<p>…for the cooking-challenged!!!</p>
<p>Ideas, anyone?</p>
<p>Baking a turkey is super simple. And mashed potatoes are simple, also.</p>
<p>A great side dish. Melt about 4 TB of butter in pan. When it is foamy, add four cups of corn. Stir or toss the corn until it starts to brown and/or “pop”. Stir 1/4 cup of chopped fresh mint. Salt and pepper to taste. This is great with all the heavy food on the traditional Thanksgiving table, the mint is really refreshing.</p>
<p>Sweet potatoes. </p>
<p>No need to get fancy. Get sweet potatoes (not yams) and bake them just as you would baked potatoes. Then serve them with a mixture of sour cream and maple syrup for people to add in place of the sour cream and/or butter that they would add to a baked potato. Simple and easy.</p>
<p>My teen daughter makes this every year. She leaves out the cheese though.
[Corn</a> Casserole II Recipe - Allrecipes.com](<a href=“http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/corn-casserole-ii/Detail.aspx]Corn”>http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/corn-casserole-ii/Detail.aspx)</p>
<p>^^^ I was just about to suggest the corn casserole. We never put cheese in ours either. Love it! And we use the Jiffy corn bread mix.</p>
<p>Do you have a food processor? Put a couple of cans of drained sweet potatoes in there, blend until pureed. (It works in the blender, too, but is a bit messier.) Add orange juice and maple syrup to taste.</p>
<p>EVERYONE can make the green bean casserole. It’s on the can of French’s onion rings.</p>
<p>I love the cranberry orange relish…put a bag of cranberries, a peeled orange and half of the orange peel in the food processor and chop (fine), add sugar to taste.</p>
<p>My kids love the canned crescent rolls and the store bought brown and serve rolls more than any of my attempts at homemade.</p>
<p>Two easy ways to cook brussels sprouts:</p>
<p>1) Trim and blanch/shock whole sprouts. (For the cooking challenged, blanch/shock means bringing a big pot of salted water to a rolling boil, then dropping in the vegetable, cooking for a few minutes until partially done, then draining and plunging into ice water to stop the cooking.) Drain the cooled sprouts and cut into quarters, slicing from top to bottom, not across. This may be done ahead. Cook in a single layer in a skillet or skillets in plenty of butter until lightly browned and delicious.</p>
<p>2) Rinse and trim brussels sprouts and cut in half from top to bottom. Toss in a large bowl with several tablespoons of good olive oil–just enough to lightly coat, not dripping with it-- and coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. Preheat the oven to 475F. Line a shallow metal baking pan or rimmed sheet big enough to hold all of the sprouts in a single layer with aluminum foil, and let it preheat in the oven while the oven is heating. When the oven/baking sheet is at temperature, turn the sprouts out onto the preheated sheet and roast for 10 minutes. Turn them and let roast for another 10 minutes or until done and getting some blackened leaves. Done! If you want, consider tossing the roasted brussels sprouts with some toasted walnuts and/or some lemon zest.</p>
<p>BTW, don’t overdo on trimming the sprouts, or they will fall apart! Just a very narrow sliver off the bottom.</p>
<p>Here’s an easy way to do sweet potatoes: Bake 5 or 6 large sweet potatoes in the oven until well done. When cool, scrape insides into a large bowl. Add 1 stick of melted butter and about 1/4 cup of sherry or bourbon, plus some fresh grated nutmeg, and fresh pepper and salt. Beat until fully incorporated with a hand mixer. Taste, and adjust seasonings and booze. Transfer to an over proof serving dish. This can be made way in advance and refrigerated. Before serving, bake until hot. The temperature doesn’t really matter, but 350 would probably be a safe bet.</p>
<p>Honestly, what I like about Thanksgiving is that the food is so simple. Roast turkey, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, something green (I usually do brussel sprouts - halve them, boil 4 minutes in salted water, then saute in butter till yummily browned.) Two pies for dessert - pecan and apple in this house. If you want salad or crudites. I like cooked cranberry sauce, the one on the back of the bag of berries - nothing but cranberries and sugar.</p>
<p>LOL crossposted with Consolation on the Brussel sprouts. GMTA. :)</p>
<p>If you really want a new recipe, I made this one for several years: </p>
<p>**Warm Winter Salad <a href=“as%20remembered%20can’t%20find%20the%20recipe”>/B</a>
steam or boil the following till just done (quantities or proportions as you like):
quartered red or Yukon potatoes
carrot chunks or baby carrots
Brussel sprouts
other root vegetables if you like</p>
<p>You want enough to fill a serving bowl cover it with the following vinaigrette (enough to cover, this may be too much)</p>
<p>Add a vinaigrette made of:
1/3 cup of olive oil
1/3 cup of wine vinegar
1 Tb of celery seed
2-3 Tb Dijon Mustard
salt and pepper to taste</p>
<p>Serve warm.</p>
