Thanksgiving Winners and Losers

[tea4one]

The turkey breast was really good. I didn't do anything special to it either.
The dressing seemed a little dry to me, I am still trying to figure out why.
Cranberry jello was good. I will have to look for something new to try next year and hope I don't regret it later.

[BucknellAlum]

Wow, what time zone are you in that you have already eaten?

[tea4one]

Eastern. I was up early and since it is just me eating here it doesn't matter when I prepare it or when I eat.

[mkc]

So far, the 2000 S. Anderson Blanc de Noir is quite tasty....

The rest of the vittles are still in progress (and will be for a few more hours).

Michelle

[Trishinomaha]

I am desperately waiting for the bird to come out of the oven so I can get my side dishes started. Once it's brown enough we'll transfer it to the electric roaster. Dinner is supposed to be at six - getting nervous here..

[dreamer101]

Originally Posted by tea4one

The turkey breast was really good. I didn't do anything special to it either.
The dressing seemed a little dry to me, I am still trying to figure out why.
Cranberry jello was good. I will have to look for something new to try next year and hope I don't regret it later.

I had my Thanksgiving meal last month. I cook for one as well. No one to complain about the meal but me! I did stuffed turkey legs. You called it "dressing" vs "stuffing". Did you cook it separately in a casserole or cooked under the breast? If you took a "stuffing" recipe and cooked it separate as a "dressing" it would be dryer since it didn't have the added juices of the turkey while roasting.

[Gecko]

It is only 12:00pm here and I just put the turkey in the oven. Everything else is pretty much done and ready to be gently reheated before we eat. It sure smells good and I think a little glass of champagne is in order very soon. I have to say that my youngest DD (who is 11) did a fantastic job of the table, napkins and all, and she has been my sous chef all morning too.

[karen w]

This is the first year that it was just DH, me, and the kids(3 of 'em) but I wanted to make it a special night anyway. However, we had a Greek/Turkish dinner so it was FAR from traditional. The kids were a bit upset leading up to tonight so last week I made them a sweet potato casserole and a turkey breast which made them happier. BUT. . . after tonight's meal there were no complaints in the house!! All dishes were a hit. They included:

-Aleppo Pepper marinated chicken kabobs-BA
-Bulgur pilaf with fresh herbs-EW (very tasty)
-Swiss Chard Spanikopita Casserole-EW (the hit of the night)
-Mezza Platter including some slow roasted plum tomatoes, grilled fennel, onions, eggplant, and summer squash, olives, feta cheese, and EW's Eggplant Garbanzo Salad with tahini dressing(my fav)
-flatbread

Dessert:
Baklava-CL
Apple Betty-KAF whole grain cookbook

YUM!

BURP!!

Karen

[tovie]

Oh, yum!! I wish I'd had dinner at Karen's I'm not real crazy about most of the traditional stuff but that's what I'm stuck with.

I wasn't real impressed with the turkey but the mashed potatoes were to die for. Of course, between the cream cheese, sour cream and butter So sadly they're not something I'll be making too often.

Everything else was pretty much my standard holiday recipes.

Slow Cooker Mashed Potatoes

5 lbs red potatoes, cut into chunks
1 Tbs minced garlic (I used more)
3 cubes chicken bouillon
8 oz sour cream
8 oz cream cheese (I used light)
1/2 cup butter
salt and pepper to taste (only used pepper)

Cook potatoes, garlic and bouillon in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water until potatoes are tender but firm, about 15 minutes. Drain, reserving water (I did not need the water).

In a bowl, mash potatoes with sour cream and cream cheese, adding reserved water as needed to attain desired consistency.

Transfer potato mixture to a slow cooker, cover, and cook on Low for 2-3 hours. Just before serving, stir in butter and season to taste with salt and pepper.

