I like the beginning of the fall season when the whether is cool, leaves are falling changing colors.  Birthdays, Halloween, and now Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving with my husband’s family – it’s exciting, interesting, eventful, and a whole lot of food.  The table is set with soup, appetizers, antipasto, lasagna and turkey with all the fixings.  How could one person ever put all that together.  Then there was the dessert table to contend with.

Thanksgiving dinners were once shared at my husbands mother’s home, but then came the day he offered to have it at our house.  We lived in an apartment at the time – I could never understand how I was ever going to complete a meal for 14+ people and get everything out on time.  Anxiety would set in and then it came.   I think it was the first time I ever burnt a sauce.  My husband and I stood in the kitchen trying to figure out what we could do to mask the taste of the burn.  We threw a couple of pieces of potato in the pot thinking it would soak in the burnt taste, but it just didn’t matter. The anxiety got the best of me hosting that Thanksgiving.

That is the moment it hit me – I wanted to go to culinary school to learn how to cook.  I enrolled into The Cambridge School Culinary Arts in September of 1998 and have hosted successful Thanksgiving Dinners ever since.  After graduating, I felt a new found appreciation for not only being thankful, but for sharing what I was learning with the people I was thankful for.  Updates on recipes will come soon!  For now, enjoy the Goat Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes!

What’s on the menu:

Goat cheese stuffed tomatoes

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Bruchetta

Cheese, crackers and fruit platter

Turkey and all the fixings

Lemon Pound Cake

Cannoli’s with fresh strawberries

Lisa’s stuffing