Gobble, Gobble!

Mmmmmm...I love Thanksgiving dinner! I could eat it year-round! I get so excited when I'm planning it. We have it at our house every year (we have for the past 10 years or so). Some years we have a ton of people, and other years just a few, but we always have plenty of food, and everyone is always welcome! My menus have been everything from traditional to gluten-free and vegan. I try to make sure everyone is stuffed (except for the turkey...I don't like to stuff the turkey) and happy. Last year, I was shopping for some vegan ingredients for a friend who was joining us when there was a small accident involving my kids and a shopping cart, 2 days before Thanksgiving. The good thing is my baby is still alive. The bad thing is I ended up with a broken finger, and I'm still not back to "normal" a year (and a surgery on 3 fingers) later. My mom ended up making Thanksgiving dinner last year! Fingers crossed that we don't have any more accidents!

So, here is this year's menu:

Appetizers
	Relish/Vegetable Tray	Cucumbers, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, red bell peppers, black olives, Greek olives, baby dill pickles, sweet pickles
	Cheese ball & crackers	Use bacon bits instead of nuts, Ritz and wheat thins
Drinks
	Apple Cider (hot)
	Hot chocolate
	Sparkling cider
	Egg Nog
Main
	Turkey	Attempting to brine a fresh turkey for the first time. This brine recipe has the highest ratings all over the internet.
	Gravy	A recipe without using any strange turkey innards. Using the drippings from the turkey, separating the fat off.
	Stuffing	Believe it or not, I actually like Stove Top stuffing, but it really isn't that hard to make your own just like it, and it is a lot less expensive too.
	Mashed Potatoes	Garlic potatoes…we love garlic in our house!
	Turtle Rolls	I can't make things with yeast for the life of me…that is what my mom is for!
	cranberry sauce	I'm also one of those people who like canned cranberry sauce (not whole…yuck), but I want to make some fresh too.
Sides
	Sweet Potatoes	A necessity at every Thanksgiving, but a little more sophisticated than the canned with the marshmallows on top. No nuts (we will be having someone with a nut allergy)
	Green bean casserole	This recipe does not have a "cream of" soup in it, which I like. I will be adjusting the recipe per the popular reviews.
	3 Bean Salad	A family recipe…a can of green beans, a can of wax beans, and a can of kidney beans (all drained). Add some bacon bits and Italian salad dressing. Let it sit over night for best flavors.
	Scalloped potatoes	I've made this for a few years, and it is really good. I also like that it is gluten-free (although Cecily won't be here this year)
	Brussels Sprouts	This recipe almost makes them tolerable. My husband loves Brussels sprouts, so he requests them every year.
Desserts
	Pumpkin Pie	Traditional, and my husband's favorite.
	Cranberry Cheesecake	I have been making this every year for over 15 years. I found the recipe in a magazine my grandma had, and it sounded really good! It isn't Thanksgiving without it!

Of course, now that this is planned, I have to plan my menu for the week before Thanksgiving...that is so anticlimactic...

The Sky is Falling!

OK...it isn't really, but it is Fall, and we have rain in the forecast (I'm terribly sorry that Cecily actually experienced snow this week..yuck!). So, that means lots of soups in my future! Let's get my newest menu plan out of the way first. Like I said, lots of soup! I love soup...there are so many different types of soup out there, and I rarely find a soup I don't like. My favorites are Zuppa Toscona and Hot & Sour, neither of which are on my menu. I've managed to duplicate the Zuppa Toscona (use kale instead of spinach), but it is not a very easy recipe, so I save it for special occasions. And the Hot & Sour...yeah...there are so many unusual ingredients (most of which are mushrooms, which I technically don't like, but I'll tolerate for a good Hot & Sour soup) that I haven't attempted to even try to make it yet. But I do know one thing...never use black pepper to spice your Hot & Sour soup. That is a big turn off to me, and if I go to a Chinese restaurant that does this, I do not go back. Always use white and red pepper to spice your Hot & Sour soup. OK...that is enough of a rant for a recipe I've never attempted myself, haha!

Sunday

Tomato Basil Soup Grilled ham & cheese sandwiches

Monday

Chicken Parmesan Bundles Salad

Tuesday

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Wednesday

Chicken Gyros Pasta salad

Thursday

Sweet & Sour Chicken Rice broccoli

Friday

Chicken noodle soup

Saturday

Baked Potato Soup

The chicken noodle soup is based off of the soup I made in my last post. My husband isn't feeling well, and it was his request. The other non-linked dish (besides basic salads or veggies) is the pasta salad. I use tri-colored spiral pasta and add diced cucumber, black olives, red bell pepper, broccoli, pepperchinies, and feta cheese. Make sure you put the bell pepper and broccoli in when the pasta is still really hot so it will soften them up a little bit. Add Italian dressing on top, and you are good to go! You should probably make it a few hours in advance because it is best served cold.

