<p>For Thanksgiving salad I think keeping it simple is good, I’d just dress up your favorite greens with a combination of either mangos or clementines and avocados. If you want a little more pizzazz toast some pecans or walnuts. I brown them in a frying pan with butter, salt and real maple syrup. I don’t have a recipe - just do what looks good.</p>
<p>Martha Stewart has a wonderful warm winter vegetable salad, I’ve made it for Thanksgiving, but may be heartier than what they have in mind. Basically you steam or boil, potatoes, brussel sprouts and carrots and then pour a vinaigrette on them. The vinagraitte is olive oil and wine vinegar and has a lot of Dijon mustard and celery seeds. It’s yummy.</p>
<p>I agree with mathmom. For a Thanksgiving salad, simple is the best: mixed leafy greens with thingly sliced purple onion, pears, and avocado, sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and served with your favorite raspberry vinagrette dressing.</p>
<p>I am doing cold asparagus salad, because our grocery store has asparagus this time of year. Cook the asparagus until it just done, drop it into cold water and then drain it well. Dry it by laying it out in a single layer on a clean towel, and then roll up the towel and put the whole thing in the frig. Just before serving put the asparagus on a platter, top with dressing made of 1 part lemon juice, 2 parts olive oil, salt and pepper. Finish with a flourish of lemon zest. This is great because you can do the asparagus the night before, put the dressing in a jar, and assemble it just before you sit down at the table, and it is fresh and light,</p>
<p>Salad=
For holidays I usually do tossed mixed greens, dressed with a classic vinaigrette, and tossed with roasted pecans, dried cranberries and feta.</p>
<p>Strangely enough…I’m in Connecticut and we have also had asparagus on sale for $1.99/lb for the past two weeks. Not sure where it’s grown, but it has been tasty. Previously always considered it a spring vegetable…</p>
<p>I LOVE making new salad concoctions! Always experimenting with new combinations! I would suggest a mixed greens with baby spinach salad. Mostly baby spinach. I agree with adding dried cranberries and feta or blue cheese and candied walnuts and pears. Or even roasted beets. I also have a recipe for a maple syrup type dressing. Let me know if anyone wants it and I’ll look it up.</p>
<p>Keeping it light for this holiday meal makes the most sense. (The above recipe may have too many ingredients for Thanksgiving) Keep the salad combo ideas coming…It’s good to have ideas on what to make for future salads!</p>
<p>I usually just put a small tray of sliced carrots, radishes, olives, etc on the table and skip salad but that really sounds wonderful. By classic vinaigrette, what do you do, musicamusica?</p>
<p>Make a regular salad…add (depending on what is available) yellow beets, sunflower seeds, asparagus…whatever looks good. Girad’s champagne vinegrette…toss before serving.</p>
<p>I think it is grown in Chili – normally I don’t buy produce that isn’tlocal, but this time of year everything fresh in Iowa is from somewhere else. Except the stuff out of my husband’s green house, but right now that is just lettuce, leeks, green onions and mustard greens. Which will all be featured on the Thanksgiving table, but the asparagus salad is an extra.</p>
<p>So, the day after Thanksgiving…Mom60: How did it go?</p>
<p>I have to tell everyone…our Turkey turned out fantastic. I followed a low and slow recipe and it was super moist and delicious! The key is prepping it and putting it in the oven the night before! Easy. I can take out the recipe & share if anyone is interested!</p>
<p>Abasket:</p>
<p>Your sil’s wild rice dish came out very well, many people liked it! Our butcher recommended chicken sausage instead of turkey sausage. He thought it was a bit more “upscale”? For lack of a better word. Anyway, our family never eats sausage, so it was interesting, but it tasted like ground chicken. I would make this recipe again, definitely, but I may try an all vegetarian way, like keeping the fennel & onion and adding carrots or cauliflower to add flavor…I’ll have to improvise a bit! Thanks for the basics and tell your sil we all enjoyed it!</p>
