Japanese Thanksgiving

I decided to make a bunch of random things for Thanksgiving since we are limited oven-wise (we basically have a convection oven, so it's not even big enough for a frozen pizza!) But I digress... here is a Mexican flavored Veggie Tart that I made as an appetizer. Turned out I chopped up some wacko hot white chili to add some heat to the vinigrette and paid for it dearly. More on that to come...

Second course consisted of twice cooked Japanese baking potatoes (SO good!!!) combined with bacon, onions, and dill. Yummy!

All the sudden, all of my fingertips start burning like they're on fire and they are unrelenting!! Joel and I were clueless as to a cause until we remembered that darn chili I chopped up and used my fingers to de-seed. OMG! I then started trying to soak them in anything that provided temporary relief. I think the toxicity really affected me because my fingers are really dry anyway, so I lived in pain (literally, I thought my fingers were flaming with fire it burned so bad) for about 2 hours. I tried soaking them in milk (in the picture), oil, cold water, rum (REALLY reaching on that one, but you never know...), and lotion. NOTHING WORKED. So I suffered like a champ and Joel did most of the food handling for the rest of the day.

This picture does not do the redness of my fingertips justice. They looked horrible!! I mean, they were even burning under my fingernails! Under my fingernails people!!!

This stuff was my favorite - probably because it had beer and cheese in it and was therefore bad for me. You got it folks, Beer and Cheese Soup. SO de-lish, there aren't enough words. This recipe is a keeper. Thank you "Food and Wine Magazine"!

I made homemade mashed potatoes (with sour cream and butter, so good). Then Joel rolled fresh cooked shrimp in the taters then covered them with panko crumbs. Joel fried them and we dipped them in sesame dressing.

Last but not least (actually not last, but I forgot to take a picture of the Pear Pie I made!), we had more mashed potatoes, Asian cooked fresh cabbage and scallions, along with a couple of Cornish Hens. Yup, you heard right. Cornish hens. They're totally awesome and fit in our tiny oven. Turkey is just not going to be an option for the next few years. But we had a marvelous Thanksgiving and are SO happy because our household goods arrived 2 days before!! So were able to eat all this wonderful food on our own dishes and sit on our own furniture and wear clothes we haven't seen in months! You can bet your sweet bippy we were SO grateful for SO many things this year. God has been very good to us here. :)