Thanksgiving Menu

I'm trying to plan our Thanksgiving menu/cooking schedule for this year.  And by our cooking schedule, I mean my cooking schedule because that's how it's going to roll this year.  We don't have any family coming (unless you want to make some fast plans!) and it is too short of a vacation/too far for us to visit family for the holiday so we are pretty much on our own.  It's really not so bad.  We've been doing it this way since we moved to the great wide north over 7 years ago (7 YEARS? WHAT?!).
So for my sanity and maybe your benefit - maybe not - I'm posting the plan for this year.  It is much the same as last year but hopefully by writing it down in a more permanent location than a spiral notebook it will last.

The Menu:

Turkey

Stuffing

Sweet Potatoes

Mashed Potatoes

Green Jello

Cabbage Salad

Cranberry Sauce

Green Beans

Crescent Rolls

Apple Pie

Layered Pumpkin Pie Toffee Cheesecake

The Turkey:

I use the turkey brineing method found on OurBestBites it is a bit laborious but totally worth it!  I did it this way last year and have done it a few times since.  Just look at this gorgeous bird.  It is so juicy and flavorful. We really like it.

 The Stuffing:

Don't judge.  It's good enough for us and
there's enough going on with this meal that
making my own stuffing is not a priority!

Sweet Potatoes:

I've never been a fan of sweet potatoes.  Last year I discovered it is actually the traditional way of preparing sweet potatoes - you know, the brown sugar and marshmallows - that I'm not a fan of.  I tried this recipe from OurBestBites last year.  It was a hit!  Definitely the way to make sweet potatoes for my family.

Mashed Potatoes:

I just found a new recipe, Make Ahead Mashed Potoatoes.  What?!  I think I might try these before Thanksgiving just to make sure we like them.  And then again, I might now.  But if it works, these are going on the permanent list.  How fabulous to not make mashed potatoes in the midst of everything else going on!

Green Jello:

This is Roy's favorite jello.  Probably because it is more sugar than jello.  I use a recipe adapted from an obscure cookbook from a small restaurant in Osseo, WI called The Norske Nook. 

Gladys's Cottage Cheese Salad

1 large can  crushed pineapple and its juice

2 small boxes lime Jello

4 cups mini marshmallows

dash of salt

2 cups cottage cheese

2 cups whipped cream

1 cup chopped nuts

1. Drain the pineapple juice into a 2 cup measuring cup reserving pineapple for later.  Add enough water to make it 2 cups liquid.  Nuke until boiling.  Use this boiling liquid to dissolve the lime Jello in a large bowl.

2. Add the marshmallows and salt.  Stir until the marshmallows are mostly dissolved and really small.

3. Refrigerate until the Jello starts to set but isn't totally gelled yet.  Add the cottage cheese, whipped cream, nuts and crushed pineapple.  Mix well and return to the refrigerator to finish setting.

 Cabbage Salad:

This is my favorite salad which is why we have it.  Roy thinks its okay and the kids don't like it much but I love it.  Since I'm the one doing the planning, shopping, preping and cooking, we have this salad!  It is adapted for many different sources.

1 bag coleslaw mix

1 bunch green onions, chopped

2 bags beef Ramen Noodles

handful or two sunflower seeds

handful or two sliced or slivered almonds

Dressing:

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup oil

1/3 cup vinegar

seasoning packets from Ramen noodles

1/2 - 1 tsp pepper

1. Crush the Ramen noodles.  Mix coleslaw mix, green onions, Ramen noodles, sunflower seeds and almonds in a large bowl.

2. Mix dressing ingredients well.  Pour dressing over salad and refrigerate for 1-2 hours before serving. (I like the dressing to soak into the salad a bit before eating it.  If you don't, pour the dressing on right before serving.)

Cranberry Sauce:

Not a huge fan of cranberry sauce.  Honestly, we only having it because I have some in the freezer from last year.  I used this recipe from OurBestBites.  It's not bad as far as cranberry sauces go.

Green Beans:

Last year, I made these Bacon-Wrapped Green Bean Bundles.  My FIL really liked them but I felt the bacon was too chewy with no way to get it crispy.  This year I'm going for our favorite green beans.

