Thanksgiving Dinner! – The Recipes.

I love to put together a holiday meal, especially thanksgiving. I have it down pretty good to corral the chaos.

Turkey in the electric roaster!

Thanksgiving Dinner Plate!

First prepping the turkey & stuffing…

I do the bird in the electric roaster, stuffed, for 15-ish minutes per lb. @ 325° Farenheit. I roasted in the preheated pan on full for about 45 minutes at the start before turning it down. I inject the turkey in a few sports with a mixture of melted beer, butter, & spices. I usually rub some softened butter on top and toss on lots of seasoning there too. I usually pour a bottle of beer and a box of turkey broth in the bottom, & include some carrots, celery, & an onion.

Don’t worry about samonella with a stuffed bird. Take it to 165°. Always use a food thermometer. Some of the dark meat of the turkey will be overcooked but it will still be juicy & delicious. I haven’t killed anyone with my turkey yet.

The extra stuffing can be made into stuffing balls, but I put it in the crock pot. You just have to stir it, & maybe add extra turkey or chicken broth if needed or it will stick to the sides a lil’ burnt.

Do the math, & time it so you’re pulling the turkey out about a half an hour before you want to serve it.

Then I make the sides. Check out my recipes!

• Stuffing (check out the old school recipes too!)
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Rainbow Carrots
• Roasted Butternut Squash
• Mashed Potatoes

I cut up the butternut squash first, & put it in the fridge for when I needed it.

I peeled & quartered the potatoes, let them sit in cold water (& turkey broth).

Cut up & prep the brussels sprouts & carrots, you want to pop them in about 45 min before you plan to eat.

Prep the squash & put it in right after the brussels sprouts.

Turn on the potatoes, by the time they cook & you do your thing… it the other stuff should be ready to go.

Others brought even more sides… cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, & rolls!

If I make green bean casserole, I pretty much use the Campbell’s recipe or French’s Fried Onions recipe… sometimes with an added can of mushrooms, fresh green beans, & maybe even some bacon pieces or ham.

If I cook with beer it’s either Yuengling Traditional Lager or Straub Amber.

For the gravy, I just use pan drippings broth from the turkey, and eyeball together a slurry of corn starch, add it, & some more spices if needed.

Someday I am going to brine a turkey with a buttermilk brine & cook it on the smoker, but… not for Thanksgiving. Well, not the first time anyway.

I like to keep the oven open for sides, & any brought sides or pies that may need warmed up.

Thanksgiving Sides! Brussels Sprouts & Rainbow Carrots, Butternut Squash, Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes, & Stuffing!

What are your Thanksgiving or other holiday meal prep tips, go-to’s, methods, or favorite recipes?

🦃 Don’t forget these free Thanksgiving Mazes! 🦃

Roasted Butternut Squash

I love squash, it’s a toss-up between acorn & butternut as my favorite. This is a nice sweet & simple holiday go-to.

Ingredients:

• 2 whole butternut squash
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Paprika
• Brown sugar
• Salt

Do it!

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit.
2. Cube the butternut squash, get rid of that skin.
3. Toss the cubes in the EVOO & spices to taste. I go easy on all of em.
4. Put it in the oven in a single layer on a baking sheet or glass baking dish for about 30 minutes.
5. That’s it!

You could also…

• Just buy it already cubed. It really probably is worth it if you’re going to cook it soon.
• I destroyed a vegetable peeler trying to peel it once. Just use a knife to cut off the skin.
• Add as many spices as you want, skip the sugar, use maple syrup, or whatever sounds good to you. You know what you like!

Any advice? Do you do it another way? Do you halve it & roast it like acorn squash? What’s your favorite squash? Share your secrets!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts w/ Rainbow Carrots

Another one of my holiday go-to’s, this one takes a bit of labor but it’s worth it.

Brussels Sprouts! With some goodies…

Getchya mise en place:

• One 32 oz. “family size” bag of Brussels Sprouts (or 2 lb. of bulk fresh)
• One 16 oz. bag of baby cut rainbow carrots
• One 2.8 oz bag of bacon pieces
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt, pepper, garlic powder, whatever spices you want.

Do it:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit.
2. I quarter the baby carrots – one cut long ways, one cut through the middle.
3. I cut the bottom off of the sprouts, remove the outer leaves if they’re not great looking, halve them, and if they’re large, score the middle. (Look close at the photo.)
4. Mix the sprouts, carrots, & bacon pieces in a bowl, add the spices, eyeball in some EVOO & toss to coat it all evenly.
5. Spread evenly on a baking sheet or in a glass dish.
6. Slap them in that oven for 40-ish minutes.

