One Thursday, Jason and I invited over our friends to spend the holiday with us. Now I've never actually made a Thanksgiving meal before so this was quite a task for me. I will admit I almost had a panic attack at the beginning of the day when I got stuck, but once I got past that the meal turned out to be amazing!
We started out with appetizers to enjoy during the Packers/Lions game. I seem to have an obsession with buffalo sauce. Every time we are at a restaurant, my eyes always move to items on the menu with buffalo sauce. So I decided to make a Buffalo Chicken Dip.
This is a recipe I came across about a year ago and have made previously. It is a delicious combination of chicken, buffalo sauce, cheese and ranch dressing. I would highly recommend it. It's a tasty treat!
After the football game and waiting for the turkey to finish cooking we were ready to eat. I made the following:
Crescent Rolls-didn't attempt these from scratch, just made the Pillsbury ones
Everything turned out to be amazing!
The turkey was nice and juicy, although I would recommend having your own meat thermometer to check when the turkey is done. Our "built-in" thermometer didn't pop. We believe this is because of the way we baked the turkey. So I would recommend just monitoring the turkey with a meat thermometer and pulling it out when the internal temperature in several places is about 175-180 degrees. I would also recommend that after the first hour, you baste the turkey every 20-30 minutes. I would also suggest adding additional water and chicken bouillon right from the start. I found that I had to add more as I was cooking the turkey because the water kept evaporating. However, overall I think this was a great recipe.
I have never been a big stuffing fan and generally this is one component of this meal that I generally would not put on my plate. But the Sausage Stuffing was amazing! I would highly recommend it. I tried it and found myself going for a second helping. I used Jimmy Dean's Breakfast Sausage in the tube and found that this worked great!
I don't really have much to say about the Basic Mashed Potatoes as they were just as the recipe states: basic. In the future, I think I'm going to look for a recipe to add a little more taste to the potatoes. We did make gravy from the gravy packet in the turkey, so this is what we used with the potatoes.
The Candied Sweet Potatoes were a tasty treat with the meal. I would recommend boiling the potatoes longer than is stated on the recipe. I found that after only the 15 minutes that the recipe required, I had potatoes that were still not nearly cooked. Of course they did cook more once I put the casserole in the over for awhile, but I would recommend boiling them for at least 30 minutes to make moving forward with this recipe easier.
Of course, we couldn't have a Thanksgiving meal without the Green Bean Casserole. This is a staple of Thanksgiving meals. It's a great way to do up green beans for those that don't want just plain green beans. I love the fried onions, so I always add more of those than the recipe calls for.
And of course, we finished our meal up with Pumpkin Pie. I made my first ever pumpkin pie with this meal as well and the recipe I found was great. It was a delightful treat after a delicious meal.
I cut the pie crust recipe in half as I was not covering the pie with crust. I only needed it to line the pie pan. I would also recommend cutting the pie recipe in half. I had a lot of extra filling to put in my pie pan. Of course, you could use the recipes as are and make two pies.
Overall, I was impressed with how well my Thanksgiving meal turned out and look forward to making it again in the future.
