pantsfarm

I was going to take a bunch of photos of the food and people at the [tag]Thanksgiving[/tag] dinner party my parents threw in Beijing on Saturday the 25th, but both because I wasn’t taking enough photos in general, as well as the fact that I still suck at using the phone to take pictures, about 3 of them are not too blurry to be worth posting.

So, all that survives as photographic evidence are three photos of [tag]dessert[/tag]s.

This photo shows all of the deserts, before anybody showed up, and before they were plated nicely. On the far left, kind of out of view, is a little bowl of candied ginger. Under the plastic cover is a Chocolate Hazelnut torte. The two pies stacked over each other are both pumpkin pies. The pie with a crust on top is an apple pie. Next, moving right, is an apple tart. Finally, just at the right of the screen under plastic wrap are individually sized almond cakes. Though, the almond cakes are big enough that each one really serves two.

This is a better photo of the almond cakes, before plating.

Unfortunately, this came out pretty blurry, but depicted here are two of the deserts, plated. On the left is half of one of the almond cakes, with some berry compote, two fruit sauces (raspberry and apricot) and some whipped cream. On the right is the chocolate hazelnut torte over raspberry sauce, garnished with whipped cream and a piece of hazelnut toffee my mother made. The toffee is not pictured otherwise, and though it was made as a garnish, it was incredible and should have been featured as a dessert unto itself.

The whole dinner was a lot of fun. There were some 18 or 19 people there, most of whom were expatriates living in Beijing, plus a couple people like me who came up from Shanghai for the occasion. My mother had made most of the food and desserts over the course of the previous week. Other people contributed potatoes and wine, though I think nearly everything else was made there. Turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, the sorbets that were served both as an intermezzo and the sorbets that were served as a dessert (cranberry-lime for the former, apricot, pear and hawthorne for the latter), the vegetables, the shrimp toast appetizer and pumpkin soup. Oh, somebody did bring a salad, and somebody else brought some cheeses and bread too.

All told, it was an incredible meal and though I haven’t yet been feeling particularly nostalgic for Western foods, I’m sure that this meal did well to delay that from happening. It was basically two straight days of stuffing my face with amazing [tag]food[/tag].

I feel like I should go up to Beijing just to help them out with the leftovers or something.