Crescent Rolls:

This is my standard, go-to roll recipe.  I use it for rolls and cinnamon rolls.  We really like them and it is pretty hard to mess them up.  Just don't add too much flour.  It will seem like you need more flour but really, less is better here.  My dough usually sticks to the side of the bowl even while being "kneaded" in my Bosch mixer.  But that's part of the magic: they are always light a fluffy (even if you don't have much rising time) because there isn't too much flour.    

Apple Pie:

This recipe comes from my mom.  What really sells it is the crumb topping!

1 single pie crust (frozen this year;)

1 cup sugar

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp salt

1 Tbsp cornstarch (more or less depending on the juiciness of your apples)

6 cups apples, peeled and thinly sliced

1 tsp lemon juice

Crumb Topping

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup flour

1/3 cup butter

1. Mix sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and cornstarch in small bowl.  Dump lemon juice over apple slices and toss to coat.  Combine apple slices with sugar mixture until apples are coated. Pour apple mixture into unbaked pie crust.  

2. Prepare crumb topping by mixing brown sugar and flour.  Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly and combined (don't beat it - you don't want it smooth).

3. Cover apples with crumb topping.  Bake at 400* F for 30-35 minutes.

*Hint* Place pie tin on baking sheet before putting it in the oven.  That way if any liquid bubbles out from the apples it won't burn on the bottom of your oven for the next 2-4 weeks.

Layered Pumpkin Pie Toffee Cheesecake:

It is starting to feel like this post should be sponsored by OurBestBites with the number of links I've linked you to!  Here's one more.  Again, so worth any effort to make this one.  And compared to making pumpkin pie, this isn't really much more labor intensive but 1,000 times better.  Of course, I don't really like pumpkin pie so.... there's that.

Anyway, there you have it.  Once a year I go all out and crazy making food.  It's great that I don't have to cook for the week following too!

A great day!

This morning was preschool at our house.  That's always fun.  No, really, that wasn't even sarcasm!  A is always so excited to have her friends come.  She loves to help me set stuff up.  She kept asking me for jobs to do to get ready.
After preschool, I was cleaning up the kitchen when K came to the front door.  If you recall, the bus can sometimes be a difficult place to retrieve children from.  However, the regular bus driver knows us and my neighbor was out with her son so the bus driver let K off the bus to come home even though I wasn't out there.  And why wasn't I out there you ask?  Because the bus was nearly 20 minutes early!  That's a good thing too!  I actually really like our regular bus driver, I just have to be patient when it is a sub.  Unfortunately, patience and I are not on close terms right now.
The girls and I had a delicious lunch of "macmaroni and cheese sauce" before we went to D's school for an election party.  They have been doing a unit about elections where the kids were in groups.  Each group had a presidential candidate and running mate as well as a speech writer and campaign manager.  They campaigned, gave speeches, had a primary election and finished with an election yesterday.  Then today the parents were invited in the afternoon to hear the chosen president give his acceptance speech and sing patriotic songs.

Swearing in the president on the student handbook

D and some girls from his class were in the front of the room leading the songs (sort of - the teacher was leading but the students were examples I guess).  It was particularly inspiring to sing God Bless the USA.  I was impressed with the small sampling of the next generation of leaders in that room.

After school I helped distribute cookie dough with the PTA.  I always feel like I'm doing my school duties when I help the PTA with something (even though I'm not actually a member at either school!).  The kids played hard and had a good time waiting for me.
Tonight we had a very pleasant evening at home.  Roy brought home donuts from work (Krispie Kreme!) that I ate too many of but my Dr. did tell me to start gaining weight.....  K went to play with her friend for a few minutes so D read stories to A.  The girl hadn't had a nap today so....

All's well that ends well, right?  When K got home she snuggled on the couch with Roy while I folded laundry.  We all talked about personal safety and taking care of each other.  It was a great bit of family time. Everyone was being kind to each other.  D and K were not competing to be "FIRST!" or "BEST!", we just talked while A snored away in the rocking chair.  It's days and nights like these that make it great to be the mom!

Does this shirt make me look piratical?

A says it makes me look like a pirate.

I don't see it.....

Happy Halloween!

What a great day!  It was a really busy day.  Everyone had school -- including A.  She had preschool then we invited her preschool friends over for a little lunch and party.   We had a nice little lunch then had some fun crafty things planned.  However, the kids were having so much fun playing we let the kids play while we just had grown up talk upstairs.

