Thanksgiving! Food Prep

Sarah and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving week! We very much enjoyed cooking and hosting our first Thanksgiving. The menu:
Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger
Green Bean Casserole (a la Campbell's Soup)
Roasted Beets and Brussel Sprouts
Stuffing
Pecan Pie

As we are vegetarian, we skipped the turkey. Rowan brought homegrown swiss chard and Anne brought appetizers.

Sarah and I started cooking on Wednesday with the squash soup and pie. When I make squash soup (which happens quite frequently), I roast the squash. This necessitates cutting the raw squash in half, an often formidable feat. I started gently:
After banging the squash with the knife stuck in it repeatedly on the counter in an attempt to break through, I resorted to brute force.
This resulted in some seriously raggedy-looking squash.

I thought that brandishing the remaining squash like a triumphant squash conqueror would help bolster my oomph.
Let's just say it's a good thing all the squash gets pureed in the end.

Sarah was a bit more sedate making her pecan pie crust.
The filling:
The finished pie! Isn't it pretty? Sarah managed the lovely top decoration even though I kept eating the pecans from her "decoration" pile. I thought she had made a pile of the rejects.
Thursday morning we started with the stuffing. Every year when I am home for Thanksgiving, I wake up to the smell of onions sauteing in butter: my dad starting the stuffing. He cooks the stuffing and turkey, and likes to be out of the kitchen before anyone else starts cooking. So when I started sauteing my own celery, carrots and onions in a whole stick of butter, it really smelled and felt like Thanksgiving.
Right before it was time to put the stuffing in the oven, I remembered the most important flavor of the stuffing: white wine. By some miracle, we actually had a corkscrew (2!). I didn't have to borrow one from Ken and Kenny, or the scary neighbors. I had not, until that moment, successfully uncorked a bottle of wine. As you can see, it was quite the effort. But I had success!
The stuffing about halfway through cooking. This was my favorite part of the meal.
We also roasted beets and brussel sprouts. The color contrast when raw was excellent, and they tasted so sweet cooked.
One thing about having several different roommates over the last year and a half is the rotating kitchen supplies. I am now without a sufficiently large mixing bowl, and my soup pot was in use. While all of the green beans fit in the bowl, it was difficult to stir them into the sauce. About halfway through I realized that it was customary to defrost the green beans before mixing them in the sauce. This might have aided the mixing process.

It was a fun day and a half cooking--not stressful.