Thanksgiving is Here... Again

Here is Thanksgiving again bringing the “holiday season”. The year has gone by so fast! I think I had such a rough start this year that the months have just gone by in a blur.

However, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. It feels festive without the whole commotion that Christmas normally brings with it. This year my side of the family is getting together at our home {insert half-joking half-serious cringe}. In all seriousness, it should be fun.

I decided to bake the pies tonight. Things looked promising at the beginning. We were moving right along, Kaitlin was helping and we started baking the pumpkin pie. I made more crust for the apple pie, and started cleaning around the kitchen and setting up the table for tomorrow. I checked on the pie after 45 minutes and it looked firm enough but when I inserted the knife, it was still coming out dirty. I left it in for 10 more minutes and just took it out before the crust would start getting burned. I kept looking at it from time to time, because it just had an odd texture. All of the sudden it dawned on me what the problem was. I decided to give it a taste, and sure enough, I had used flour instead of sugar!! Panicked because I had only bought one can of pumpkin this year, I sent my husband to the store to get some more pumpkin. He came back with two cans and said those were the last two cans on the shelves! I remember reading in the news that this year they are having a pumpkin shortage.

So here I am at 1:30AM waiting for the second pumpkin pie to be done baking so I can go to bed.

{Update:  The pies were a success, although I'm not sure worth the going to bed past 2AM}
While I wait, I figured I would share with you our menu this year.

I found this recipe for Apple Pie that I tried a couple of weeks ago and it turned out very good. The part I enjoy the least is making the pie crust. I’m not very good at rolling it and it being one whole piece. Mine looks more like patchwork. However, it tastes very good.

Since the above pie turned out so good, I decided to try the Pumpkin Pie recipe at the same website.

Tomorrow I am going to try to make this Unturkey. This one should be interesting. I have never dealt with gluten or nutritional yeast flakes and the likes, but I am going at it with low expectations and hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised.

{Update:  This Unturkey was a total failure.  I'm glad I had a backup plan!}

We are also making some Green Beans with almonds. I am going to be following this recipe.

Finally, a favorite dish for everyone is Candied Sweet Potatoes. I use my Mother-in-Law’s recipe and it always comes out delicious.

Here is the recipe:

3 cups of Mashed Sweet Potatoes (drained)
1 Cup of Sugar
2 Eggs Beaten
¾ Stick of Butter or Margarine (melted)
¾ Cup of Milk
½ tsp Cinnamon
½ tsp Nutmeg

Topping:

Mix
¾ Cup crushed corn flakes
½ Cup Chopped Nuts
½ cup brown sugar
2/3 stick of butter (melted)

Bake sweet potatoes on greased baking dish for 20 minutes at 400. Add topping and bake an additional 10 minutes.

And that's just me! The other two families are also bringing some dishes.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Christmas Primer Party

Last night we had a little get together with my side of the family. My brother in law dubbed it a “Christmas Primer” because it definitely had a Christmassy feeling to it. I know what you are thinking, “It is not even Thanksgiving yet!”

Normally I do not put out any Christmas decorations until the weekend after Thanksgiving, but since we are traveling for Thanksgiving this year and I got in the mood with all the snow we had, we are now all Christmas-decorated at home. I have to admit it was a little weird having all these kids running around with Santa’s hats and taking pictures by the Christmas tree, this early, but it was a fun!




The point of the get together was to draw names for our Secret Santa gift exchange game. Last year we decided that instead of everyone getting gifts for everybody (14 people) we were going to play Secret Santa and only get a gift for that one person. Some people were hesitant about the idea, but at the end, everybody enjoyed it. The best part was trying to sneak little notes and clues to your person without they noticing were it came from. We are looking forward to doing that again this year.






I thought I would include a couple of the recipes I used last night. We had an appetizers buffet. Joel and Natalie made these cute penguins out of black olives, cream cheese and carrots.


Ingredients:

Jumbo black olives, pitted
1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese, softened
Small black olives, pitted
1 carrot

Directions:
Cut a V shaped slit into the side of the Jumbo black olives. Fill with softened cream cheese. Slice rounds of carrots about ¼” thick and cut out a little wedge on each slice to form the feet. Save the little wedges and press them to the center of the small olives to form the beaks. Set one large olives on top of the carrot slice. Set the smaller black olive on top and secure the whole thing with a toothpick. They turned out very cute!

We forgot to do this last night, but you can also wrap little “scarves” made of green and red pepper strips. To set up a winter scene smear some cream cheese on the bottom of a glass tray to resemble snow and set the penguins on top. We also made some snowmen out of cream cheese and toothpicks.

I also made a cold vegetable pizza. We used to make this quite frequently years ago, but had not done it for a while. It is very simple to make and very yummy!


Ingredients:
1 package Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
1 8oz package of Philadelphia cream cheese
½ cup of mayonnaise
1 pack of Hidden Valley Original dry dressing.
Various chopped vegetables (I used broccoli, cauliflower, red pepper and black olives)
Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese

Directions:
Spread the dough on a large baking sheet or pizza pan sealing all the perforations.
Bake as directed for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool
Beat Cream Cheese, Mayonnaise and Dressing until smooth.
Spread the mixture on the cooled crust and sprinkle with the veggies (for best results make sure the veggies are chopped into pretty small pieces)
Chill for several hours (my recipe calls for overnight but I normally only do 3 or 4 hours)
Just before serving cut into smaller pieces with a pizza cutter and sprinkle generously with cheddar cheese.

Hope you are enjoying the beginning of this holiday season!