Fast forward to November 22, 2012 and our first Thanksgiing as a Mr. & Mrs. After a turkey juice spill, accidental spice overload and a few tense moments - we had ourselves an awesome meal!
Here are the recipes we used. Typically when we cook, we try to do most by scratch and with healthy ingredient substitutes. However, turkey day is our exception for healthy!
Becoming a W. Rules for Cooking
1. Recruit your husband to do all of the chopping & heavy-duty stirring.
2. Allow for messy hands.
3. Taste test, taste test, taste test!
I found this recipe last year. If you like getting messy when you cook - this recipe does the trick. You can find the recipe here...in my opinion, the intense butter and the oven bag are the secret to the ABSOLUTELY PERFECT turkey.
Stuffing
Growing up I always detested stuffing. But now that I can cook my own, I've realized that I love fruit-based stuffings. This one is my favorite that I've tried so far. So tasty - get the recipe here.
Tator Tot Casserole
This recipe has a lot of memories behind it. It is my dad's recipe for a common dinner in my parent's household while I was growing up. I really never liked it as a child...probably because the word "casserole" was in the name.
But man oh man, Carl and I LOVED this! Here's my dad's recipe:
NOTE: The dish in this photo is before it's been cooked
Ingredients:
1.5 lb ground round (We substituted ground turkey for less grease, etc.)
1 package frozen seasoned tator tots
8 ounces sour cream (We subsituted fat free)
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can of french style green beans (We substituted fresh green beans
2 stalks of chopped celery
Shredded Mozzarella cheese
Salt & Pepper (We use just a pinch of salt when recipes call for it...avoiding salt as much as possible.)
Directions:
Brown the ground meat with chopped celery. Drain. Combine all ingredients in a large dish, saving 1/3 of the tots to top off the dish. Bake 350 degrees for one hour. Add shredded mozzarella cheese when 15 minutes remain. Eat and enjoy!
Cranberry Sauce
I always loved cranberry sauce from a can...until I began doing my own cooking from scratch. Now the canned stuff just seems wrong! This recipe is a sweet & spicy cranberry sauce. We followed the recipe and the end result was way too spicy for us - so we made another batch of cranberry sauce with nothing added and mixed it in with the spicy sauce. Now it tastes perfect and the leftovers are heavenly.
Oh Martha would be so proud...here's the recipe.
Yummo! The recipe called for Rosemary Water...we didn't have that, so we just sprinkled actual rosemary in the drink. Made the texture weird - I totally don't advise making that substitute. Other than that, it was very tasty. Recipe Here!
If you try any of these recipes, let me know how they turn out! Hope you all had as great of a Thanksgiving as I did...I mean, just look at how cute my two boys were while cooking away in the kitchen :)
