Thanksgiving Prep

Today is my annual early morning shopping trip to buy all the ingredients for turkey day. Actually, since I don’t have to go to work, I’m not going as early as usual. I’m going around 8:00 rather than 6:00. Mostly because I stayed up too late last night. Oops.

On the menu: Turkey (trying for a 23 pound bird this year if they have one), stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole, cranberry sauce (homemade, of course), tuna pate and crackers, apple pie and pumpkin pie. New on the menu is green bean casserole, cheese dip and veggies and spiced nuts.

The green bean casserole I downloaded from the Food Network website. It is an Alton Brown recipe. I just really couldn’t bring myself to making a casserole with mushroom soup and canned fried onions. Not that there isn’t mushroom soup in the broccoli casserole (along with Cheez Whiz) but that is a family favorite that my mom always made for holidays so it slips by the Julie Censor of Quality Ingredients. This recipe from Alton has a sauce made with 12 oz of fresh sliced mushrooms and heavy cream, among other things. It has to be better than mushroom soup that has, maybe, three pieces of mushroom in the whole can. I hope it tastes as good as the recipe sounds.

The next new item is the cheese dip. My mom used to make this cheese dip that had Old English Cheese in a jar as the main ingredient. It also has cream cheese and garlic powder in it although I think her recipe had other things in it as well.  I just remember the cheese and the garlic. She would serve it with raw cauliflower. It was absolutely delicious!

Again I found a recipe on-line but this time from Cook.com. The thing that was missing from this recipe I found was that it made more of a spread than a dip. It only had the cheese, cream cheese, garlic salt and white pepper. I decided that I need to add sour cream to loosen it up into a dip. I have to use garlic powder instead of the garlic salt since I never use garlic salt. Since I’m not using garlic salt, I will have to add in some salt. I’m sure if I play with it I will be able to get it like my mom’s dip.

The third new recipe is for spiced nuts. I think it will be nice to have some nuts along with the other appetizers for people to much on while they wait for dinner. Of course I can’t just buy spiced nuts. That would just be wrong. So I am buying peanuts, cashews and almonds and making my own spiced nuts. I’m not going to buy them in the shell. I’m not that fanatical. But I am buying dry roasted unsalted nuts so I can adjust the salt content. I still haven’t found a recipe to use but I’m sure I will find something before Thanksgiving.

So that is the menu for the great dinner. Now for the great shopping expedition!!