<p>Mental note for Thanksgiving next year – have on hand the ingredients for either turkey chili or turkey enchiladas for the next day leftovers. We always seem to grave something spicy the day after and I was too tired yesterday to brave the traffic and go to the grocery store. So just re-heated leftovers. </p>
<p>Also, I should have doubled the stuffing. What is with stuffing this year? Everyone is obsessed with stuffing and there was not enough leftover. No one loved the potatoes. Just the stuffing.</p>
<p>I think people love stuffing (for us cornbread dressing) because it something they never make themselves. I cook all the time but never seem to make dressing which I love. This year I was asked to bring salad but not a green salad. My brother-in-law and his kids insist on a separate bowl for green salad and the host wanted to served everything on one plate. I tried a fennel salad with orange and a fennel salad with apple and shaved romano cheese. Both were easy to make and suprisingly well received.</p>
<p>chocchipcookie- thanks for asking. It all went well. I did panic a bit when I picked up the two birds at Whole Foods and they felt almost frozen. Wed I put them in the sink for about an hour and they softened up. Thursday am I got up early. Made the stuffing and got bird #1 ready. I used a combo of different recipes. I did not brine. For the first turkey I put garden sage and thyme under the skin. Rubbed the bird with olive oil, freshly ground salt and pepper. I used the Martha Stewart link from someone on this thread, Soaked a cheesecloth in melted butter. I cut ups some mexican limes from my trees and put them around the base of the bird. Added water to the bottom of the pan. Started out on high heat and lowered after 3o minutes. Got that bird in the oven and started on the smaller turkey. This one I stuffed but added some cut up apples to the stuffing. Instead of olive oil used melted butter to coat the skin. I had a borrowed roasting pan from the 1940s that had a lid. So I did not cheesecloth the 2nd turkey.
Everyone raved about the turkeys. They were both good. I think the olive oil skin was better tasting.
I used Mary’s Fresh Free range turkeys which I bought at Whole Foods. I would buy them again.
My mistakes- going by the cookbook for length of cooking time. The birds were done much quicker. I did not take into consideration that my top oven I used Convection which was much faster. My turkeys were done almost two hours early. I worried but it worked out fine.
After getting the turkeys in I made an additional batch of stuffing to cook separately outside of the turkey for those who prefer that method.</p>
<p>I had the least stressful Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever served, because I gave up on “Making The Perfect Thanksgiving Dinner With My Own Two Hands.” </p>
<p>The changes this year: I got the turkey from Honeybake, delegated the yam dish to my SIL, and went with semi-homemade pies (Sara Lee frozen, doctored up a little before baking). The rest of the sides were either make-ahead, or 5-minute throw-togethers. What a difference! </p>
<p>When we were going around the table telling what we’re thankful for, I said, “I’m thankful that nothing got burned, nothing got spilled, and I don’t have to worry giving food poisoning to any of you.”</p>
<p>i am cooking my thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. as it turns out, it is going to be a much smaller group than i had planned for–probably have too many leftovers. </p>
<p>i have already made my potatoes–they are ready to be warmed up in the oven tomorrow. i made baked beans yesterday–kind of an unusual but traditional dish at our house. turkey is ready to go into the oven in the morning–pumpkin pie squares made yesterday…all is ready to go!</p>
<p>mom60, I’m glad everything went well too. I didn’t see this thread til now. If anybody does turkey for Christmas… we have had great success using the Reynolds roasting bags. Baking time for a 16lb turkey (my favorite size) is about 2 1/2 hours. We use a metal roasting pan. The aluminum ones seem flimsy (perhaps better with a baking sheet underneath). </p>
<p>GRAVY - I transfer the abundant juices to a pan to use for for gravy base. To thicken it I add a paste of cornstarch & water which has set for a few minutes. I then stir at a low boil. To add some flavor/salt and stretch the amount to cover leftovers, I stir in on jar of store bough turkey gravy. While I am doing gravy, DH is carving the turkey.</p>