Thanksgiving is a perfect time to cook a truly seasonal meal. This year we took all the vegetables growing in our garden and built dishes around each. Since we had a talented photographer among our guests, we decided to start a series of posts featuring local, seasonal dishes that delight and nourish.

Appetizers

With the warm Fall we experienced, we still have sweet peppers this Thanksgiving! We roasted Topepo Rosso and stuffed them with Italian sausage from our friends at La Finquita del Buho. We roasted beets and topped them with goat cheese rolled in toasted almonds. Last, we made bruscetta topped with carmelized onions and squash.

Salads

As well as a green salad composed of lettuce, spinach, arugula and mustard greens, we made a fennel, orange and olive salad. James created a celeriac salad with apple, walnuts, dried cranberries and a mustardy vinaigrette with creme fraiche added.

Vegetable main dishes

As with many families at Thanksgiving, we have traditional favorite dishes. Braised pearl onions are one of these. We had a poor onion year this year, so pearl-onion-sized alliums were easy to find! We made this year’s dish with pearl shallots. Our other must-have dish is leek gratin. Our roasted vegetables this year were potatoes, parsnips and squash with shallots. I parboiled the potatoes for 5 minutes before coating all the veggies in olive oil and tossing with salt and quartered shallots. They roasted for about an hour and a half in a 350 degree oven. Cauliflower was turned into a delicious curried cauliflower and potato dish with the last hot peppers and tomatoes from the garden. We halved Brussels sprouts and browned the cut side before tossing them with an Asian ponzu-based sauce.

Missing from the pictures was an excellent broccoli dish with pine nuts, lemon and Parmesan, mashed potatoes, our beautiful turkey, stuffing, two cranberry sauces and gourmet sausages.

We rounded out the feast with pumpkin pie (made from real pumpkin naturally), upside-down pear cake and a selection of cookies.

Thank you to Sarah Sebring for the beautiful photos!