<p>Mash potatoes and turnips together. Add some butter, OJ and ginger to taste. Roast potatoes, parsnips, onions, and brussel sprouts with the turkey and baste.</p>
<p>1 automobile, 1 shopping cart, 1 trip to (fill in blank) Supermarket, 1 check/debit card/credit card to pay for order, 1 gofer to pick up order day before Thanksgiving, 1 happy “cook” and family! :)</p>
<p>The barbeque restaurants around here will smoke a turkey for you. Not everyone likes smoked turkey but I do. Lots of people order Greenberg Smoked turkeys. </p>
<p>[Greenberg</a> Smoked Turkeys](<a href=“Greenberg”>http://www.gobblegobble.com/)</p>
<p>I like them, but the one year I ordered my own, two of the five of us got sick as dogs and that was the only thing I could attribute it to.</p>
<p>My contribution this year will be apple crisp.</p>
<p>5 lbs apples
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg</p>
<p>for the topping
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup oatmeal
1/2 pound cold unsalted butter, diced</p>
<p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, butter a 9x 14 dish</p>
<p>peel, core, and cut the pples into wedges. combine the apples with the zest, juice, sugar and spices. pour into the dish</p>
<p>to make the topping, combine flour, sugars, salt, oatmeal, and cold butter in a bowl. use an electric mixer with a paddle attachment. mix on low speed till themixture is crumbly and the butter is the eize of peas. scatter evenly over the apples.</p>
<p>place the crisp on a sheet pan and bake for 1 hour until the top is brown and the apples are bubbly. serve warm.</p>
<p>I also will be serving it with vanilla ice cream. =)</p>
<p>fendergirl, that recipe is what I make but I add a can of tart cherries. It adds a lot.</p>
<p>Drop biscuits (I think this might be the recipe from the Joy of Cooking-- got it from a friend):</p>
<p>Preheat oven to 450f</p>
<p>Mix in bowl:
1.75 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoons salt
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
2 to 6 tablespoons chilled butter (more=tastier)</p>
<p>Cut butter into dry ingredients until it is the consistency of coarse cornmeal. Bascially just take the chilled butter (ideally out of the fridge for 5 or 10 minutes, but softer or harder works too) and cut it into small chunks with a knife. Then mix it with the dry ingredients and make it finer with a pasty cutter or two forks. </p>
<p>Add 1 cup milk. Stir until most of the dough comes away from the sides of bowl, about 30 seconds or a minute depending on how much you’re making. The mixture will be moist and lumpy.</p>
<p>Drop biscuits onto an ungreased baking sheet with your hands or a big spoon (as long as the size is consistent you can vary it, I like half way between a golf ball and a tennis ball) and brush with a little melted butter for an extra golden color if you’re felling fancy. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes until lightly browned (there will be little pointy bits that cook harder and they’ll be all soft and moist in the center).</p>
<p>You can also grate up some cheap cheddar cheese and mix it in, which goes over well. All in all, an easy (less than 10 mins prep time) biscuit recipe that tastes significantly better than the stuff from a can.</p>
<p>It’s all in the planning. Here’s a good start…</p>
<p>[The</a> Thanksgiving Letter AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com 11/26/2009](<a href=“http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/2009/11/26/awkward-family-story-the-thanksgiving-letter/]The”>The Thanksgiving Letter)</p>
<p>Sorry, I couldn’t resist.</p>
<p>^OMG, GSharp, is that for real? </p>
<p>I’d rather be staying home with a frozen Swanson turkey dinner than be going to Marney’s house for Thanksgiving. (And, doesn’t she having any serving utensils?) Must read some of the comments, especially Randy’s–truly LOL.</p>
<p>That is hysterical! I have such a twisted since of humor I really want to copy that and send it to my family… 
</p>
<p>By law you have to have cranberries. I never learned how to make fresh ones. Here’s a super easy cranberry relish.</p>
<p>1 16oz can whole-berry cranberries
1 6oz box strawberry or raspberry jello
2-3 grated carrots, grated
chopped nuts - pecan or walnuts</p>
<p>Make jello using ‘quick set’ method. When thick add cranberries, carrots, & nuts.</p>
<p>My kids like it better without the carrots and nuts.</p>
<p>^ Holy cow. Was that serious? Really? I must be the anti-Marney. I host every year, make all the food, clean up after, and hate having anyone else in my kitchen helping with anything. (They can talk to me or each other in my kitchen as long as they don’t touch anything.) I have a plan. It’s worked for 20 years. I’m not about to change it now.</p>
<p>Easy dishes? I like to heat stewed tomatoes in a large pot, add butter and croutons (or stuffing cubes), mix together, and serve when hot. It adds “red” to the table. There must be a variety of colors served. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, buns - who wants a totally tan dinner?</p>