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My Thanksgiving Dinner Including Recipes

Well it is a few days until ThanksgivingDay. My turkey is thawing in the refrigerator. Wednesday I…

My Thanksgiving Dinner Including Recipes

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Who I am

Well it is a few days until Thanksgiving Day. My turkey is thawing in the refrigerator. Wednesday I will be doing all the work I can do in preparations with food that I can because I can no longer stand without pain for too long.

Our menu here at home is going to be like this.

Turkey

Mashed Potatoes

Green beans

Corn

5 layer salad

Layer lettuce, crumbled fresh bacon, peas, shredded cheese until you are out of ingredients. Cover entire dish with mayonnaise. Store over night.

Fried Bread Dough with Strawberry Jam

You can make home-made yeast rolls or cheat like I do and purchase frozen bread balls. Let them rise and fry them in hot oil until each side floats. Smother them with butter and jam.

Relish tray

Grandma’s homemade dressing.

Cook a chicken. De-bone and save broth. Mix three eggs, add several pieces of bread. I usually use about a half or over of a loaf of white bread. Mix with eggs, add a stalk or two of cooked and diced celery. Add chicken pieces. Add one can of cream of mushroom soup, one can of celery soup. Mix. Add enough broth to get it to the consistency you wish. Bake for half an hour at 350 degrees, maybe a little longer, depending on your desire of crispness.

Macaroni and cheese, homemade. I cook my macaroni, then add 2 cups of shredded Colby cheese, a stick of butter and a little bit of milk. It makes it nice and stringy. Then I make a white sauce by melting three tablespoons of butter in a saucepan. Then add about two to three tablespoons of flour. Stir constantly until it bubbles. Slowly add milk then until you get it the thickness you want. The key is to make sure the flour and butter are smooth before adding milk, and don’t add too much milk, adding won’t hurt, trying to back track won’t work.

Pumpkin pie, directions taken from back of Libby can.

Pudding dessert

Pudding Dessert
First Level
1 cup flour, 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup nuts.
Mix and press in a 9×13 pan Bake for 15 minutes 350 degrees
Second layer
1 cup cool whip, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 8 oz. cream cheese
Blend together and add to first layer when cooled
Third layer
2 packages of instant pudding, your choice of flavor, we always used butterscotch, made with only 3 cups of milk instead of 4. add to second layer
Fourth layer
Top with rest of cool whip and garnish with nuts

Caramel Apple Salad

Ingredients

6 regular size Snickers Candy Bar

6 apples I used Red Delicious… Granny Smith would also be great

1 (5 oz.) package Vanilla Instant Pudding dry, do not prepare

1/2 cup milk

1 (12 oz.) tub cool whip

1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping

Instructions

Whisk vanilla pudding packet, 1/2 cup milk and cool whip together until well combined.

Chop up apples and Snickers.

Stir chopped apples and Snickers into pudding mixture.

Place in a large bowl and drizzle with caramel ice cream topping.

Chill for at least 1 hour before serving.

Grandma, Memories, and her Dressing at Thanksgiving

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Who I am

With the holidays coming up, this brings stress to me this year as it won’t be easy to get out to buy gifts or groceries, but the house will be pretty near darn perfect in cleanliness, since I have been home so much, I am an almost perfect maid!

Along with this, I thought I would mention a little bit about the wonderful holidays I have memories of. Let’s go back in time to when I was a young kid. We would all go to grandma’s house, and at that time, it meant all the families on that side of the family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, parents, brother’s and sisters. There were no excuses as to why someone could not come, it was just a known fact to be there.

Stores were not open, not even gas stations, the world became quiet for one day. The lady of each house would take along at least two side items and so this added to the already wonderful smells when you walked into grandma’s front door. Mmmm, I can still smell the aromas.

All of us kids would go outside and play tag, and run and play. There were no video games or television on. We used our imaginations to have fun. We rode our own bikes our parents brought, or there were always spares to ride.

When mom would open the front door, and yell for us all to come in, we would wash our hands and find our assigned seats at the kids table, and the adults would sit at the grown up table, then some adult would stand up and say a prayer of thanks for our great meal.

Grandma would always make her famous chicken and dressing. She also made fried chicken, and home-made yeast rolls with apricot preserves and lots of melted butter. Along with this she always had peach, and apple ,mincemeat and pumpkin pies, and if we were really good kids, we could have that advance to pie with ice cream on top. There was always a big ham that our uncle would bring and he would slice it and give us each a nice, thick piece, and of course all of us kids fought over the drum sticks and wish bones of the biggest turkey we had ever seen.

There was corn and green bean casserole, and the famous seven layer salad, pickled eggs, lots of sliced cheeses and crackers. A humongous bowl of mashed potatoes with a few lumps in them, and lots of slithering gravy to pour on top, and a big pan of sweet potatoes with lots of brown sugar and marshmallows on it. There were also sliced carrots and bread and butter pickles, red beets, green and black olives, which I always managed to keep going back and snatching another green one.

These were the days, the best of times. Now, today, I have to email my own kids, tell them the date and time of the Thanksgiving meal. Ask them to bring one side dish, and wonder who will and not will show up. Every business in the world seems to be open, so work schedules get in the way, plans with friends by grandchildren are sometimes made, causing some to come, eat and run. I wish I could keep the tradition alive of what was expected and happened so many years ago, but thank goodness I have my memories.

This was my grandma’s favorite recipe for her chicken and dressing, and I still use it today, and now you can try it!

Cook up a whole chicken, cool and de-bone. Put small pieces of chicken in a big bowl, and to this add four to five eggs, and stir. Then cut up small bits of celery stalks, and add some bits of onion, according to your taste. Next, add one loaf of bread, whole wheat or white, that has been tore up into bite size pieces then salt, pepper, and celery salt, and stir. Next add one can of cream of celery soup and one can of cream of mushroom soup and stir. After all this is nicely stirred together, start adding the chicken broth until you have a nice bowl of bread that holds it shape. Pop into a 350 degree oven for thirty-five to forty minutes.

This was a recipe for a big family of 20 plus. You can down size the ingredients to make it the size you need for your family. This is a simple recipe that is moist and makes you want to go back for more. Easy to make as you can cook up your chicken the day before and store it in the refrigerator. There are so many varieties of dressings out on everyone’s table at this holiday, but I always return to the super good recipe of grandmas.

Thank-you grandma for giving me some of the best memories of my life. Grandma is still alive and kicking and no longer bakes those huge, soft, home-made sugar cookies, and no more pies and big chocolate cakes, and no more dressings. In January, she will be 97 years old and she is now taken care of by a very nice nursing home. She was a hard worker, in her day, a farmer’s wife, killing and cutting her own chickens, butchering their own beef, and eating out of her own garden. We could always count on getting good food at any time of the day or evenings by just visiting grandma. I love you grandma.