The weather is so unseasonably nice, that it is really hard to imagine that next week we'll be slowing down to a few days off from school and work, in order to help us unplug and enjoy our families. And if the rumors from folks in Chicago and Ohio are true,
this region may actually get snow for Thanksgiving! Which would be a classic case of terrible weather for those who drive or fly to Grandma's - something always comes up.
For this year's Thanksgiving Menu Roundup, I had to plant myself at Ella's Bellas - one of the delicious sources of what may be several dishes served on your table this year - for my own pre-Thanksgiving
slice of pumpkin cake and pumpkin fondue (which is not on their official Thanksgiving menu). It was a nice treat to have pumpkin and spice on the tip of the tongue - literally.
Pick and choose your Thanksgiving treats and serve a bounty of dishes collected from all over Beacon. Let us begin...(and order RIGHT NOW because some of these makers have ordering deadlines of Monday, or Tuesday, or maybe yesterday, but they might still accept last-minute orders).
HINT: Call ahead to see if the pie or bread of your dreams is still available to pre-order... While pounding the pavement for these menus, we saw several spots had order deadlines that had been scratched off and extended. So take a chance and call just in case... Websites can be a little trickier to update than good ol' pen to paper. Several sources list Sunday or Monday as the drop-dead day.
APPETIZERS
Cheeses...you are in luck because cheese platters are
Beacon Pantry's specialty! These cheese plates are serious business, and include delightful bite-sized goat cheese tarts, stilton and cranberry tarts (stilton is a type of blue cheese), and a hand-selected array of artisanal cheese.
Because you cannot snack on cheese alone, dips and spreads are also on the Thanksgiving menu at Beacon Pantry. Select from hummus, dolmas, tomato bruschetta, mushroom bruschetta and olives.
Beacon Natural Market has a tasty menu with a lot of options for various courses of your dinner. Select from tapenade (a dip made from black olives, capers and anchovies) or artichoke hummus, or surprise your guests with a seasonal pumpkin hummus!
What
will you decide?
SALAD
 |
| Pumpkin Pie Spice vinegar from Scarborough Fare. |
Stay light and healthy with an arugula/mesclun salad with goat gouda, toasted pepitas, butternut seed oil and maple vinegar dressing from
Beacon Natural Market, or an Autumn quinoa salad.
ROLLS & BREAD
Time to get really fancy with the bread you'll serve to guests. And by fancy, I mean tasty. First, start with really salty, smooth butter from
Kate's Homemade Butter from Maine or the Amish Roll Butter (a tad onion-y from the cows' diet of regional chives and such), which is easy to find at Key Food.
As for the bread,
All You Knead Bakery has the
largest selection of breads, from Sourdough to Challah to Olive to an Autumn Harvest - a sweet and chewy loaf chock full of cranberries, raisins and pecans. Baguettes are easy to find at other cafe restaurants like Beacon Pantry, where you may also be ordering cheeses or soups, while plain or rosemary dinner rolls dinner are warming in the oven at Ella's Bellas.
Special to Beacon Pantry this year are sweet breads, including include petite muffins in a variety of flavors, orange gingerbread, banana bread, pumpkin cranberry bread and apple raisin, brought in from the famed Cafe Le Perche up in Hudson.
SOUPS
Now come the toughest choices. There are a lot of good soups on these Thanksgiving menus. But here is the good news: Soups can totally transform leftovers into fresh, savory dishes when you make a sandwich and dip it into soup. So feel free to over-order here. While you may find frozen soups at your favorite source like
Homespun, you need to think about these seasonal soups being offered special for Thanksgiving. Beacon Natural Market is offering a pumpkin soup with curry leaves. Ella's Bellas has a butternut apple soup, and Beacon Pantry also has a butternut squash soup.
