I had a delicious Thanksgiving and I hope everyone else did too.

A lot of people around me this year seemed to be celebrating Thanksgiving a little bit differently this year.  I went home for Thanksgiving, as I always do. But my Thanksgiving was a little different as well.

Traditionally, I spend Thanksgiving with my immediate family as well as my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents that live in the Bay Area.  It has been this way since we moved to California. But this year, a lot of my cousins didn’t come home. And a result, each family did their own thing for Thanksgiving.

It felt odd spending Thanksgiving with just my siblings and parents. In some ways, it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving, and instead felt like a regular meal with my family, except that we had turkey and some Thanksgiving sides. It was a more mellow experience, but I am still thankful I got to spend it with my family. I know quite a few people who weren’t able to make it home to spend Thanksgiving with their family, so it makes me even more grateful that I was lucky enough to still fly home and be with my family.

My parents originally suggested coming down to San Diego for Thanksgiving, but I insisted that we stay in the Bay Area. There’s something magical about going back home. In San Diego, I’m an adult with a job and responsibilities. When I’m home, I’m a kid again. My siblings are all in San Diego, so I see them all the time. But it’s different spending time with them at home.  We sleep in our old rooms, in our old beds and just hang out on our beds like when we were little. At night, we knock on the adjoining walls of our rooms to communicate while lying in bed.

Normally I make a ton of different desserts for Thanksgiving. Since there was only my family this year, I didn’t need to make as many. But after spending two months testing out different recipes, I felt a little lost not being able to make so many desserts. Luckily, BF was still spending Thanksgiving with his large, extended family. So I made the crazy decision of volunteering to bake a bunch of desserts for him to share with his family.

I’ve never been a good baker under stress. And baking for Thanksgiving has always been stressful. Part of it is the number of desserts. Most of it is the stress of presenting desserts to other people to eat. I know I bake a lot, but I usually only share the desserts with only those really close to me. I always feel pretty shy about sharing my desserts with others and so I stress when I am baking for others.

So, as a result, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong when I was baking. I mean everything. I made a bread recipe using regular flour instead of bread flour. My premade pumpkin puree somehow froze over in the fridge. My sweet potato puree went flying across the kitchen when I tried to open the container it was in. I baked muffins putting only in the wet ingredients and completely forgetting to mix in the dry ingredients. My hand mixer fell off the counter and spilled batter all over the couch.  Somehow, I managed to get it all together in the end…

I didn’t take pictures of our actual Thanksgiving dinner, but for those who are curious, here are the desserts I chose to bake this year for Thanksgiving:

Soft and fluffy milk toast

Pumpkin mochi cakes

Pumpkin bread

Sweet potato cupcake roses
(I made these last year and they were a big hit. I didn’t have time to remake them again this year before Thanksgiving,but this post has a few shots of the ones I made this year before they were devoured. You can view the recipe by clicking on the above link)

Finally, I am doing a giveaway this weekend as well. In honor of this food holiday weekend, I was contacted by Foodzie. I met Foodzie when I attended the Foodbuzz festival last month. The company brings together artisan and small food companies from all across the US. You can shop for all kinds of food products on their site. They also have a monthly Tasting Box where they send out samples from five different companies. They contacted me and offered to provide two of my readers with a Tasting Box.

The contest is open to US readers only. Please leave a comment telling me your favorite Thanksgiving dessert this year (or any dessert if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving). I’ll use random.org to generate two random numbers to choose the winners. The contest ends at 5pm on Monday, November 29. Good luck! In addition, if you visit the website on November 29, Foodzie will be giving additional Tasting Boxes, so you can have another chance to win.