From allrecipes.com


I guess I really should read the directions better when cooking stuff I totally missed the part about adding the bouillon to the cooking water (I added it to the potatoes when I mashed them) and I also added the butter when I mashed them. Oh, well, didn't do any harm (although I would imagine that's why they didn't need any salt )

Also, I have an old crockpot and I turned it up to High for about an hour because they just weren't getting warm enough and I also stirred them quite thoroughly a couple times. But that could be because I made them the day before and so they were cold when I put them in.

[DeeK]

In October I roasted a few sugar pie pumpkins and froze the puree for "future use". The future came today. I tweaked my standard pumpkin muffin recipe and the results --

Six thumbs up! Even the pilgrim couple seem happy.


Pumpkin Muffins With Dried Cranberries

1 cup pumpkin puree
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup canola oil
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries

1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Combine the first five ingredients (pumpkin through cranberries); set aside.

In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour through baking powder).

Make a well in the dry ingredients. Pour in liquid mixture and stir gently with a spatula until all the flour is incorporated into the batter. DO NOT OVERMIX.

Place batter into 12 greased, regular-size muffin cups.

Bake at 400°F for 20-22 minutes until muffins test clean on a cake tester and are nicely browned.

Remove muffins to a wire rack to cool.

Serve warm with apple butter or cool completely before refrigerating or freezing.

[kathyann]

Originally Posted by DeeK

In October I roasted a few sugar pie pumpkins and froze the puree for "future use". The future came today. I tweaked my standard pumpkin muffin recipe and the results --

Six thumbs up! Even the pilgrim couple seem happy.


Pumpkin Muffins With Dried Cranberries

.

LOL... I have the very same salt/pepper set that I dig out for just this day every year!! Makes the table festive, but is SO NOT "me" that we all have a good laugh.... it's fun to see "our" pilgrims on someone else's table!!

[sneezles]

Two definite winners here today. First was CI's Classic Cornbread Dressing. It's very close to a bread pudding and very tasty. I have stopped stuffing the bird but had yet to find a recipe that didn't make me miss the stuff inside the bird...until today.

Second winner was CL's Pumpkin Chiffon Pie from the December issue...fantastic! I didn't use their crust recipe and I did not put the cream on top or the chocolate. The filling is so light and not heavy with the spices. This will be my go to pumpkin pie recipe from now on!

[tholbrook]

We had my in-laws over for a late breakfast this morning - I made Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls - they were fabulous. The dough was a dream to work with - rolled out easily without shrinking. I stuck to the recipe, both ingredients and technique. My only change was to cut them into 1-inch thick rounds, so I got 18 rolls. I used two 8" square pans, plus a little pan for odd-sized "scraps" from the ends. I did find that it took a little longer to get the rolls to rise when they came out of the refrigerator (but I got a really late start the night before). The rolls were rich and fluffy, the filling was sweet and cinnamon-y, and the cream cheese frosting was sinful. My only complaint is that I now have 4 egg whites that I need to use up .

My contribution to Thanksgiving dinner later in the day was dessert: Gourmet's Triple-Layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Another winner - it was moist without being heavy, and the carrot flavor was prominent. I made this as written, except: reduced oil to 1 cup, and added an 8-ounce can of crushed pineapple (well-drained) as I can not fathom a carrot cake without pineapple. I left out the pecans and raisins, as I knew there would be some issues with both of those things. Although the layers didn't rise very high (possibly the result of my changes), it was a beautiful cake. I decorated it with Martha Stewart's Petite Marzipan Carrots.

Wow, I really went through the cream cheese today!

[Yoga0829]

I made a Maple Pecan Pie with Wheat-Flavored Crust from epicurious and it was a huge hit with my professional chef dinner companions. This will be my go to pecan pie from now on.

[charley]

First time in years I've made a turkey day dessert. Smittenkitchen's Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie
was a major hit! Had a lightness that's normally missing in pumpkin and sweet potato pies.

[Varaile]

The Big Dinner was at 1p today and it was a combined effort between the Mom and I. I have to say, this was one of the best dinners we've ever made.

