Best Thanksgiving dishes

[Anonymous]

So... what was a success? what was a bust? This should give us some reference for next year.

The brussels sprouts with figs and bacon from the NYT's mark bittman was a huge hit for me. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/dining/281mrex.html
as was a mix between Tom Colicchio's herb butter roast turkey and the Washington Post's roast turkey. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Tom-Colicchios-Herb-Butter-Turkey-233118 and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111500359.html

[Anonymous]

Oh, I wish I'd done the brussel sprouts; the Post also had a recipe for brussel sprouts with cranberry balsamic dressing -- I sent up a trial balloon, but everybody wanted the sameold, sameold. It was all yummy, but I was bored cooking it and bored eating it. The irony is that my teen DS, who has insisted that we have pumpkin pie, decided at 9 pm Weds. to make a pumpkin flan instead, having surfed the net and found an old recipe from Gourmet on foodnetwork.com. He had to set his alarm clock for 2:30 a.m. to get up and put it in the 'frig after letting it cool, but it was worth it -- both his lost sleep and my aggravation. It was the star of the menu -- looked fantastic and tasted even better! Plus, it was different and new. So, this T-day I gave thanks for the hire-wire act of living with an adolescent male and for foodie posters like you, OP, who want to do the post-mortem and not just move on to shopping and holiday cards.

[Anonymous]

I brined our turkey for the first time, and didn't stuff it. It was the best turkey we ever had! The meat was very tasty.

The down side was that the stuffing doesn't taste nearly as good when it is not cooked inside the turkey. But I'll be brining from now on....