Now for some reviews. By far, Olive, garlic, and lemon chicken, lemon & herb wild rice, and salad was the biggest hit. If I had used a better camera besides my phone, you could really see how beautiful it was. The wild rice was just from the bulk bins at WinCo. The salad was a regular garden salad with romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese (mmmm...I love me some feta cheese!). I got a lot of recipe requests for this one on Facebook.

Other food I've made recently was Chicken tortilla soup (add corn and zucchini), Red beans and rice (the baby ate a full bowl!), Slow cooked spicy Asian beef (I wasn't home for this one, but I heard everyone liked it...I felt it was missing something, but I'm not sure what), and Chili (for a chili cookoff, but I burned it, so I didn't win any awards...). Something I made without a recipe was beef (buffalo) and barley stew. It is based off of the beef stew my mom used to always make when we were little, but improved upon. I just wish I could make rolls like her...those would have been perfect with it! I'm making Curried coconut chicken tonight, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Oh, and I can't forget to tell you about my low-carb experiments. Bacon Cheeseburger Quiche was OK. It tasted more like a breakfast food than dinner, but that was probably from all the eggs and bacon. I made my enchiladas with this idea, and while I didn't particularly care for the egg tortillas, we had company over, and he really loved them! I also made zucchini pizza bites. Basically, you make them the same way you would make pizza, but you use medallions of zucchini instead of the crust. I broiled the zucchini before I put any of the toppings on it, then loaded the toppings on (I used pizza sauce, mozzarella, red bell peppers, and these cute mini pepperoni I found), and popped them back in the oven until the cheese was melted and starting to brown. These were another big hit on Facebook.

Now onto desserts...yup, the sweet stuff! I don't usually make sweets (I'm not much of a baker...I leave that to Heather), but I did make a couple sweet things recently. The first were I <3 Cherries Cupcakes. My little girl and I were alone for an evening, and she requested heart cupcakes. I had recently seen a post on Pinterest for how to make heart-shaped cupcakes (put a marble in the tin with the liner), and she picked out a cherry chip box mix. I grabbed cherry pie filling, cream cheese frosting, and a box of cherry Jell-o. I made the cake mix as directed, mixed the Jell-o in with the frosting, and added a cherry on top! I thought they turned out great! And isn't my helper adorable?!

The other dessert is something I've been making every Halloween for the past 4 or 5 years now. There was a sushi place by us that served the most yummy caramel apples ever. I don't like sushi, but I would go with my husband and insist on getting one of these apples every time I went. I thought I would try to duplicate them. I scowered the internet trying to find a recipe, but all I could find was a picture. So, I deconstructed them on my own. They were a hit, and every year my request list grows...I had to make 4 dozen of them this year! I was told that they make these at Disneyland. They are now all over the internet (I'm claiming the trend...it is the sincerest form of flattery, really!). I usually unwrap hundreds of individually wrapped caramel squares, but this year I found a recipe on Pinterest for home-made caramel in the microwave, so I thought I would give it a try. It is very buttery and a little thinner than usual, so it was sliding off some of the apples that didn't get the white chocolate on them quick enough, but the reviews were still great, so I'm not sure if I'll use that recipe again or not. So, once you dip the apples in the caramel, you dip them in melted white chocolate, and then sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon on them. There are some other tips and tricks I've learned through the years to make them better, but I won't bother posting them here...if you really want to make them, just let me know.

That's enough for now...I'm hungry!

Reviews

I still need to plan my menu since coming home from vacation, but I wanted to get on and post some reviews before I forgot to do it. If you remember, my husband is on another low-carb kick...fun times! But, I do get Mondays where he goes out of town, so we can carb out.

Sunday's recipes were Flank Steak with red wine vinegar and greens and Baked Stuffed Tomatoes. I used buffalo tenderloins instead of flank steak because that's what we have. Everyone loved the steak and the greens. The tomatoes got mixed reviews though, and mostly bad. I don't think I'll be making them again, but it was nice to do something different.

The Lasagna on Monday was spectacular, if I do say so myself. It better be, with as many good reviews as it got! And it made a ton. I actually had enough to make an additional small pan. I can't wait to eat it again! And I'm sure it will be even better after it has been setting, letting the flavors meld together. I didn't get a picture of it the day I made it, but here is a picture of some I had as leftovers the next day.

Tuesday’s Broccoli Beef was good too. It is difficult to use buffalo for stir-fry because it tends to get tough, but I didn’t think it was too bad. There weren’t any left-overs, so that is always a good sign!