Tips n’ tricks:

• Of course, use whatever spices fit your fancy.
• If you can’t find rainbow carrots, regular ones or parsnips or both are an absolutely awesome addition also.
• Roasting caramelizes the sometimes bitter brussels sprouts. You may find that you prefer them “more” done or “less” done.
• Scoring the middle helps them roast fully or more evenly.
• You can skip the bowl if you can stir it all up and not make a mess like I do.

So, what do you think? Do you like Brussels Sprouts? Do you prepare them a similar or wholly different way?

Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Putting my thanksgiving recipe here… which is more of a method I guess.

We ran out of bowls, so it’s in a pie plate.

Here I keep it super simple.

Gather it:

• 5 lb. bag of Yukon Gold Potatoes
• 1 Stick Butter
• 1 cup of Buttermilk
• 8 oz. Sour Cream
• 32 ox. box of turkey broth.
• Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, White Pepper, Salt to taste

Do it:

1. Peel the potatoes, don’t be afraid to leave a bit of skin.
2. Quarter them, place them in your stock pot in the turkey broth with some salt and cover the potatoes with cold water.
3. Maybe toss in a pat of butter and some spices.
4. Bring the pot to a boil on high with the lid on, take the lid off and crank it down to medium for 20 minutes.
5. Turn the burner off, strain the potatoes, but the pot with the potatoes back on the warm burner.
6. Add your spices to taste.
7. Start to mash ’em, add the buttermilk, sour cream, & butter.
8. Don’t mash ’em too much. I like them thick enough to build a tower like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Some lumps are OK.

Tips:

• I don’t actually measure the buttermilk & sour cream. Just do it by feel. Of course you can use regular milk, heavy cream, or a non-dairy milk.
• Use good whole buttermilk, like Charlie’s Old Time Buttermilk by Turner’s.
• Save a pat or two over butter for on top… or, just add MORE butter.
• Of course you can just use water or chicken stock or bullion cubes or beer or whatever you want.
• Add whatever spices you want too! I may have put some poultry seasoning in there. Sometimes I add cheese too.
• I use a meat chopper instead of a traditional potato masher. I find it goes much smoother and is less of a mess.

I’d be interested to see how you do it. Got any tips or secrets for me? What are your favorite methods or add-ins? I also love a good boxed potato flake mixed extra thick and flavored-up, but get out of here with that runny Bob Evans microwavable slop!

Nostalgia & Stuffing

I hope you have seen my stuffing recipe, and I hope to blog the method for all my sides. I was digging for these, and I thought I’d post it here for posterity. My Grandpap King was always the one who did holiday meals. He passed away when I was very small, but my Grandma always used his stuffing recipe, and that’s what I use today. I’s very simple, and it came from a Westinghouse cook book. I have a terrible photo copy of the book with his notes in the margins where he extrapolated to make a much larger portion. I want to use that small one to make stuffing ball sliders.

Here is is zoomed in a bit, & cropped…

Here’s notes from an email from my mom…

My uncle found a copy of the book at an auction or garage sale… It’s the first edition, when looking at the photocopies wasn’t what my family originally had, but it is the same recipe.

Share some of the recipes that you have had passed down!

Happy Thanksgiving and don’t forget to enjoy some Thanksgiving-themed mazes before or after dinner!

This is a preview maybe of how I make the sides…

Ooo, I took a photo of my scribbled notes last year. pic.twitter.com/W5XupuV9bq

— ᗡʏꙅ⅃ɘXiA ƆiЯƎ 🎸 (@AiXeLsyD13) November 22, 2023

Thanksgiving Mazes! 🦃

I was going to share some mazes for Thanksgiving, and I realized I have a bunch of them. I did some quick dirty coloring of some old ones. I am sharing new ones that will be in my second book, some from the first book, and I have some that are loosely related to fall or Thanksgiving dinner.

Please, use them to have some fun this holiday season! They could be placemats, an activity for those that aren’t cooking while they’re waiting for dinner or for company to arrive, or used as a game to see who finishes first. You could use them to make place cards too if you wanna get creative!

If you complete the mazes by printing them out & solving, or on your phone/tablet/PC with a drawing app, share it on you preferred social media platform & tag me! I’m @AiXeLsyD13 on pretty much all of ’em. (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, TikTok, Tumblr, YouTube, etc.) I’d love to see a video of a race to complete the smaller easier ones… and I love to see solutions! I like to draw mazes, not so much solving them.

