I can't believe I never posted anything about our Thanksgiving dinner. I had the most fabulous time helping Shelby (via tons of telephone calls!) cook her first Thanksgiving dinner, which was a total success!
Mine was smaller than usual this year, but I did make some changes that I thought I'd tell you about, especially since these dishes do tend to grace Christmas dinner tables!
The first was my mashed potatoes....we've all had successes and failures with this dish! I've made them too thin, too lumpy....you name it! But this year I bought a gadget (and one for Shelby, too!) that makes no-fail mashed spuds.....a potato ricer! Believe it or not, I got it at Farm Fresh....and it works! Just boil your potatoes, as usual....just make sure they don't get too mushy...just fork tender. Then spoon them into the ricer and push them out! It sure beats having to clean spuds off the cabinets when you use a mixer...and the food processor turns them into something even a baby can't eat...wayyyy too thin! They were perfect, especially after I added a whole head of roasted garlic, butter and sour cream. Yummmmmm!!!
The next thing I did was change up my green bean casserole recipe. I literally cannot stand canned cream of mushroom soup, which is why I never made green bean casserole until a couple of years ago, by request only. To "mask" the canned soup taste, I added sour cream, mayonnaise and cheddar cheese and everyone LOVED it....but it still bothered me that I was using something in my food that looked like glue...and didn't taste much better! Sooooo......I melted a little butter in a pan on medium high and sauteed some chopped up mushrooms, added a little flour, salt and pepper and cooked the floury taste out of it, then added half and half until it was thick!!! Homemade Cream Of Mushroom Soup!!! This year's casserole was, by far, the best I've ever had....no more canned mushroom soup for me!
The next thing I did was change up my pumpkin pie a little......I had read somewhere that they had used a portion of sweet potatoes to pumpkin puree and it made it better, so I tried it. I used 1/3 canned sweet potatoes and 2/3 pumpkin puree....ohmigosh!!! It was the silkiest pumpkin pie I've ever had and it had a richer color, too!
So, even though I didn't make everything I normally make when Shelby is home, I made the "must haves" and our dinner was wonderful!!! I hope you have a change to try some of these changes in your dishes.....they work...promise!
Oh yea....the turkey turned out great, too!
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