Today is the day that I am starting all my posts for your Thanksgiving Feast. Along with that, I am also doing a great giveaway to help you out with your Thanksgiving dinner. I am giving away turkeys thanks to Butterball. I have 4 coupons to giveaway. They are good for $15 off any Butterball fresh or frozen whole turkey. The $15 should buy you a 10 -12 lbs. turkey which feeds about 5 adults and 2 kids. However, if you need a bigger turkey you can just use it toward your purchase and save $15.
All you have to do to enter the contest is leave a comment on this post and share your favorite Thanksgiving recipe, memory or blooper. It’s that easy. You have until Sunday November 15 at midnight (Mountain Standard Time) to enter. I will announce the winners on Monday morning. I want to have plenty of time to get you your coupons in time to get you Thanksgiving bird.
If you weren’t aware, Butterball has a Turkey Talk-Line lady that is available to answer your Thanksgiving meal questions, share ways to save or to gobble up any turkey-day cooking myths. So if you encounter any problems along the way with preparing your Thanksgiving meal, you can give them a call. No question is too tough for these turkey talkers, and they are ready and excited to tackle any challenge you throw at them. Give them a call at 1-800-BUTTERBALL throughout November and December.
You can also go to Butterball website to plan the perfect amount of servings you need in their perfect portion planner. Just plug in the amount of adults and kids you plan on serving into the planner. There are boxes you can check to say we want leftovers, we are big eaters, or we are light eaters. Then it will tell you the size of turkey you need along with the amount of stuffing. So simple.
So I must admit that I do not do anything fancy when I cook my turkey. The turkeys you buy today usually have stuff injected into them and are pre seasoned. All I do is throw that baby on my rack in my roaster and put some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper on the skin. That’s it. I know some of you are in shock. I have heard the only way to do a turkey is with a brine. Maybe one day I will give it a try, but I have been successful with doing nothing more than salt and pepper and my turkey has been perfect and moist.
Now for me, Thanksgiving wouldn’t be Thanksgiving with out cranberries for the turkey. I must have it. You can get the stuff from the can, but the fresh homemade stuff is so much better and it really isn’t hard to make at all. You can even make it a day or two before and keep it in the fridge. Now there is a recipe on most bags of fresh cranberries to make the sauce. I have changed up the basic recipe by using orange juice in stead of water and I also throw in a little orange zest. Love it! It adds just a slight orange flavor which goes so well with cranberries. Cranberries have there own natural pectin in them, so you don’t need anything to help jell or thicken the sauce. Give the fresh cranberry sauce a try. You won’t be disappointed. In fact, you just may never use canned again.
Homemade Cranberry Sauce
1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of orange juice ( can use fresh, but juice made from concentrate works just fine)
1 tsp of orange zest
- Put all ingredients into a sauce an and mix well.
- Cook over medium heat and bring to a boil.
- Boil for about 10 minutes until the cranberries pop. There may be a few light colored ones that don’t pop, but don’t worry. They soften as the sauce cools. I like to serve my sauce at room temp or slightly warm. The sauce can also be made up to 2 days before and kept in the fridge.
My favorite Thanksgiving “memory” had to be when I was five and my mother took on the daunting task of hosting about 50 people for Thanksgiving dinner. My mother, along with a few of my uncles, decided it would be fun to try and smoke a turkey (as well as have a roasted one), so they set up the smoker in our backyard and let it go all night long. My bedroom faced our backyard, so I smelled roasting turkey all night long! Well the smoker got WAY TOO HOT and the bird in the morning was burnt to a crisp. Thank goodness we had a backup bird for the oven, but the kids got the option of eating pizza for dinner! There were no complaints there!
My favorite Thanksgiving memory is of my Grandfather who would always steal my bun while we were eating. It was such a tradition around our Thanksgiving table.
It’s a toss up between cranberry relish and candied yams. How can you pick just one?
My favorite memory is when our family would join our youth group at our church and prepare homemade sweet potatoes for a Thanksgiving Feast outreach in Gary, IN. One year our small youth group (30 or so) bought, peeled, cooked and delivered 220# of homemade sweet pototoes.
