Garden food for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners

We hosted some friends and their children for Thanksgiving this year, serving four adults and three children in total.  What came from the garden?

Last year I was still in the midst of the Vegetable Challenge during Thanksgiving so we petitioned our friends that we would provide the turkey and they would supply the vegetables.  We had the same bargain this year, despite not being within the Challenge.  However, we still served:

Mashed potatoes
Pumpkin pie
Braised chard and celery with garlic and shopbought leek
Homemade gravy using cockerel stock
Homebrewed cider

I was able to use our own eggs in the homegrown pumpkin pie for 2018, but our hens all stopped laying after the second week of November this year, so it was shopbought eggs.  The gravy was very tasty though, with the stock I'd made from November's fried cockerel bones, along with extra celery and garlic for flavor.

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As for Christmas dinner, we're only feeding ourselves and fresh garden veg is looking pretty slim now.  No matter how small they are, we'll eat the Brussels sprouts at the allotment, and there is some more cockerel stock in the freezer for gravy.

My other homegrown offerings are fruitcake and stollen bread, both using my own grown dried fruits and almonds, but sadly not our own eggs.

And last Christmas I bravely put away 2018's Christmas pudding, the one (of two) which I made with our own currants, cider and eggs last year--it's been ageing in the cupboard with the help of some rum and an airtight container and I'm happy to report it's still good!  I opened it up, had a sniff and a tiny taste, and rewrapped with a bit more rum to carry it over the last few weeks to Christmas. 

I might be making another two of these:  one for 2020, and the other for 2021, though I don't have any homegrown currants left:  instead I'll use dried figs and plums.