Thanksgiving Feast a la RAW-ish

Last night I told T, "I want to have a Thanksgiving feast. I want courses, with salad, and soup, and make it last 4 hours like an Italiana dinner."

Well...it happened.

It wasn't quite the way I had thought, but the Universe took me totally at my desire.

I cooked a 27 pound turkey, for 81/2 hours (and the underside was still undercooked).

We had Bo's spinach and pome/walnut salad-a hit BTW.

Then I had some cold raw side dishes that I had made as extras. Perfect for another course.

Marinated cucumbers with feta, beets in garlic, grapefruit, strawberries and bananas with coconut and dried blueberries, edamame salad with vidallia dressing...all hits. 

We had a leisurely salad course with french bread and a bottle of wine...turkey not done.

We had leisurely cold salads with french bread and another bottle of wine...turkey not done.

We finally had our main course, with lots of vege side dishes...I made roasted brussel sprouts with garlic, green beans with red peppers, corn and peanuts, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, something else...

Tony said "well this IS exactly what you said you wanted to do..." I smiled. It WAS what I had said, but I hadn't thought of it quite like this. Goes to show-we are getting what we say. 

It DID go well. EVeryone ate many more vegetables than they would have normally, I got some raw in them too and they all commented that it was so much better than the usual mad feed.