My favorite Thanksgiving memory was when our family was playing the game “spoons” after out big feast. My Dad (being slightly competitive) lunged for a spoon and practically sprawled across the table. Well….the table cracked and totally collapsed with my dad in the middle. We all laughed until we were crying.
I loved Thanksgiving the year I got engaged (20+ years ago) although all are special. My dad cooked the whole meal himself. Some of the specific things I remember my father doing is: he scooped out the inside of orange peels and cooked the yams in them. He bar-b-qued the turkey and made the stuffing from “scratch”. My best friend from high school flew in to meet my fiance and both were in awe at my Dad’s talents and willingness to give my mom a “day off”.
Butterhorn rolls, Sweet potato/apples, and the best turkey I have eaten was cooked on an outdoor BBQ.
Definitely my mom’s rolls are the best part of Thanksgiving for me! I love them. I still haven’t mastered them, but I am working on it!
My favorite memory is a talent show we have every Thanksgiving when we get together with family. Family members come up with some silly stuff. I love Thanksgiving!
I remember when I was young and my parents oven went out the day before Thanksgiving. They bought one of the first ever microwaves to cook the turkey. I remember them being so surprised when the turkey didn’t brown! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!
I LOVED the rice and gravy made by my mama and my grandma!
My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the left-overs! Me and several friends get up at 3am Friday morning meet at 4am and hit the Black Friday Sales. By lunch time we meet at one of ours house, unload the gifts and heat-up left-overs and then wrap the gifts we bought and watch football! I love this tradition. These are the only presents that usually get wrapped BEFORE christmas eve!
I love Thanksgiving. My dad always prepares the entire meal by himself, but doesn’t do pies. However, he insists on picking up 3 from a little Amish restaurant each year, rather than have have someone else bake them and bring them to dinner. About 3 years ago, he almost got into a fight with 2 little old ladies over the restaurant’s last pumpkin pie! He still goes each year to get his pies, he just doesn’t wait until the last minute any longer.
I love Thanksgiving…! Well, except one year when I was cooking for 12 people and my boyfriend took the dressing out of the oven and set the pyrex pax on top of a hot burner. The pan exploded, and dressing and glass went flying all over the kitchen. *eep*
My mom always makes the most delicious dinner rolls for Thanksgiving. Some plain with homemade jam and some with orange. Mmm, it’s something to look forward to every year. I’m not going home this year so I’m trying to talk myself into making these but I don’t do yeast so I’m scared.
Thanksgiving Rocks!!–and so does your site!!–the preparation of the meal–which appetizers,sides,desserts to choose–we always have an extended group of family and friends–I like to include old family favorites and inject some new ones each year–we always have my special Cranberry-Strawberry Sauce and lots of great pies –some for us and others to give to special friends and neighbors–a truly special day!!
My favorite blooper is the year my sis in law hosted turkey day for the family. She asked my mother in law to carve the turkey and low and behold she found the bags inside with the neck and gizzards in it! She still hasn’t lived it down.
I remember a few years ago my SIL cooked the turkey, only she cooked it upside down. It tasted great, I think having the dark meat ontop helped keep it moist. But it sure did look funny seeing it come out of the oven with the legs sticking straight up!
thanksgiving is one of my FAVORITE holidays!..i love cooking and baking and spending time with my family, so this holiday pretty much rolls all of those things into one day!..my favorite thanksgiving memories include spending the day at my grandparents’ house..my grandma was a fabulous cook and always made the most amazing thanksgiving meals..the smell of wonderfulness cooking in her kitchen as we walked in the front door is something that i will never forget..my grandma passed away this past august and this will be our first thanksgiving without her, but the memories that she created for me will last a lifetime.
I just discovered your website and have it bookmarked! I’m going to try to get it into my Google Reader so I don’t miss anything!
