a baking pan - the way we've always done it. From that point on, our family has always baked the stuffing separately.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 8

It was decided that we were going to stuff the stuffing into the turkey this time. Great. DG bought a stuffing bag, though, so no one would be scooping the stuffing out of the turkey. VN and DG put the bag in the turkey and filled it with stuffing. The turkey was massaged with butter and then placed in a pan that was lined with onions, celery, carrots, a few potatoes, olive oil and some thyme. It was thrown into the oven for a few hours and came out looking... uh.. appetizing... yes...

Thanksgiving 2010 - 9

Is it supposed to look like that? Hahaa! I think the poor turkey was over stuffed. We took the bag of stuffing out of the turkey and it looked like a thing of haggis. Bleh. It didn't look bad when we took the stuffing out of the bag-sock-thing.

Oh, the turkey gravy was made with the drippings, a bit of gravy mix and roux. It was a bit on the salty side, but it was very good nonetheless.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 10

Oops, I said that we made everything from scratch, but I kinda lied. Kinda. The caesar salad dressing and croutons came out of a jar and box. But VN and I didn't put it together, so it wasn't a total lie. The turkey was over done. It was a bit on the drier side (you can tell by the amount of turkey shrinkage in the photo of the turkey). Other than that, everything else was fine.

Thanksgiving 2010 - 12

Thanksgiving 2010 - 13

For dessert, we had both apple and pumpkin pie. I don't think I've ever had pumpkin pie before, since our family usually just makes apple pie. The cold pumpkin pie tasted of gingerbread cookies with a bit of pumpkin. Quite tasty! The warm apple pie was pretty good, too. Despite a bit of drama, Thanksgiving dinner turned out alright.


Disclaimer: I wasn't asked to write about the resort or paid in any way. My friend booked the cottage for the holiday back when there was a special price on a site called travelzoom. It's an amazing place. I definitely recommend it.

~*~*~


4801 Chemin St Cyr
Labelle, QC
819-686-1413

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