Snow White, Ladybug Princess, Watermelon, and Scary Lion are preschool friends.  Almost a pirate and Transformer guy are older siblings who came along for the fun.  Those four girls are the sweetest group of 3 year old girls ever!  It is so fun to have them for preschool.

I forgot to tell you about the Trunk 'r Treat at K's school.  We TrT-ed our little hearts our then went in the gym for a dance.  Two of three kids felt the music was a little loud but they did eventually warm up to the idea and dance.  One crazy dinosaur thought it was great.  Here he is shaking his spikes to the Chicken Dance:

 He also went up front to demonstrate the Macarena for everyone.  He was awesome and I'm so proud of him for having the confidence to do that!

Of course last night was the main event!  It was fun taking the kids around the neighborhood and visiting our neighbors.  We finished off at Roy's secretary's house.  She is always so good to the kids on Halloween -- preparing special treat bags for them.  This year was no exception even though she just got back from a free trip to Hawaii.  WHAT?!  I know.  The kids Love LindaGill.  And they call her LindaGill all one word, never just Linda.  Funny.  

It was a good time but I tell you what, with all the extra activities leading up to Halloween it is starting to feel like a season rather than a holiday!

Boo Bash

My awesome friend, Heather, invited the kids and I to join her at the "Boo Bash".  It's where the kids can dress up and visit businesses along main street in a nearby town.  It sounded fun so we headed out to check it out.  It was cuh-razy.  I'm glad we went but it seems likely that we won't go again.  Heather was talking to one of the people giving away candy who said they plan for between 2,000-2,500 trick-or-treaters.  In a 2 hour window!  Still it was pretty fun to see all the costumes and the kids enjoyed spending time with their friends.

Dinosaur

"Scary Lion"

"Aargh! Me Hardy!"

Harvest Party

It's that time again where wards think to have an activity revolving around chili and candy.  Good times.  I took the kids while Roy went to get candy for the Trunk'RTreat because that's the kind of advanced planning that we've come to expect around here.  Fortunately he got there in time to have some of Drew's 5 alarm chili with ghost peppers.  Hot stuff.  I played it safe and ate the chili brought.  The kids played it even safer.  K chowed down on tomatoes.  I have no idea what D ate and A ate whatever was placed in front of her.  It was a lot like eating at home!
After eating the youth took the kids into another room to decorate pumpkins (we took small pumpkins for them to color and put stickers on.  No knives with the young men and primary kids.  Not a good plan.) and have their faces painted.  The adults were supposed to check out the 72 hour kit ideas in the back of the gym and get ready for the TRT.  Mostly though we stood around talking until the kids started coming back in -- about 45 seconds after they left (I'm pretty sure that's accurate).
Since it was raining (Inconceivable!) Roy stood in the church hallway to hand out candy and I herded the cats kids around the rooms to get their free candy.  It was a chaotic scene with kids coming away with way more candy than they should.  All in all, a pretty standard ward harvest party.

Plumbing

Today I was a plumber.  See, last night I put cucumber peels in the garbage disposal.  This was apparently more than it could take.  It isn't the toughest kid on the block.  Last night I fell asleep lulling myself into a false sense of security, "I'm sure the dishwasher won't make the sink overflow.  Water can drain, it is just really slow but surely.... besides, even if it fills to the top it will just spill over into the other side of the sink that isn't plugged.  Yeah, that's right.  It'll be fine."  Yeah.  Not fine.  But not as bad as it could have been either.  Just had water over the counter and the rug was half soaked.  Easy-peasy.
So after A and I got back from our morning errands I started taking the pipes apart under the sink.  Not my first time doing this (apparently tough-guy can't handle potato peels or egg shells either).  Somehow this time I managed to break a pipe though.  I loaded A back up into the van and headed to the nearby plumbing store, took a number and tried to figure out what part I needed while waiting for my turn to be helped.  After we got the right pipe, A and I headed back home to complete the job that shouldn't be this much trouble.
Pipe's too long.  It seems they only carry this pipe in one size and figure people can trim them down to fit.  Really, that's reasonable but just one more hurdle in this simple job.  Well, I plugged in the jigsaw (harder than it sounds in my garage) and fortunately it cut right through no problem.  Finally, after nearly 90 minutes I achieved proper draining function!  Yes!