THE TURKEY & WHAT GOES WITH TURKEY
 |
Russell Samuel and Shivana Weathers
donate turkeys as part of the
I Am Beacon here in Key Food Beacon. |
Beacon Natural Market and Key Food are your easiest sources to find turkey. Barb's Butchery cut their turkey ordering off a week ago. Key Food is also carrying out the
annual turkey and food drive in partnership with I Am Beacon, and have so far reserved 95 turkeys,
donated by various people, for families in need. If you usually pick up Murray's chicken from Beacon Natural Market, you can order their turkeys as well in 20lb or 22lbs range. There is a larger selection from Snowdance Farms, where you can buy a turkey from 11-24lbs. But order now, because they are accepting orders until the turkeys are gone.
A cranberry sauce with orange and spices can be found at Beacon Natural Market, and Beacon Pantry does have a cranberry chutney as well as your turkey gravy, sausage bread stuffing, and traditional bread stuffing. But if stuffed acorn squash is your thing, then Beacon Natural Market has a stuffed acorn squash stuffed with tofu, nuts, fruits and quinoa. If you're making your own stuffing but want a little help from Ella's Bellas, they are selling stuffing cubes in 10oz bags.
SIDES
 |
| Rosemary infused oil from Scarborough Fare. |
Mashed potatoes get creative twists this season with a sage mashed potato or a
sweet potato puree with toasted pepitas at Beacon Natural Market, and Yukon gold mashed potatoes or a mashed maple sweet potato at Beacon
Pantry.
Veggies!! We must be healthy, right? Good luck with that, when we can order
roasted brussels sprouts cooked in duck fat and bacon from Beacon Pantry.
Regular roasted veggies are available at Ella's Bellas, and consider an order of string beans with sesame garlic
seasoning from Beacon
Natural Market.
If you are roasting your own potatoes or vegetables, infused oil from Scarborough Fare can put your dish over the top. A top recommendation for the Thanksgiving fixings is the rosemary oil.
DESSERT
 |
Pumpkin molasses turnovers with cheesecake filling
at All You Knead. |
This is the moment when you need to get a cup of coffee and really think about your options. This is serious.
Among light and fruity options are tarts, like frangipane tarts in many flavors including apple, blueberry, raspberry, chocolate caramel pecan and mixed berry at Beacon Pantry. Stuffed apples with pecans, currents, brown sugar, butter and maple syrup are being baked at Homespun. Cranberry sour cherry pie, and a vegan apple or apple pie or a cranberry upside down cake can be found at Ella's Bellas.
Pretty much all of your usual bakeries are selling pumpkin pie and apple pies. You are covered here. You just need to get your order in.
Where you want to get dangerously delicious are in these other pies, special for Thanksgiving. Ella's Bellas is baking up a fudge pie, and a pecan bourbon version with Hudson Valley Bourbon. There is a chocolate malt pie at Beacon Natural Market. Homespun has outdone themselves with a caramel pecan tart pie, pumpkin cheesecake bars, almond dacquoise with pumpkin buttercream (gluten-free), and vanilla cranberry jam cake with pumpkin-spiced buttercream. You may also find pie ideas from
Get Frosted Cupcakery, but call for options!
Traveling?
 |
| The Pie Box, to travel with your pie, at Utensil. |
For those of you traveling, pies are always the easiest contribution to bring to a gathering. The key will be in how sturdy the pie box is. Thankfully,
Utensil is one step ahead of you with The Pie Box. This is a lucky find, as The Pie Box actually sold out last year around holiday time. For pie bakers, it's a great holiday gift because it makes pie delivery so much more secure.
Frozen soups are also easy to travel with, especially if you have a luggage rack on your roof, as it's usually cold in November. Well, hopefully it's cold in November.
This is all assuming you are driving, of course.
Please share your pictures of Thanksgiving meals with us at A Little Beacon Blog by tagging us on Instagram at @alittlebeacon! Looking forward to see how your dinner turned out.
Menus Used For This Article Include:
Homespun
PS: If you are a food source who wants to be included in next year's Thanksgiving Menu Roundup, be sure you sign up for our Advance Notice email by clicking here where we send out opportunities to businesses so that they can submit to articles we are working on.
