A French Country Nantucket Thanksgiving
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The Festivities
One of my favorite times to be on Nantucket Island is Thanksgiving weekend. Each year we gather on island with family and friends, along with thousands of others, for an end-of-the-year celebration to include cocktail parties, dinners at the island’s beautiful restaurants, end-of-season shopping (great sales!), the Christmas Tree Festival at the Historical Society, bay scallop season, cranberry bogs in full swing, Christmas tree lighting ceremony with 18th century Christmas carolers and of course, the epic Thanksgiving Day feast with a digestion trip to the beach in between the soup course and the entrée!
Commercial cranberry cultivation began in 1857 and is the pride of the island. You can imagine the importance of cranberry everything!
Our day begins with me, like you, getting up at the crack of dawn to get the turkey prepped. We follow with a small continental breakfast of coffee, juice, pumpkin muffins and cranberry orange jam while everyone is running around the house getting ready to go downtown.
The 5K Race & the Turkey Plunge
Time to go! We're off to cheer whomever is running the 5K race, followed by more cheering for whomever is plunging at the Turkey Plunge at Children's beach (coffee in hand because we’re always freezing!), followed by the search for Joe Biden who comes every year and who I've seen make the plunge, followed by returning home to host our traditional Bloody Mary party which begins around 11. Are you tired yet?
Traditional Bloody Mary & Mimosa Party
I alternate each year hosting dinner in the dining room or the kitchen. Then, the buffet of tasty hors d'oeuvres prepared the day before is set up in the other room. This may be skewers of sausage balls with cranberry orange dipping sauce, shrimp cocktail, cranberry and brie bites, a big antipasto, a cheese and fruit platter with fig jam, prosciutto wrapped cheese sticks and pumpkin walnut bread with quince jam grown on the Island…I’m really into the jams! A pretty elaborate Bloody Mary bar (a must) changes every year. This year it accompanied Penny's Pomegranate Rose' Spritzer (inspired by my idol Tieghan at Half-Baked Harvest), and orange and pomegranate mimosas. Family and friends are invited to come right over! It's a great way to include everyone in the day since our families have grown and it's hard to fit everyone for dinner! This is when I give my brother-in-law the traditional mincemeat pie l've bake for him and my husband every year now for 20 years! When the guests leave, we ready to re-set the same table for our Thanksgiving buffet!
Let’s face it, everyone wants to be in the kitchen, so why not let them be?
It’s always a fun challenge to change the tablescape each year. I begin scheming in September and waiting for that one thing to inspire my design. This year, I came upon the loveliest French Country tables linens on Instagram from Couleur Nature, designed by Parisian artist Bruno Lamy. I was attracted to the lovely navy, gold and white….Our home decor is navy & white and I thought it would be an interesting coastal take on an island Thanksgiving table. I ordered two cloths, one for the dining room and one for the kitchen. The colors of gold immediately led me to think harvest ~ wheat~ gourds. I ordered tiny clear glass vessels from Amazon and dried bunches of wheat stems from Terrain. I accented with navy and white striped linen napkins wrapped in twine, each with a wheat stem through it. I opted to use my favorite signature white ruffled dinnerware from Coton Colors. If you look closely you will see how I accented with cobalt bottles of Saratoga water, cobalt stemware and navy cocktail napkins monogrammed with “Niptucket”, the name of our home. It’s the little things that add up to the total look.
“From the Kitchen of LyonsLifestyle”
Our gift to our guests this year was a loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread wrapped in cellophane, tied with twine and topped with a custom tag that read “From the kitchen of LyonsLifestyle” (since we were in the kitchen!). Always great to have a delicious carb to eat the morning after a “cocktailing” holiday! Chinoiserie jars and lots of different color gourds were scattered around the table and on a 3-tiered stand which I topped off with a big sage green pumpkin. It was a very casual, fun look that was a bit different for me.
