This is the first time in three years that I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving state-side, and best of all with family! My husband and I just hosted Thanksgiving with my side of the family this past weekend, and next week we'll be traveling to visit his family for the holiday. So we'll have two Thanksgivings this year to make up for some of that time abroad. 

I was posting a lot of the food on my instagram stories, but decided to stop blowing up everyone's feed with content that was two weeks too early and post them here instead. So without further ado, here are the thanksgiving recipes I used this year:

Honey Glazed Ham & How to cook a Ham

Sweet Potato Casserole

I always read the notes on allrecipes.com and find them entertaining. People will leave a 5-star review saying something along the lines of, "This was perfect! I just added this, this and this, left this out, and cooked it at a totally different time and temperature. Highly recommend!" The All Recipes team made a suggestion for this one, which was to triple the amount of sweet potatoes and leave everything else the same. I followed the suggestion, which was about 3-4 large sweet potatoes. 

Two different kinds of Dressing, 

Cranberry Sauce

You guys, give me a moment on this one. I feel like cranberry sauce has a bad rap. I was always fed the cranberry sauce in cylindrical form with aluminum can lines across it. So bad. But this recipe is SO good, and insanely fast and easy. From start to finish you'll spend 15, maybe 20 minutes making it. And it's so worth it. Please. Make yourself some home made cranberry sauce.

Mashed Potatoes 

I didn't use a recipe, so here's this year's rendition. 

Boil about 8 potatoes with skins on until they can be pierced with a knife. Put all of the potatoes into mixer with paddle attachment (careful, the bowl is really full and potatoes might pop out). Add about 6 tablespoons of butter (more if you prefer), 1.5 tsp salt, 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper, 1/2 C whole milk, and 3/4 tsp. garlic powder. Very slowly mix the potatoes, turning the mixer on and off to make sure the potatoes won't fall out, until they were a chunky consistency. Scrape them into a 9x13in pan until ready to serve. 30 minutes before serving, top with several pats of butter, cover with foil, and warm in pre-heated oven set at 325F.

*Note* I intentionally tried to keep these mostly no frills because of the richness of all of the other food. You could definitely add half-and-half and even more butter.

Pumpkin Bread

Deep Dish Apple Galette

The recipe is from NY Times cooking, which you need a subscription to, but they say "We offer all new and existing users a one-time free trial, which includes full, unlimited access to NYT Cooking similar to what you'd have with a subscription." So if you're new to it you could check out this recipe and screen shot it for the big day. It mostly looks impressive and is slightly easier than a pie.

If you can't get access to the recipe, I would say just to make a regular apple pie in a spring form pan, but instead, fold the crust over the apples like a galette, sprinkle edges with sugar and sesame seeds and bake.

I also thought about making this Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie, but then thought it might be over kill (and also, I was tired). Maybe at our next Thanksgiving. In two weeks. I hope some of these recipes come in handy for you! Would love to hear if you give them a try.

Bisous,

Katrina