What's on my table for Thanksgiving?

Here's more of a 'roundup' post of what I plan to bring to a friends 'pot luck' thanksgiving.

1. "Cranberry Sauce". No one volunteered for this and when someone suggested "the can" I caved and decided to 'ad lib' a cranberry sauce. Basically, I took a cup of apple-cranberry jam from 101 Cookbooks that I had already canned. Then, In a food processor, I blended a good hunk of ginger with about 1/2 cup to a cup of orange juice - processed well, strained (squeeze the pulp well, keep the juice, ditch the pulp), and then added the ginger/orange concentrate (to taste) to the jam. I also added a pinch of cinnamon, some more orange juice, zest of one large orange, and a touch of powdered sugar (all of these 'to taste' -- this is by no means an exact recipe!). I ended up with about 1.5 cups of "sauce" which should be plenty for the 6 or so expected guests.

2. Parmesan Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes. I love this recipe as an alternative to the super-buttery mashed potatoes of yore. Nice and light. Perfect with chives.

3. Sweet Potato and Swish Chard Gratin. This was meant to be. I happened to have these ingredients from my last trip to the market, so I just had to make it. I hope my hosts won't mind a bonus dish! One of two smitten kitchen recipes making the trip. A real post about this to come?

4. Dessert! Yum. I'll be bringing along some of my Brown Butter Pumpkin Pecan Dulce de Leche Ice Cream. Along with some homemade dark chocolate magic shell!

5. Last but not least, I'm going to make Smitten Kitchen's Cranberry Caramel Almond Tart. But with a slight twist. We've made this before, and had some leftover filling and tart dough so we cut out shapes (think large sugar cookies) and baked the dough and filling separately. Then, just before serving, we scooped some filling onto the tart dough cookie and had a 'deconstructed' tart. This meant I could accurately gauge the baking of the tart dough and the filling without using anything fancy like pie weights. Plus, it will likely travel better this way. Last we made this, was for cjr's boss's tenure party and it turned out adorable (cjr's boss loves dinosaurs...)

I look forward to sampling all of the other guests homemade goodies. Especially more pie. Oh, how I love pie. No turkey for me though. I never liked the stuff anyway :)