Turkey was from Fine Cooking
standard stuffing/dressing (bread cubes, celery, mushrooms, giblets, onion, all soaked in chicken broth and baked)
Gravy
A twiced baked mashed potato dish (Fine Cooking I think...)
Roasted carrots, squash, parsnips, and brussel sprouts (from my garden) drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

I made the Chiffon Spiced Pumpkin Pie from Dec CL as well and it IS outstanding! I did add the whipped cream on top. Yum! Crust compliments of Pilsbury. I had enough to do without having to putz with a crust.

and a basic Crumb Topped Apple Pie

Simplicity seemed to be the key this year. Nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary, just good good good.

[helios7]

We went to my in-laws for Thanksgiving, so I didn't have much to do with most of the meal. And I'm not complaining! But I did take a dairy free dessert, as I knew MIL had not focused on the fact I wouldn't be able to eat any of the (many) purchased desserts.

When I went dairy-free due to my son's dietary issues, I bought Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. A woman cannot live through Halloween parties, Thanksgiving and first birthday parties without cupcakes!! For Thanksgiving I made the gingerbread cupcake with lemony buttercream. Outstanding, all around. I really didn't miss the dairy, and my DH who has been lukewarm with this vegan baking voluntarily praised them. So, definitely a Thanksgiving hit in our house!

Tami - MMM, cinnamon rolls. I want to make some for Q's bday party this weekend. I may have to try that recipe (with a few modifcations), but with a cream cheeseless frosting. I have my eye on a carrot cake cupcake next.....

[mkc]

The turkey with its simple kosher salt brine, roasted vertically on the Big Green Egg, taking almost 30% longer than expected (must check the Egg thermometer....), smoked with a single chunk of apple wood was unbelievable. DH announced that we needed to do turkey more often

We added cornbread (Dairy Hollow House Skillet Sizzled) to our stuffing for the first time ever (20+ years of making Thanksgiving dinner) and loved it. I sort-of followed the Williams-Sonoma recipe for Corn Bread, Sausage, and Chestnut stuffing, but used sage sausage instead of Italian, left out the chestnuts, and used California Sourdough's seeded rye (our usual stuffing bread) in place of the white they call for. This will absolutely be our stuffing from now on.

Those were our two best meal items.

The worst was Pioneer Woman's turnip gratin. I had high hopes for it, but it turned out like a brothy turnip soup. Not pleasant and very difficult to serve. I ended up using the turkey baster to draw off as much liquid as I could. I reluctantly held on to the leftovers, which might end up re-purposed into soup (we hate to waste food) and in the future will stick with the Paula Deen () recipe for mashed potatoes and turnip that is t-n-t for us.

Michelle

[funniegrrl]

We had a small, lower-key T'giving this year -- people were more scattered than usual.

The winner I think was the brined and smoked whole turkey. Incredibly moist without being "wet", tender, tasty. Sides were the basics from our usual must-haves -- dressing (which was unusually good this year), sweet potatoes, etc. I did appetizers as usual. Again, going with the low-key theme, a two-layer curry chutney cheese spread I sort of made up, plus crackers, plus shrimp (Kroger had a 1/2 off sale of their prepared rings this week!). Also made the two-layer pumpkin cheesecake pie mentioned in the "one pie" thread. It was just as good as last year, that's definitely a winner.

So, successful meal, ate our fill, not a metric ton of leftovers, which is good.

[tholbrook]

Originally Posted by helios7

Tami - MMM, cinnamon rolls. I want to make some for Q's bday party this weekend. I may have to try that recipe (with a few modifcations), but with a cream cheeseless frosting. I have my eye on a carrot cake cupcake next.....

Heather - the cinnamon rolls would have been just fine with a powdered sugar / vanilla glaze. The cream cheese icing put them over the top, but the rolls were so good on their own. I think they would be fairly easy to make dairy-free. I gave M one of the little end pieces that I had baked. I put just a tiny smear of icing on it ... she loved it - had her cheeks packed full like a chipmunk [Of course, I had to clean it out of her hair, her ears, her chair, the floor, etc.]

