We both absolutely love to cook, so planning a menu for some of our best friends for Friendsgiving was so much fun! 

We did a lot of online research…. thinking about our guests, their preferences and most importantly, that we didn’t want to simply serve a typical Thanksgiving meal.  We wanted to use seasonal ingredients and flavors that echo the the holidays, but we will all be eating ourselves silly in just one week and we didn’t want to start too early 😉

Epicurious was a huge source of help for the menu.  They actually have a whole Friendsgiving post here that we used as a big source of inspiration.  You could literally use this entire menu for the most perfect party!

One of the big hits of the party were the Parsnip-Wrapped Devils on Horseback.  Despite the hilarious name, these little babies were CRAZY good and our guests loved them!  Bonus:  they are vegetarian, so a great option for anyone.  They are stuffed with blue cheese, but we think you could totally use goat cheese or something more mild if you don’t like the strong taste of the blue. 

For the main meal, we served the Stuffed Turkey Breast with Butternut Squash, Kale and Sausage from Epicurious along side these fabulous Candied Sweet Potatoes with Bourbon and the most beautiful salad ever created, the Persimmon and Burrata Salad with Sesame Candy, both courtesy of Food & Wine

The flavors were perfection together and no one felt overly full after this gorgeous meal.  A couple of tips that we learned:

• The turkey recipe calls for boneless, skin on turkey breast.  When we go ours, one of the breasts was split in half and the other, the 2 breasts were attached.  (I mean, could we say breast anymore?!) The breasts (there we go!) that were attached rolled up much better and came out looking absolutely gorgeous!  The ones that were not attached were equally as delicious but the presentation wasn’t quite as pretty.  
• We actually had planned to make the Shredded Brussels Sprouts Ricotta Toast, but in the chaos of the day, we totally mismanaged our time and about 10 minutes before the girls arrived, we hadn’t even started them yet!  WHOOPS!  We both wished that we could have had that brussells sprouts element in the day, but with how good the dates were, we don’t think anyone missed them.  And we definitely had plenty of food. 
• Speaking of plenty of food, one of the best lessons we learned with this is to keep it simple.  Party planning is fun but it is also really stressful at times.  So, KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid!  Look at each recipe, take the timing into account, make as much as you can ahead of time and drink plenty of wine to get you through it 😉