Mom’s Sweet Potato Casserole: A Thanksgiving Staple

Dec 5, 2016

Pretty much anyone you talk to will tell you what their non-negotiable Thanksgiving dish is.  For some it’s pumpkin pie or mashed potatoes.  For me it’s Stovetop stuffing (original recipe).

And for my mom it’s this sweet potato pudding.

And I have to admit, it’s pretty doggone good.  None of those nasty marshmallows here.  No, sir.  This is creamy and warm but not too sweet—the only really sweet part is the topping, which has a great crunch to it.  It’s really easy to put together and is always a crowdpleaser.  No question that it’s on my list of 14 never-fail Thanksgiving recipes.

14 of My Favorite Thanksgiving Recipes

Nov 14, 2015

Thanksgiving is a BIG deal in my family.  I always fly home a day or two before, and stay through the weekend.  I have a big extended family, so my mom and sisters and I (and my aunts) spend the day before baking, cooking, and prepping.  The morning of Thanksgiving is always insane—my mom’s up super early with the turkey, then leaves around 10:30 to get down to my grandma’s.  I get up a little later, go for a run, finish up all the remaining dishes, and head down around noon.

We eat a huge lunch, then graze all afternoon and have leftovers for dinner.  We play football, watch football, play cards, and talk.  Chase the kids around.  We also usually get together Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday morning for brunch.  It is a LOT of cooking all weekend.

When you’re cooking for a big crowd (anywhere from 25 to 50 in past years; usually around 25-30 these days), there are some realities in the kinds of dishes that make sense.  Anything super time-intensive that doesn’t yield many servings is automatically out.  So these are some of my favorite dishes that I’ve contributed.  There’s no turkey or main dish here, because we always make a couple simple turkeys or turkey breasts.  Nothing fancy, because it’s all about the sides, breads, and desserts.  Hope you enjoy and everyone has a safe, happy (American) Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Easy Drop Biscuits from Outlander Kitchen

Dec 25, 2014

These biscuits are SO easy and SO good!

It’s no secret that I adore biscuits. They’re buttery and flaky and warm, you can put jam and honey on them, and they feel so good in my belly! But there are two things about biscuits that I don’t love. I really hate having to cut cold butter into flour—it may be irrational, but I really hate it. And while biscuits are amazing straight out of the oven, they’re usually dense, dry balls of bread that get stuck in your windpipe and try to choke them to death when you eat them as leftovers.

But no more! For Thanksgiving this year I needed to make another kind of bread for our hungry horde. We already had rolls, so I thought some kind of biscuit. The problem is that making regular biscuits for a big group is time consuming, and if they have to sit around for a while they’ll start to get dry and stale. Enter these amazing, easy drop biscuits…

These use melted butter, and stirring everything together takes a couple minutes tops. You get this shaggy dough that you can use a spoon or ice cream scoop to plop directly into the pan, so no cleanup from having to roll out and cut the biscuits. And the taste and texture! Not only are they amazing right out of the oven, but we re-heated them for dinner that night and scarfed the last couple the next morning, and they still were light and fluffy as leftovers. So basically perfect.