The gingerbread cupcakes sound great - glad you were able to find something yummy for the holidays!

[Gecko]

OK, the feasting is all over so I can now report back. I stuck to mostly tried and true recipes and we enjoyed them all. The only new thing I tried was a recipe for Roasted Squash with Brown Butter and Orange by Alex Guarnaschelli. I saw this last Sunday on her show Alex's Day Off and thought it sounded good. The first thing I noticed was that there was no mention of the orange, even though it is in the title of the recipe, so I just added my own. However, one mouthful and I knew that it was a dud. I had two of my daughter's try it and they had the same reaction. I did not even bother to serve it.

[DeeK]

Originally Posted by kathyann

LOL... I have the very same salt/pepper set that I dig out for just this day every year!! Makes the table festive, but is SO NOT "me" that we all have a good laugh.... it's fun to see "our" pilgrims on someone else's table!!

I bought them at Publix a few years back. I don't actually use them except when they are posing with muffins.

[Andrea_2]

Most of the recipes I made turned out well.

Spicy Pumpkin Bisque www.lanierbb.com - This tasted fantastic, but the amount of liquid seems way off, because it took 7½ hours longer to reduce to bisque consistency than the recipe said it should.

Tuscan-Style Turkey Breast with Sage Gravy Food & Wine - This was really good too, but I ended up losing most of the gravy on my counter and floor.

Baked Mashed Potatoes and Yams with Garlic and Parmesan Bon Appetit - I really loved this recipe when I made it before, but I didn't like it as much this time. Not sure why.

Chestnut and Sausage Stuffing Gourmet - This was great! I can't wait for the leftovers tomorrow.

Broccoli and Cauliflower Au Gratin Emeril - Pretty good, although it made WAY too much of the cheese sauce.

A friend of mine brought rolls, and a cranberry sauce that was quite good.

She also brought dessert, but that went badly. See Thanksgiving mishap thread...

[peachesncream]

I tried a new dressing recipe this year, Frog's Apricot, Almond and Apple Bread Stuffing from the Frog Commissary Cookbook. That was a hit. I think this will be our "go to" stuffing from now on. Also would taste good with roast pork.

The biggest frustration of my day was Pioneer Woman's Butternut Squash Puree. First, I had a tough time cutting the squash in half. It took a lot longer than the recipe stated to bake to the tender stage, I kept having to add water to the pan, the squash would not blend in my blender (the blender sounded like it was laboring, and I kept having to stop it and push the mixture into the blades). The taste was nothing special, and it made a very small amount of squash for all of that work! (How many squashes would a person have to cook to serve a crowd??) I might have liked this dish better if I'd prepared it a day ahead - I made it Thanksgiving morning and that contributed to the mess and chaos in the kitchen. Still, it was not a "wow" dish for us - and I had such high hopes for that recipe.

[ecau]

We are in Canada and there was only going to be me, DH, and 3 year old DD, so I wanted to do something simple. Of course, it never quite works out that way! In the end we had one neighbor over as well.

We did Italian themed Thanksgiving. We had:

pumpkin amaretti gnocchi with sage butter sauce from the Silver Spoon cookbook

spinach and prosciutto stuffed turkey breast and gravy from italianfoodforever.com

salad and italian bread

pumpkin pie from Tartine cookbook

The complications began when I realized that I couldn't get amaretti (almond cookie). So Wednesday night I made a batch of them to crush on Thursday. The recipe I found online was fairly easy, but if I were to make them again for general consumption I would use less sugar.

The next problem was finding a boned, butterflied 4 lb turkey breast. Recall it is not Thanksgiving here. Many stores said, we will have them in Friday - great! I finally found one with a bone that the store butcher was willing to chop off and then butterfly, but it was only half a breast, so not very big.

