Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving was a HUGE SUCCESS! We ended up trimming the menu slightly when we saw how much food we had for 4 people, but basically I want to give you a more visual than wordy representation of my day. I will then go into detail on the recipes and tweaks that I gave them at a later date. Although these were turkey day recipes for me, they really could be used any day.

Almost all the ingredients I needed!

Cleaning the bird - eww!

Stuffed and ready to roast!

 

Making the stuffing

Covering the bird so it doesn't get too crispy!

Stuffing done!

Stuffed Mushrooms pre-oven

Fresh brussel sprouts

Ready to get in the oven!

More roasting

Cheated on the gravy :)

The bird is done!

Sweet potatoes with cranberry topping

Dad carving up the bird

Brussel sprouts were to-die for!

Cauliflower was just ok

Quite a feast for just 4 people!

A little bit of everything!

PIE!

I just had to try both! :)

Thanksgiving Day Meal Preview

This year, I have assigned myself the task of making the entire Turkey Day meal. It's the least I can do after living at home for the last 18 months while trying to buy a condo. With me almost out of the home, and on a tight budget, I offered to make it all this year and my parents gladly offered to buy the groceries. They are hunting down the deals as I type this. My mom can (hopefully) sit back with a glass of wine, relax by the fire and watch some football while I take over (destroy) her kitchen.

The part that grosses me out the most is actually prepping the turkey. I made sure my mom has new gloves for me to wear and I'm really grossed out about sticking my hands in the body cavity and making sure it's ready to go. I do want to spread the herbs and butter between the skin and meat, as long as I don't pass out. Go figure, I'm a foodie that handles meat all the time, but never in the whole body variety.

I found almost all my recipes on Pinterest, so here is the preview of my turkey day, with results to follow. I hope my mom can help with the picture taking and not take too many that have me in destructive stages of the meal prep that she can use against me later. I hope that all spatulas and spoons are found in their complete form after the cooking marathon and everyone has full, happy bellies.

Pinterest Recipes for Turkey Day:

The Bird: This is a chicken recipe, but I have heard of doing the same thing with a Turkey.

Stuffing: I'm not a stuffing fan, so I'm trying a new one to see if I can like this one more!

Garlic Mashed Taters: I plan to make a smaller portion than usual, but I love me some carbs so we will see.

Sweet Potatoes: I can't find the original recipe I was going to use that had goat cheese in it, but this is pretty close.

Butternut Squash: I made this recipe a few weeks ago and it was amazing! Seriously, so simple after you hack apart the squash. Boil for 10, brown the butter, add the sage and pour over the top.

Here is my picture:

Green Beans: I just love almonds & beans together.

Rolls: Pillsbury - yep cheating on this one, but they are just so good. I don't have a popovers pan or I would have made those.

Cranberry: My mom has an awesome raspberry cranberry sauce and so I have to find her recipe. Otherwise, I'm going this route

Dessert: My mom is making her apple pie and I'm going to try this pecan cheesecake pie

And my family always puts out a pre-dinner spread with cheese, crackers, sausage, crab dip and more so I'm going to be a chubby kid after the meal, but I think it will all be worth it!

Did I miss anything? Is there something that is a must on your table every Turkey Day?

Pin-It Tuesday: Thanksgiving Dishes

I hope everyone had as wonderful of a Thanksgiving as I did. My brother and his wife ended up staying in town and that meant that my nephew (13 months old) was going to be around. I love that kid. My grandma was just moved into Assisted Living last week, so we picked her up and my Aunt flew in from California to surprise her and help with the adjustment of the new place.

Alex and Grandpa supervising the cooks!

With so many people going to be in town, my mom and I were emailing back and forth throughout the week with different recipe ideas. Of course we both had a ton, but we only had one oven to utilize, and with the turkey taking up a lot of the time, I had to cut my list down to just a few times.

Here is the list of everything that was served:

Turkey - 13 lbs.
Mom's stuffing
Corn bread
frozen corn
frozen petite brussel sprouts
roasted cauliflower
Mom's cranberry jello salad
mashed potatoes and gravy
sweet potatoes
pumpkin pie cheesecake
apple pie with streusel topping

I made the cauliflower and corn bread and want to share those with you in this blog. Stuffing and jello will come in a future post as they are my mom's special recipes and really good (and I didn't capture pictures of those - whoops)

I found the cauliflower via Pinterest and my mom and I both agreed that this would be a unique twist on a mostly "boring veggie." She isn't a fan of cauliflower smash like I am, and I hope to try to make a pizza crust with cauliflower in the future, so this would be something good for us.

We started with a rather large head of cauliflower and chopped it into florets.

Then in addition to the garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper, I added some paprika, thyme and oregano to pump up the flavor.

It overfilled the 9 X 13 pan, but it still roasted up just fine. Immediately after you remove it from the oven, you sprinkle the entire dish with grated parmesan so it gets nice and melty over the pieces. The cauliflower was tender with nice browning on the tips of the pieces. The lemon juice added a tartness that we weren't expecting, but made it really enjoyable. This is one of the easiest dishes I ever created that tasted so good. And plenty of leftovers to enjoy this week.


My mom suggested I try to make a creamed corn, corn bread as I wanted to do a corn bread casserole, but my grandma always has bread with her meal and we didn't need another veggie dish (at almost 90, the woman gets what she wants after providing for us for so many years). I found one on GardenFork TV. We didn't have a cast iron pan to bake it in, so we used two darker metal 9X9 and 9" round pans.

This is another simple recipe as I started with corn bread muffin mix from the store. Just add some milk, creamed corn and eggs. We realized that there was no fat in the recipe and because we weren't going to melt it in the cast iron like the recipe said. So we melted a few Tbsp. in the microwave and added it to the mix. Then we scooped even amounts in the pan and guessed on about 20 minutes in the oven.

 The bread came out light and fluffy and was the perfect addition to the meal. Leftovers were eaten with my mom's black bean chicken chili on Sunday night.