Thanksgiving 2010

We stayed home and cooked and celebrated with just the two of us this year. Alex helped with the chopping – he minced ½ cup of garlic – and had him help cook some other things. He half-heartedly complained about it as he was doing it but turned out the things he helped with were the things he liked the best!

Our menu:

Turkey – baked with rosemary and garlic

Ham – a Honey Baked Ham that was given to me

Stuffing – used a Stove Top package and added sauteed onions, mushrooms, celery, and grated carrots. Per Alex’s request, we actually stuffed the turkey this year rather than cooking it on the side.

Green bean casserole from Pioneer Woman – added mushrooms, subbed red pepper for the nasty pimento things. I did have some bread crumbs taking up space in the cabinet, so tried using them. If I ever do that again, it would be with ½ cup, not a full cup of crumbs. Chances are good I’ll simply leave it off completely. I did not think it added anything except to make it grainy.

Corn casserole – recipe from high school Home Ec class, but added onions, green and red bell peppers for color. It uses creamed corn and cornmeal. I used to love it, I haven’t made it in a while, and it was still ok but not as exciting as I’d remembered.

Mashed potatoes – cooked them the day before, then mashed and baked again.

Sweet potatoes – I baked some sweet potatoes to make the peanut yams recipe, but decided I had plenty of carbs and yellow items on the table so saved them for later.

Mini Cornbread loaves – came from Boston Market and were leftovers from a food distribution at church

Pumpkin pie – came from Walmart and was a leftover from a food distribution at church

Cranberry Cheesecake pie – the result was visually odd, but the taste was good

Nutella Cream Cheese Pudding – Alex requested something chocolate. I was looking through my printed recipes to find my corn casserole directions, and came across this recipe that I’ve had for eons and had never tried. It has a nutella custard that gets layered with a nutella glaze. I made the custard on Wed and made Alex do the glaze and then create the layers. There’s something that gives a strange taste, I think it is the honey in the glaze, but he was very pleased with it.

We certainly have plenty of leftovers to stuff ourselves with over the next few days. We have so much to be thankful for!