The surprise of the week was Wednesday’s Cauliflower “Mac” and Cheese with Kielbasa. Everyone in the family had a disgusted look on their face when I said what it was, but even my mac&cheese experts thought it was good. I do have to admit that I didn’t measure the mustard, and I personally thought it was a little overbearing, but my kids who say they don’t like mustard gobbled it up, so I guess it wasn’t too bad. I forgot to take a picture of it though. The Key West Crab Cakes with Mustard Sauce on Thursday (I actually ended up making it a week later due to different scheduling issues) was not so popular. Actually, I didn’t even try it because I was going to a birthday party that night (good planning since I’m not a sea food fan anyway), but from what I heard, it all went into the trash as soon as I left. One of the kids had a friend over that night and she said she liked it, but she was the only one. It could be because I used imitation crab instead of real crab (I wasn’t going to fork out all that money for the real stuff, and I’m glad I didn’t), but I thought it looked and smelled like cat puke.

Uncle Al's Sausage and Peppers Casserole on Friday was good, but I think if I were to make it again, I would pre-cook the sausage and drain the grease because it was it was way too greasy. But other than that, it tasted really good. I’m glad I made the onions big so the anti-onion hubsters could easily pick them out.

Finally, I had a bonus recipe! I was getting sick, and our whole family swears by my chicken noodle soup when they are sick. Well, my husband didn’t want the carbs from the noodles, so I just made chicken soup, but it was still good and once again, there were no leftovers. A friend asked for the recipe, so I did the best I could: I started with cooking cubed chicken breasts in a little olive oil. I added about 2 heaping tablespoons of minced garlic, some chili powder, Italian seasoning, and onion powder (onions would work, but I didn't feel like chopping them). I added a can of diced tomatoes with garlic, a can of green beans (drained), and some baby carrots. Add water and chicken bullion as needed to fill the pot. Boil until the carrots are soft.

So, those were my meals for last week. Now I need to come up with some new low-carb ideas…my husband gained everything back on our vacation that he had lost before…*sigh* The good thing is that my husband has been starting to brag a little to his friends about my “recipe experiment thing,” so I think he is mostly happy with what I’ve been making!

Cool New App!

OK, OK, OK...I know I promised you that I would post more often, but I've had a good excuse...really! I had surgery on 3 of my fingers (that, and I became addicted to Pinterest...evil, I know...)! OK...now that we have the excuse over with...I have to tell you about a wonderful new app/website I discovered (through Our Best Bites): ZipList! This wonderful site lets you "clip" recipes from all of your favorite recipe sites. You can then make any changes you want (so, say a reviewer of the recipe says there is way too much salt, you can cut back the salt...you can also add ingredients, make notes, etc.). After that, you add it to your recipe box. But the fun doesn't stop there! Once a recipe is in your recipe box, you can then add the ingredients to your grocery list! Their smart little programmer figured out how to suggest items that you might already have on hand, but it is as easy as checking or un-checking little boxes to make sure everything you need is on your list while everything you don't, isn't. But wait...it gets better! Not only is all of this free (my favorite word), but there is a free smart phone app as well! So, you can sync all this wonderfulness to your phone, so it is always with you when you are out and about. You can also sync with other people you are connected to. So, say your dear hubby really, really has a craving for a special treat, he can add it to the family grocery list (and it is your choice if he deserves it or not)...or, if he is running to pick up milk for you on his way home from work, and he wants to be extra nice, he can check the family grocery list to see what else he can pick up for you while he is there (and he would win some major bonus points). The possibilities are endless! Now, if they would add a menu planning tool, this thing would be the Marry Poppins of apps.


Now back to our regularly scheduled program (and can you believe I didn't get compensated in any way for the above paragraph?!)...

The lovely hubbs is at it again...no carbs. I'm dying, and it is only the second day! I went to my usual site, allrecipes, and looked up low carb recipes, and I was very disappointed. Lots of recipes full of BBQ sauce (and not specifically low carb either) and other no-no's for the gung-ho carb counters. So, I did a Swag Bucks search (and got 11 Swag Bucks...Wahoo!)

I ended up finding a bunch of new and tasty-sounding low carb meals on the Food Network site that won't make me feel like I'm on a diet too. And my saving grace is Monday nights, when the Dear stays at his mom's house, and I get to carb-fest with the kids! y step-daughter has been craving lasagna (which is odd for her), and she wants Stouffers, but I found a killer recipe that I'm going to try instead. Wish me luck!


With all that being said, here is the menu for the week (Saturday is leftovers night):

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday
Flank Steak with red wine vinegar and greens Baked Stuffed Tomatoes	Lasagna (make Sunday) Salad Garlic bread	Broccoli Beef Brown rice

Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Cauliflower “Mac” and Cheese with Kielbasa salad	Key West Crab Cakes with Mustard Sauce salad	Uncle Al's Sausage and Peppers Casserole salad

I will try to get back soon to post reviews of all the recipes I've been making over the summer. There have been some hits and fails, so hopefully I can remember everything!