It is all about the food, isn’t it?  Thanksgiving.  And then the favorites in our family carry over to Christmas too.  And some even to Easter.  So I thought I’d share 3 favorites that we had on Thanksgiving Day.  Maybe you’d like to try them for your family holidays.

Sweet Potato Casserole

Sweet potatoes.  Nothing says Thanksgiving at our house like sweet potatoes.  And this recipe could qualify as dessert.  It’s a family favorite.  I’ve been making it for too many years to count.

The cast of characters:  sweet potatoes or yams (is there a difference?), sugar, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, salt and butter.  And for the topping: brown sugar, flour, pecans and butter.

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into large chunks.  You can even used canned if you want to skip this whole “peeling, dicing and cooking the sweet potatoes” part.

Send them for a swim in a big pot of water with a little salt, and simmer until they are soft enough to smash.

Then mash them all up with a potato masher.  And if you’re using canned this is where you start.  With the mashing.

Dump in the sugar, eggs, vanilla, salt & cinnamon and then pour in the melted butter.  Mash it all together.  Then pour the luscious sweet potato goodness into a greased casserole dish.  I used butter to grease the dish.  Because it really needed extra butter.

For the topping…. dump flour, brown sugar and pecans in a bowl and add the melted butter.  Stir together with a fork.  Mixture will be crumbly.  And yes, I like those pouring butter pictures.

Then sprinkle the topping all over the top of the sweet potatoes.  Sswweeeet!

And it will look like this!  Easy peasy.  Bake at 350° for 30 minutes.  YUM!

And if there is someone in your family who can’t stand the sight of nuts, you can leave them out <gasp!>  OR you could do them like this:

With some added mini-marshmallows on the nut-free side of the foil for that one person in your family who doesn’t like nuts.  This is how I made them last year.  This year?  The nut-free people got their own dish of sweet potatoes.  Made by said person’s mother.  Thanks, Kaye!  Here’s a pic of her sweet potato dish:

We actually had three sweet potato dishes at Thanksgiving this year.  Apparently we are a sweet potato loving family.

And here’s the link to the page where you can print my recipe without having to use up all the ink in your printer printing all the pics above:

Sweet Potato Casserole

Pea Salad

This is a favorite at our house.  Mom has made it for years and it wouldn’t be a holiday for us without it.  If your family can’t stand the sight of peas, then just scroll on past the simple pea salad to the crescent rolls.  Because believe you me, you don’t want to miss the crescent rolls.

Simple ingredients:  peas, mayo, onion, hard-boiled eggs, relish.  I added a bit of dill and some dijon mustard this time to give it a little extra punch.  Just because I felt like it.  And everyone seemed to like it.  Sometimes I use dill relish instead of sweet too.  But some in the family weren’t impressed with that option. 

Chop the onion.

Dice the eggs.  I saved one and sliced it for garnish.

Dump all ingredients into a bowl and stir it up.  Easy.  I’m all about easy.

Put it all in a pretty serving bowl and garnish with the egg slices.  I also sprinkled some paprika on top to make it pretty.  And because it’s what Mom always did.

Cover and refrigerate overnight.  It’s better if it has a chance for all the flavors to chill out together overnight.  Handy printable is here:

Pea Salad

Yeast Crescent Rolls

I saved the best for last.  These rolls are really, really yummy.  I got this recipe from a friend many, many, many years ago.  I hope she doesn’t mind if I share it with all of you.  I wouldn’t know how to find her to ask!

Ingredients: flour, sugar, yeast, salt, eggs, oil and water.   We had some actual whole wheat grain and Dear Hubby ground it for me.  I wish I had remembered to take his picture doing it.  You’ll have to use your imagination.

Dissolve the yeast in ¼ cup warm water.

Mix dissolved yeast, sugar, eggs and warm water together.  Add oil…….

………..salt……….then add the flour….

….. and mix.  The mixture will be very gooey.  Cover and let stand for 8 hours or overnight.

In the morning the mixture will have risen quite a lot.  I used a really big bowl so the gooey mixture didn’t rise all the way to the top and get all stuck to the kitchen towel with which I had covered the bowl.  At this point you will need to add some extra flour.  About a cup or so.

Divide the dough in half and, on a well floured surface, roll the dough out into a big circle.  Like you would if you were making pie crust.

Like so.

Cut into 12 wedge-shaped sections.  A pizza cutter works great!

Then starting at the big end of each piece, roll it up into little crescent shapes.

Like this.  Easy as pie.  Or maybe easy as crescent rolls.

Place them on a greased cookie sheet and let rise 5-6 hours.  Bake at 375° for 10-12 minutes.

At this point I was so busy getting things ready to go that I totally forgot to take a picture of the finished rolls!  They were touching each other by the time they were ready to bake.  I do have this picture of the basket we served them in:

Kaye specifically asked for the rolls to be placed near her plate when she saw them.  So I thought right on the plate would work for her.  And this picture gives you a sneak peak into the cute touches that Janna did for our Thanksgiving meal.  Aren’t the placecards just the cutest?  She made them all!  You’ll see more in the next blog.

Here’s the link to the recipe for the rolls:

Yeast Crescent Rolls

By the way, this dough works very well for cinnamon rolls too.  Instead of cutting into wedges, I just smear softened butter on the rolled out dough.  Then pile on brown sugar and cinnamon.  Pecans are nice too.  Roll the whole thing up and slice into about 1″ thick slices.  Place in a cake pan and let rise 5-6 hours.  Then bake until golden brown.  Drizzle powdered sugar/milk icing on top. 

I hope you enjoy making at least one of these dishes for your family.  But at our house, it’s not Thanksgiving without all three.  Enjoy!  More Thanksgiving fun times coming soon.

But for now, I think it might be time for another helping of Pumpkin Pie Dump Cake.  If I can find a little space for some in my already-full-thought-I-might-never-be-hungry-again stomach.

Hugs,
Barb