Thanksgiving Day, in and of itself is over, but of course, the food has not all been eaten. Oh no. And according to my nephew, it’s not been a proper Thanksgiving if you don’t have leftovers. Just letting you know. We’ve tried that. 🙂 And according to Carol, who’s been saying this FOREVER, the best sandwich you can make is turkey & cranberry sauce with a little mayo … which you’re now starting to see on restaurant menus.
Oh, and again, to let you know, remember those Butter Horn Rolls I posted about on the 17th? We tore through almost 48 of those! Yes, they’re kind of small, and yes, there was a lot of us there and, yes, we were there for two meals …. but like I said in the post, EVERYONE loves them. No one passes on those rolls. Ok, maybe, someone did hide some … I wouldn’t be surprised. 😉
Carol’s Chocolate Italian Cream Cake
But Thanksgiving isn’t all about the food. We had such a great time yesterday with all the family. We sat around the fire pit, laughed and told stories into the night. We had family members there from 2 yrs old to 89 … from MS to DC. We’ve been truly blessed as a family. We’ve had hard knocks, we’re missing some of our family members whom we dearly miss, but we’re still standing.
But back to the food … I do have some recommendations.
I always have sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving and usually they’re some variation of a scalloped sweet potato with a fruit, like apples with nuts and brown sugar. Last year however, I wanted to try something different so I tried a recipe from Pinterest with mashed sweet potatoes and a brown sugary type topping. The whole thing was waaaayyy to sweet. Total Pinterest FAIL! I can’t believe I tried again this year, but I found a similar type recipe, but one with a streusal type of topping. (You know I’m addicted to those streusal topped muffins, so I know that’s why I couldn’t NOT try this recipe.) Well, it ended up being a total success!! Great recipe! Not too sweet, but just the right amount of sweet and the topping is like the muffins … the hit of the party. You need to try this! This is soooooo good!
Click on the links for the recipes.
Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Streusel
Another recommendation is this Pumpkin Praline Bread Pudding. Mmmm … it is good. Got lots of thumbs up on it. Even I liked it and I’m not a bread pudding eater. And it’s not hard to make. Instead of making your own pumkin pie spice you can just buy it. I actually used both because I ran out of pumkin pie spice. So I’m keeping that little recipe as back up.
If you refrigerate this, I found out it tastes best reheated.
This last recipe, I didn’t actually make this year, but I had intentions of making it. I just forgot about it. I did make it last year and it is so good. And it kind of makes me sad to remember it, because the last person I shared it with was my dad’s wife. Carolyn passed away in March and she was one of the greatest blessings of our family. A truly wonderful person that we miss so much. And she was a great cook! She had my husband spoiled. He didn’t think he could go to their house if she wasn’t frying okra. (I don’t fry. 🙂 )
This cake is sooo good! Try it! It has a wonderful texture.
You can find these recipes and other yummy ideas on my Fall & Thanksgiving Yummies Pinterest boards. Click on the Pinterest icon at the right of this page, then follow the link to my other boards.
When Dakota started school she needed a place to go during Thanksgiving Break while her mom worked. Since I was off during that time as well, she always came to stay with me that week until her family came for Thanksgiving Dinner. So for the last 4 years she’s helped me cook Thanksgiving Dinner. We’ve had a great time cooking together. Her favorite thing to make has always been pecan pie.
Many years ago, I asked a friend to share her cake recipe and she told me it was a secret family recipe. I thought that was so cool, I wanted our family to have a secret family recipe. So when I hit upon my pecan pie recipe, that was it .. our secret family recipe. And Dakota asked about it this week and actually came up with a good name for it … CiCi’s Secret Pecan Pie. But she immediately wanted to tell someone about it, so we still need to work on that part. 🙂 So I’m not going to share the recipe, but I did want to share some photos of Dakota making the pies.
Cooking with her is the perfect time to teach her all those things she’s going to need to be a good cook. We talked about the abbreviations in the recipes like C, T, t and how many teaspoons in a tablespoon? (3) She read the recipe and doubled the amounts like a pro … even the fractions. I was impressed. I taught her how to set the oven and the timer and to listen for the buzzer (she never heard it 😉 ). She even learned to crack eggs into a bowl without the shell after about 4 tries. All of those things will come with practice. She practically made the two pies on her own and after 4 years is pretty darn good at fluting a pie crust.
This girl was proud of that pie! This was the best Thanksgiving Blessing!
Because Dakota worked so hard on these pies, and she so graciously offered, I let her taste test the pie … just to make sure it was good. 🙂
This is a photo of Carol’s homemade cranberry sauce. It was yummy. We had a lot of yummy food, but this is something she “might” share her recipe for when she gets a chance. Some things a cook just does … no recipe.
Update: This is Carol’s recipe for the Cranberry Sauce. Buy a bag of fresh cranberries in the produce section of your grocery store. Turn the bag over and follow the directions on the back to make the cranberry sauce except add a dash of salt. Serve cold in a pretty dish. Enjoy! You’ll love it! 🙂
I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving blessings as much as we enjoyed ours.
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