Anyway, my favorite memories of Thanksgiving involve my grandmother. She came for Thanksgiving every year so that the day after Thanksgiving we could make Dutch cookies. Grandma Antoinette’s father had been a baker in Holland. When they came to the U.S. and my grandmother married a farmer she worked on getting the cookie recipe down to a size small enough for a family. I can’t imagine how large the original recipe was as the one we use now requires clearing off a kitchen counter so we can mix the dough there. I don’t have the recipe but remember it starts with 12 pounds of flour and 6 pounds of butter. My sister and mom still make the cookies every year. Those of us that live close enough get rolls of dough to roll out and cut out to bake. Those further away get the cookies all ready baked. My aunt got the cookie boards when my grandmother died 9 years ago so we just use cookie cutters now. But it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving or Christma without those wonderful cookies!
First of all let me say I love your website. My memories of thanksgiving always include my grandma’s fruit salad with real whip cream.
One year when I still lived at home, we had a Thanksgiving disaster! Mom got up and put the turkey in early and about 11 am, she realized the house didn’t smell like turkey…our oven had died! We were supposed to eat about 1pm and she was panicked! Luckily she called our neighbor and we were able to finish cooking the turkey and bake the rolls and casseroles in her oven. We laugh about it now, but poor Mom was in tears that morning!
Thanks for the great giveaway!
My favorite part of Thanksgiving is the leftovers. In my opinion the leftovers are often better than the first meal itself. For this reason we often cook a bigger than needed turkey just so we have plenty of leftovers.
For Thanksgiving last year I used red potatoes for our mashed potatoes! UGH! They were like glue!!! Definitely not the mashed potatoes of choice……..
My favorite recipe is my Grandma’s stuffing. If there is no stuffing, than there is no Thanksgiving in my book…lol.
I have a blooper to share. I have been cooking Thanksgiving dinner for many years, so I have no excuse, but 2 years ago, we had a group of 29 people for our Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone was arriving for dinner when I realized that I hadn’t started the mashed potatoes! I flew into gear and several people helped peel 20 pounds of potatoes. I made the mistake of starting to boil them before they were all peeled and cut up, so in the final analysis, in the pot, the potatoes were in various stages of cooking and some were overcooked and soggy and some were undercooked. When I mashed them, they were just a soggy mess, and turned out horrible. I was the most disappointed of all, because mashed potatoes are my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner! You can bet that will NEVER happen again!
my favorite recipe is cornbread dressing which I learned to make from my grandmother..a close second would be her chicken and dumplings
I love all of the Thanksgiving food. I have never made homemade cranberry sauce, but this year I am going to try.
I love the mashed potatoes and rolls best. Bring on the carbs!!
Stuffing and the pies are my favorite (along w/the butterball turkey of course)
! I can’t wait for T-day!
We spent a year living in Pennsylvania in 1984, and I was able to buy pewter dinnerware at the Wilton Armetale factory in Columbia PA. We have eaten off of that dinnerware every Thanksgiving since. It brings back wonderful memories of our time in PA!
Here is a pretty good recipe for the sweet potato lovers out there. Sweet Potato Casserole.
Filling:
3 c. sweet potato (4 big ones-orange not yellow)
1/2 c. sugar
1/3 c. milk
1/2 c. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs beaten
Topping:
1/3 c. melted butter
1/2 c. flour
1 c. light brown sugar
1 c. chopped pecans
Boil and mash potatoes. Mix in sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and milk. Put in 13/9 baking dish. For topping, melt butter and mix in remaining ingredients. Sprinkle on top of potato mixture. Bake 25 min, @ 350 degrees. Serves 10-12.
When I was growing up, our family never had pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving because my Dad doesn’t like it. So our tradition was to have apple pie and mince meat pie. Now Thanksgiving just doesn’t seem the same unless those two pies are included. (Personally, I could do without pumpkin pie as well. I can’t blame it all on my Dad!)
My very favorite memory is of the cousins making up a skit about the pilgrams and indians for the adults. We would work on our costumes and lines all day. While all the adults where enjoying their pumpkin pies we would put on our show. Oh, those where the days!
I love Thanksgiving. It’s all about family, food and fun. I’m heading to Utah to share the holiday with my daughters and families. Just give me family and I’m happy, you can also throw in some dark meat turkey and stuffing, why not.
