Thanksgiving. Like the big leagues. If I intend to take photos of my dinner for you, well this was my big night. My moment to shine. My Super Bowl. It’s Thanksgiving, after all.

I unfortunately did not bring my A game.

I envisioned getting wonderful shots of dishes before we dug into them. Instead I got distracted with, you know, conversation, and failed to bring my camera out on time.

So, I did what I could. There isn’t a great shot of the stuffing, except for what you see on my plate. I also feel like I didn’t give the acorn squash justice, but I’d have to say they tasted much better than they looked. The secret of the great-tasting acorn squash (I bet butter is one of the secrets, actually), is present in the photo. Bacon.

I also missed out on a shooting a sublime salad that preceded the dinner. Spinach, mandarin orange, almond slivers, cranberries, with a rich, but not overpowering, dressing. A great potato dish: thin slices, layered, then baked. Nice and light and I didn’t eat enough of them so I’m glad we got to take some home for leftovers. Creamed spinach was new, as was the caramel cake for dessert.

You might have guessed from previous entries in this blog that maybe I don’t cook, or like to cook, or want to cook (and, if you had a husband that did all of that, would you). It’s quite the contrary. Actually, I like to bake mostly. So it’s with great pleasure that I can present to you these photos of something I’ve created. Me. All by my lonesome. I was assigned two tasks for dinner: the bourbon pumpkin cheesecake (a repeat from last year) and the cranberry sauce (something I’ve brought every year for a while now). The cheesecake is courtesy of Epicurious.com. The cranberry sauce is a standard Ocean Spray recipe, with some orange zest and nutmeg thrown in. Incredibly easy to make.

You can view all of my Thanksgiving dinner photos on Flickr.