Thanksgiving Recap

Hey guys!  I hope everyone had a splendid holiday yesterday and filled up on scrumptious foods!  : )  We sure did!  The Husband and I had a great holiday.  We cooked all morning, ate in the afternoon, watched football in the evening while listening to Christmas music and we even started decorating the house a little bit for Christmas! 

On to our Thanksgiving recipes. 

Pumpkin Spice Dark Chocolate Dessert Muffins

I wanted to make something to pose as our dessert since we didn’t think of buying anything at the store to make.  I ended up using a box of muffin mix and adding in pumpkin pie spices and using 85% dark chocolate to create a fall dessert muffin.

I skipped the blueberries.

I combined the muffin mix and spices in a bowl

Lined a muffin pan with muffin cups and added small pieces of dark chocolate for a surprise at the bottom on the treats

Fill the muffin pan with muffin mix and bake at 400 for 20 minutes

While they were baking, I melted the rest of the dark chocolate in the microwave.

After the muffins cooled, I drizzled the dark chocolate over the muffins

They turned out great and both the Husband and I loved them!

After the dessert muffins were finished, we began on the turkey.  If your veg, you might want to skip down to the stuffing recipe and skip looking at the turkey pics.

Here is the recipe we used.  It was the best turkey I’ve ever had, so moist and juicy, plus it had great flavors.

Amazingly Juicy Thanksgiving Turkey

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp- dried parsley, dried rosemary, dried sage, ground thyme
• 1 tbsp- freshly ground black pepper and sea salt
• 1 turkey roughly 14 – 15lbs (cleaned)
• 2-4 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 orange, sliced
• 1/2 lemon
• 1 box of chicken broth
• 2 cups of champagne

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350.  Place a cleaned turkey in a roaster.  Mix all the spices together in a bowl along with the salt and pepper.  Rub the spice mix inside the cavity of the turkey until the cavity is well coated.  Next, mix the celery, carrot, onion and orange slices together.  Fill the cavity with the mixture.  Pour the whole box of chicken stock on the turkey, making sure to get some inside the cavity.  Pour the champagne over the turkey making sure to get some inside the cavity as well.  Season the outside of the turkey with salt and pepper.  Cover the roasting pan completely with foil, making sure the foil isn’t touching the turkey.  Cook for 2 1/2 – 3 hours, until the turkey juice is clear (or longer depending upon the size of the bird and your oven).  Take the foil off and cook for another hour or until the turkey is golden brown on the outside and the inside temp is 160 degrees or greater (not by the bone).  At this point, you can baste the turkey as frequently as you want.  Let sit for 20 – 30 minutes once it is cooked, recovered in foil.  Serve and enjoy!

Thanksgiving Simple Baked Stuffing

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups celery, chopped
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 3/4 cup onion, minced
• 1/2 cup butter
• 4 quarts of bread cubes
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 tbsp salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon sage
• 1 pinch thyme

Preheat oven to 350.  Butter a shallow baking dish and set aside.  Melt butter in a saucepan.  Once melted, add the onion and cook until the onion is soft.  Add the celery and chicken broth, stir.  Bring the mixture to a boil.  Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes.  In a large bowl, add the eggs, sage, thyme, salt and pepper.  Mix together.  Add the bread cubes and make sure to evenly mix everything together.  Pour in the onion and celery mixture and mix together evenly.  If you need to add more chicken broth, you can add in more.  Place mixture in the buttered baking dish and cook for 45 minutes, or until the stuffing is at the desired dryness you like.  Serve and enjoy!

Green Bean Casserole

Ingredients

• 2 cans low sodium, fat free cream of mushroom soup (condensed)
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 8 cups cooked green beans
• 3 cups French’s French Fried Onions

Pre heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Stir soup, milk, soy sauce, pepper, green beans and 1/2 the fried onions together in a bowl.  Pour mixture into a baking pan.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Stir and then sprinkle the rest of the fried onions on the top and bake another 10 minutes.  Serve and enjoy!

Along with our turkey, stuffing and green beans, we had potatoes.  I wont put the recipe on here since they were far from homemade!  : )  We also ended up making homemade gravy, that was amazing!  I don’t know how the Husband made it, but it was the best gravy I’ve had!

I know he used, milk, chicken broth, turkey stick, garlic powder, cream of chicken soup, pepper, salt and flour.  At one point he strained it to get our all the clumps.  That is about all I know!

Thanksgiving dinner was ready!

The Husband filling his plate!  : )

My huge plate of goodness!

Yeah, we had a lot of leftovers.  We hardly made a dent in all that food!

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving as much as we enjoyed ours.  I feel that there is so much to be thankful for this year!