Thanksgiving Dinner

I'll admit, in recent years past, we have opted to buy a turkey dinner from the Target deli for Thanksgiving.  It's easy, reasonably priced, and pretty tasty.  This year, however, I was inspired to cook it all myself.  It was much more time consuming, but pretty delicious.  I particularly enjoyed the cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and green beans.  Of course most of these are modified recipes from Paula Deen and The Pioneer Woman.  The links will take you to their original recipes.  

Cranberry-Orange Roasted Turkey-- Okay, this is actually from Taste of Home.  The only thing I did differently was stuffing the bird with orange quarters, instead of just the rind from one orange.   It turned out tender and moist.  It was good, but for some reason I'm just not a huge Thanksgiving-turkey fan...tastes too much like turkey, I guess.  It smelled totally delightful!

 

 

 

PW's Thanksgiving Stuffing-- I followed this recipe pretty much to the tee, and, oh my goodness, AMAZING.  I did add a little sage in addition to the herbs in the recipe, but that's really the only adjustment.  Side note(s)...according to the big shots on the Food Network, it's only "stuffing" if you cook it in the bird, otherwise it's "dressing."  Also, Rachael Ray had a great suggestion: save your bread butts!  When you polish off a loaf of bread, put the butts in the freezer, and you'll have your bread for stuffing/dressing or homemade croutons.  Brilliant.

PW's Creamy Mashed Potatoes-- SO good!  Creamy, warm, yummy goodness.  I mean, throw in almost two sticks of butter, cream cheese, and half & half, and it's got to be good, right?  I even used 1/3 reduced-fat cream cheese and fat-free half & half (just because that's what I keep on hand).  I added in some fresh chopped parsley too.  Super delicious. 

 

PW's Homemade Cranberry Sauce-- Tart, sweet, deliciousness.  Seriously, probably the best cranberry sauce I've ever had.  And I know my cranberry sauce...mostly because I use it to drown out the turkey flavor of the turkey, but whatever.  My point being, this is REALLY good stuff.  I did switch out the cup of pure maple syrup for a plain old cup of sugar just to be more cost-effective or something.  This also smells WONDERFUL when you're cooking it. 

Paula's Green Beans with Almonds and Caramelized Onions-- A wonderful substitute to the super creamy, traditional green bean casserole. 

Sweet Potato Casserole-- This is from Taste of Home too.  It's definitely a better alternative to the brown sugar and marshmallow covered variety.  WAY less sugar and fat.  It doesn't make you sick to eat it...which I like.  It yummy, creamy, and still sweet, just not "send-you-into-a-diabetic-coma" sweet.

Paula's Easy Yeast Rolls-- Easy indeed. Tasty. But, I wish they would have been bigger. 

Paula's Pumpkin Pie-- Creamy, pumpkin goodness.  I generally do not care for pumpkin pie (something about the texture), but this was good.  It has a thing of cream cheese in it (I used 1/3 reduced-fat), so I think that helped with my texture issue.  I used PW's Perfect Pie Crust recipe.  Also tasty.

That pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving dinner.  Been grazing on leftovers all day.  Well, technically just since noon.  I do the Black Friday thing, which you can judge me for if you want.  So, I didn't go to bed until 6:30 this morning, and I think I was up by 10...apparently dogs do not like to sleep in.  Bummer.  Anyways, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!