My grandma makes some of the best lemon meriange pie ever. I look forward to it ever year.
I love stuffing!!! Growing up, the only time we had stuffing was on Thanksgiving and Grandams. She made the BEST stuffing!! I was SO excited when Stove Top started making stuffing (or when Mom started buying it). The first time I tried it, I about gagged! That is NOT stuffing.
One year I had my husband make the pumpkin pie. He forgot to put in the sugar! Wow, it did not taste good!
The first Thanksgiving my husband and I shared was with my Grandmother. We had been married a whole month and were excited to start our own traditions, but went down to see her with a few other of my cousins for my grandmothers’ dinner. Grandma was a wonderful cook. Imagine our surprise when we all sat down at the table for ham, potatoes, and green beans. No turkey!! How can you have Thanksgiving dinner without turkey?! I had never seen a more disappointed husband. We still laugh about it to this day.
I love Thanksgiving. My husband was actually born on a Thanksgiving day, and I am so grateful to have him in my life. I also love all the food and family that gathers at Thanksgiving.
It was my daughters first attempt at doing Thankgiving..and she wanted to do most of it herself! She was trying to be so organized and had made herself a time schedule for every little item she was making (well almost everything). Imagine her surprize when she realized about an hour before dinner..that she had forgot to take the turkey out of the frdge that was downstairs and put it in the oven. She called me in a panic!! I told her not to worry, that I had a turkey in the oven and would be glad to trade her for her uncooked one. We all had a good laugh around the dinner table, imagining what Thankgiving would be like without a turkey.
I love Thanksgiving. My favorite dish is stuffing. We make it with seasoned bread cubes like Mrs. Cubinson. Saute onion and garlic and then cover bread with broth and melted butter until moist. Unlike the recipe given above, though, I like mine crispy. I cook it until crispy and then put lots of gravy on it. That is my favorite dish.
I love to host Thanksgiving at our house! 2 years ago we moved 400 miles away from my family. It has become a tradition that my family comes to visit us now, which is amazing, considering that they (california natives) come to Utah from California to brave the cold weather we usually have here in November. We love spending time together!
My favorite Thanksgiving memories are times spent with my extended family.
I was pregnant Thanksgiving Day 2 years ago and just wanted that baby out! She came 2 days after the big feast. I guess she just wanted to eat some turkey first! This year her birthday is on Thanksgiving Day.
I love your blog. I actually don’t cook anything for Thanksgiving. My husband does the turkey and stuffing and we go to his brother’s house. I guess I’m pretty lucky not to cook that day!
My funniest Thanksgiving memory happened a couple of years ago. My husband generally smokes our turkey in an outdoor smoker and makes a great rub for it as well. A few years ago, he forgot to put the drip pan under the turkey (the one that catches dripping fat). I guess he forgot that fat is highly flammable. When he went out to check on the turkey, he noticed a lot of extra smoke coming out of the smoker. He took the lid off to discover the whole bird was in flames! Luckily, though it only burned off the rub and the skin and the rest of the turkey was saved and still delicious.
I enjoy inviting people we know of different ethnic backgrounds to a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, and asking them to bring a dish to share. It is always so much fun.
My favorite part of Thanksgiving is being able to spend time with both my family and my husband’s family. Because we live about 300 miles away from them, we don’t get to see them often… so the Holidays are a great time to catch up! One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories is playing games! FUN and COMPETETIVE games! Never a dull moment. Thanks for the opportunity to win a Thanksgiving Turkey!! YUMMY!
One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories is from a few years ago. Do to work schedules me, my husband and son were unable to share the holiday with my family, which I look forward to each year. We decided at the last minute to make a full meal for the three of us. It was the first time I attempted to make my Grandmother’s Cornbread dressing and I was so excited that it actually came out correctly that I took photos to send to my Mom to show her. Even though we were unable to share the holiday with my extended family, we had a nice day with just us. A huge meal of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, acorn squash, green beans, rolls and three different pies. We had so many leftovers that we have to now laugh at how much food we cook that day.