This year we did almost all of our food preparations the day before, and it was the first Thanksgiving in a long time that was nearly stress free! It made it worth all the work and prep on Wednesday to have a laid back Thanksgiving Day with my family.
Here was our spread:
Quite a lot of food for the four of us, but we've got plans for the leftovers. We don't like to waste food at our house.
This year I wanted to make the traditional dishes, but I wanted to find new ways to serve them or prepare them. I'd heard a lot this year about roasting stuffing in a large pumpkin. That sounded awesome to me, but all of the grocery stores I checked had gotten rid of their pumpkins after Halloween. I found a large winter squash with a nice top for a lid and decided to use that instead. I was really pleased with how it turned out!
Beautiful!
Perhaps you already knew this, but I didn't! Funyuns are gluten free! That suddenly meant I had the perfect topping for my crockpot green bean casserole! I like my green beans to have some crunch, so I also added slivered almonds and chopped water chestnuts.
I also made "cranberry soda" by mixing some 7up with cran-apple juice. My kids loved that special treat. I made my traditional crustless pumpkin pie recipe, but baked it in 4 custard dishes instead of one pie plate. I took some KinniToos cookies, Jelly Belly candy corns (yum!), fruit by the foot for wattles, and raisins for eyes. For the kids I did more candy corns for feathers. For my husband and I, I used almonds. Just use a dot of frosting to hold the facial details in place on the cookies.
And then, after we ate, I tried to get a picture of our little family. This was take 25 (or more), and still not everyone was looking at the camera. Oh well!
Kids look like they are quickly slipping into a food coma.
I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving with those who are important to you! Any culinary experiments you'd like to share?
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