Then when looking at the gnocchi recipe I noticed it called for cubes of fresh pumpkin. I was planning to use canned. I had to come up with a conversion, since it was clear to me I didn't need 7 and 3/4 cup of pured pumpkin. I found somewhere that a ton (2000 lns) of fresh pumpkin yields 600 lbs of canned and used that to bring down my pumpkin input to 2 and 1/3 cups.

In the end, the gnocchi was good, but a bit time consuming to cook since you need to boil a few at a time. I am not sure I got the pumpkin proportions quite right since they seemed a little soggy. I couldn't really toss them with the sage butter sauce since they were so mushy. They reminded me of spaetzle. But, at least DH and I liked them.

The turkey breast was very good and a definite repeater. I had already made the pie once and it was great again.

[cherylopal]

No misses this year- and I heard the turkey and dressing were excellent- a friend brought the turkey, dressing, and gravy.

I made

Fennel, Orange, and Pomegranate Salad- The Voluptous Vegan- this was good and very refreshing with all the starches in the other dishes- I would like to try adding some clementines with the navels next time
Cranberry Salsa- Southern Living- always a hit- I used half of the jalapenos and even FIL loved it
Cosmopolitan Cranberry Sauce- Epicurious | November 2007 Rick Rodgers- this was excellent! and so easy- I did cut back on the vodka and triple sec as some of the reviews rec and it was great

garlic mashed potatoes- my recipe- really good this year
Sauteed Sweet Potatoes with Red Onions and Balsamic Vinegar- The Voluptuous Vegan- a surprise hit! delicious although I added a bit more balsamic than I should have- and that was a good thing
baked sweet potatoes

Carrots and Brussels Sprouts- Gourmet- epicurious-always a hit
Garlic Glazed Green Beans- my recipe- good

Zuni Bread- The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook- love this bread and it worked nicely- I would like to tweak the recipe and add more cornmeal for fall
rolls- from whole foods- ran out of time and space to make homemade ones this year- I would say that was my only disappointment- the whole foods ones were good but they did stick a bit

Whole Foods vegan apple pies- yummy
Whole Foods pumpkin pie- my niece says it was good
we also had birthday cake for my sister in law and most people had that for dessert
sugared cranberries- cl-came out really good this year- I've been leaving them uncovered on the kitchen island
Mini Pumpkin Millet Muffins- rebar- love these and my inlaws were happy to have them although we enjoyed these more for breakfasts than at Thanksgiving dinner

[VictoriaL]

I have to remember that Yukon Gold potatoes simply do not mash well... they were pasty. And we eat white potatoes so seldom, we were really looking forward to it!)

[YorkieMom]

Winner\s: BA;s Sweet Corn Pudding, I cut the sugar down from 6 T to only 2T and it was plenty, also added 1 T cornmeal. -- delicious!

Never again: CI's garlic mashed potatoes. Recipe called for 12 cloves of garlic for 4 pounds of potatoes, and I used only 4 cloves (way too garlickly for us).

[ChristyMarie]

My husband went above and beyond this year.

Cornish game hens brined then finished with a glaze. Perfect and just amazing. DS love them.

Mashed potatoes that were simply a thing of beauty.

He made up a recipe for sausage-sage-cranberry-apple stuffing and it was SOOOOOOOOO good. I hope he can recreate it.

I made swanky frankies (lil smokies & crescent rolls) that we all decided were the best idea. We haven't had them in years.

And my pie - Chocolate Pecan Pie from Rick Bayless - turned out well. But, it was NOT a traditional pecan pie so I was bummed but everyone else liked it. It was more brownie then pie. Very odd. Good but odd. We did agree it needed ice cream instead of whipped cream with it as the recipe called for. The PITA crust was perfect - flaky and wonderful. Still not sure it was worth the time it took though.

[cherylopal]

Originally Posted by VictoriaL

I have to remember that Yukon Gold potatoes simply do not mash well... they were pasty. And we eat white potatoes so seldom, we were really looking forward to it!)

sorry to hear- I used yukon and they came out great- i used a masher and was careful to not over do.