Who doesn’t love a little pie with their topping?!
Many of you have been asking for the recipes I used for this year’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza, so I’m going to leave them here for you with my critique/comments, for what it’s worth.
I made a wonderful Apple-Cranberry Compote but without the figs. They’re kind of hard to come by around here. I found the recipe on a website for diabetic friendly recipes. You can find the recipe HERE.
The turkey was a fresh twenty-one pounder from Butterball. I followed this recipe:
I adapted Kaleb’s recipe for dressing. I made half with Italian sausage and the other half with oysters. I couldn’t find chestnuts. This recipe puts the dressing in a slow cooker and I’ll never make it any other way!
I baked the bread for the dressing as well as the hot rolls from a recipe I’ve used for thirty-five years. I actually won First Prize in the County Fair with this recipe. It makes four loaves, or two loaves and two dozen hot rolls, or…four dozen hot rolls. Perfect for a crowd! The recipe is from America’s Best State Fair Recipes by Catherine Hanley. You can purchase the book online HERE. I really recommend you get this cookbook…there are so many wonderful recipes in it. My copy is worn and stained so you know it’s that good! The recipe was submitted by Elaine Janas of Minneapolis, Minnesota for the Minnesota State Fair. I am hoping it’s ok to share her recipe here with adequate recognition and praise because it really is awesome!
“Sweepstakes White Bread When an exhibitor wins a blue ribbon in the same "lot" three successive years at the Minnesota State Fair, she or he must skip two years before entering in the same classification again. So Minnesota home bakers now have two years to try for the top prize in white bread as Elaine Janas takes her brief hiatus. In a state where superb yeast bakers abound, the bread categories are so competitive that judges have to resort to using fractions of points to award ribbons. But Elaine Janas is the all-time champion, as her bread wins the sweepstakes award for the best-of-all bread entries, in addition to blue ribbons for white bread. Besides sharing her recipe here, she also offers some of her baking secrets that have never been published. See Elaine Janas' Yeast Baking Tips, pages 80-81. She credits state fair judges with helping her perfect her yeast baking as she studied score cards and made changes to improve her recipe and technique during the nearly 25 years since she entered her first loaf of bread. Her big three-rise recipe makes four loaves of bread. 2 (1/4-oz.) packages active dry yeast (5 teaspoons) 1/2 cup warm water (110F/45C) 1 teaspoon sugar 2 cups milk, scalded 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup shortening 2 tablespoons salt 1-1/2 cups cold water 5 to 5-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 5 to 5-1/2 cups bread flour Butter In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water with 1 teaspoon sugar. In a large bowl, combine scalded milk, 1/3 cup sugar, shorten- ing and salt. Add cold water to cool mixture to lukewarm. Stir in dissolved yeast, 2 cups of all-purpose flour and 2 cups of bread flour. Beat well, until smooth. By hand, stir in enough additional flour to form a stiff dough. Turn out dough onto a floured surface. Knead a minimum of 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. Wash and grease large bowl. Place dough in greased bowl. Cover with plastic film; let rise in a warm place, 1 to 1-1/4 hours or until doubled in size. Punch down dough. Cover; let rise 30 minutes. Punch down dough. Divide dough in 4 pieces; shape in oblongs. Cover with an inverted bowl and let rest 15 minutes. Grease 4 (8-1/2'' × 4-1/2') loaf pans. Shape dough pieces in loaves. Place in greased pans and lightly grease tops of loaves. Cover and let rise until loaves are light and almost as high as you want them when baked, about 45 to 60 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F (205C). Bake in preheated oven 45 minutes or until loaves sound hollow when lightly tapped. Remove from pans. Immediately butter tops of warm loaves. Makes 4 loaves. Elaine Janas Minneapolis, Minnesota Minnesota State Fair”
I made my sweet potatoes a little differently, too. A long time ago, when I was on one of my many weight loss journeys, I learned about this method and have used it quite a bit over the years. Peel about six good sized sweet potatoes and thickly slice them. Place them in a large glass casserole dish, dot them with butter, and cover with foil. Bake at 350° till they are fork tender. Then I place them in a bowl, add a couple good shakes of cinnamon and a couple cups of fresh cut-up pineapple and mash it all together with a potato masher. Spread in a casserole dish, brush with melted butter and sprinkle about three or four tablespoons of brown sugar on top. About thirty minutes before supper, put them back in a 350° oven till they are heated through and the brown sugar is a little bubbly. (In the diet days, I used Butter Buds and Brown Sugar Substitute which will cut down the calories and sugar a good bit.)
For the Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, sauté several slices of bacon cut up in little pieces and till crispy, toss in a bag of whole, trimmed Brussels sprouts, stirring to coat and pop that in the oven to roast for about fifteen minutes or until they are tender.
And the last dish was the Winter Vegetable Salad with Maple Balsamic Glaze. You can find the recipe on my Pinterest page HERE.
And, that’s it. Any of this would be just as good for Christmas Dinner, too! It was one of the more labor intensive meals I’ve prepared, but it was really special. I invited the kids to take whatever leftovers they wanted so things were pretty well cleared out in a hurry! That’s a good testimony of a successful dinner party, I’d say.
It will be time to start baking for Christmas before we know it, but I’m going to take a little time to recover from this week before I start in on that! I didn’t do a thing yesterday but put the dishes away, eat leftovers, and take a nap! Nothing wrong with that, either!
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“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Hebrews 13:16 ESV