Mmm, Thanksgiving dinner. Stuffing is my favorite. I need to figure out how to do a stuffing maze.

You can solve these while listening to one of my Thanksgiving playlists on Amazon or Spotify, or while talking about what you’re thankful for! I love the reflection this time of year.

This year’s turkey maze:

2023 Turkey Maze

Thanksgiving-ish themed mazes from the upcoming book:

Turkey Giblets Maze & Corn Maze …Maze – from my upcoming second book.

Newly (& quickly) colorized old Thanksgiving themed mazes:

Fresh takes on old Thanksgiving Mazes

Random older related mazes:

<shameless plug> The turkey from this year and the “giblets” maze are also available on some cool merchandise from my RedBubble and TeePublic shops too. Why not get a turkey maze T-shirt or an apron with the giblets maze? You can get both designs on hoodies, pet bandanas, stickers, magnets, coffee mugs, and even a damn shower curtain if so inclined. </shameless plug>

🦃 UPDATE! 🦃

After posting this, I found an OLD turkey maze of mine on Pinterest, so I downloaded & edited it a bit. So, here’s one more:

I guess I forgot about this one.

A bunch of mazes with no discernable common theme.

I’ve had some minor yet nagging health issues lately, and mazes help me sort of zone out or meditate. I posted them on Instagram, & my account for just mazes. I thought I would collect & post them here as mazes seem to me something that brings page hits to the blog.

Check some out. Try to solve, post, & tag me on social media. Print & use a pencil like it’s 1999, or do it right on your screen like it’s the year 2000!

Amps, man. Chase the tone!

Avocado & candle mazes.

Just shapes:

Thanksgiving Food Mazes

The kids requested these ones:

🌽Maize Maze, 🦃Turkey Maze, & 🙁August is Falling Maze ✍️

I can’t stop. Ha. I’ve been in a maze mood apparently. Someone complete some of these damn things! Here they are from Instagram.

Mike Duke requested a maize maze.

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A post shared by Eric Carroll (@aixelsyd13)

Thanksgiving is my favorite.

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Have you heard about August is Falling? See the Gloom O’ Lantern.

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Guest Post | breslesperots

That’s Brussels Sprouts. My oldest is in 2nd grade, and has a journal for what they now call ELA. We called it Writing or English back in the late Triassic when I was in school. Pretty soon I may be up to her writing level. I certainly make about the same amount of spelling and grammar mistakes.

Her journal has some great entries, but I found this amusing and asked if I could share it. Her handwriting looks a lot like mine at that age. The whole thing is just too cute, IMHO.

My second grader’s journal entry about the worst food ever.

The text, as originally written:

11-23-20

My least favite food is breslesperots. The time I tried it was at dinner. I took a bite. My dad said said, how do you like it? I said its discusting! My dad said I was crasy. One of his favite foods are breslsprots. The next time we had the my dad put one on my plate. I put it on his plate. I am relevd we do not have them very often only really on thanks giving. broulsprots are little balls that look like cabig. The worst food ever is braroslsprats.

Here’s my slight correction:

11-23-20

My least favorite food is Brussels sprouts. The time I tried it was at dinner. I took a bite. My dad said said, “How do you like it?” I said it’s disgusting! My dad said I was crazy. One of his favorite foods are Brussels sprouts. The next time we had them, my dad put one on my plate. I put it on his plate. I am relived we do not have them very often, only really on Thanksgiving. Brussels sprouts are little balls that look like cabbage. The worst food ever is Brussels sprouts.

Even though I wholeheartedly disagree, she builds a strong case. I’m anxious to see what the teacher thinks.

The Family Decorating Game

For years, I have teased my wife about a habit I have noticed when we are setting out seasonal decorations. It happened at the apartment where we first cohabitated, it happens at our house now. It happened long before our children were in the picture. She cannot leave anything that I put in place stay where I put it. I put it on the left of a shelf, she moves it to the right. I put it on the wall-shelf, she puts it on the Victrola.

I had to go out for work in the afternoon today, but I set the kids on a path of chaos this morning before I left. My daughter was excited to put out fall decorations. I told her to watch because Mommy moves every decoration that I set out. Then a light bulb went off in my head.

I told her to get a white board for herself, and a white board for her brother, and mark down a point every time they set out a decoration and mommy moves it.

The winner gets to move one of the decorations that Mommy places!

Apparently shenanigans ensued while I was at work. I think it will be a new holiday/seasonal event.

Do you have someone in the house that moves decorations?

Do you have any fun decorating traditions?

Let us know in the comments.