One of my favorite nerdy cooking challenges I like to give myself each year is thinking of new ways to use leftovers after the big Turkey-Day feast! Sometimes it feels like those leftovers can last for weeks, and you’re eating turkey sandwiches until you never want to see another turkey again until next Thanksgiving. I made a few of the Thanksgiving classics and experimented with a new idea for leftovers this year: layering them into a Thanksgiving leftover inspired pot-pie! Everything in this recipe can be pulled from your holiday leftovers. Start with some pie dough leftover from your holiday baking, toss in chopped up turkey and keep it juicy with some leftover gravy drizzled on top, and layer it with leftover mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce before baking with another layer of pie crust on top. The result is a slice of Thanksgiving that has just about every key leftover packed into each bite! My husband jokingly suggested that I should call this Pilgrim Pie, a rustic little nod to Thanksgiving’s roots, and I think it fits the dish perfectly! Earmark this one for your turkey-day leftovers next weekend, full recipe below:
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Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and in the past few years, Friendsgiving has been moving up the list too! At Friendsgiving you get all of the perks of a Thanksgiving feast (more stuffing please!) without any crazy family drama, and usually a few more holiday cocktails. We attended a Friendsgiving brunch this weekend and it was a blast, I ate enough that I started to resemble a Thanksgiving turkey! In preparation for lots more holiday events, Friendsgiving included, Target Grocery sent me a big box of Thanksgiving essentials, and challenged me to step up my holiday table game using only products from Target. Inspired by a local and seasonal treat — cranberries — I set out to share a handful of ideas to bring cranberry flavors to your holiday table with all of my favorite Target products. From cocktails to appetizers to desserts, I’ve got a cranberry spin on just about every Thanksgiving angle!
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Thanksgiving is only 10 days away, which is totally boggling my mind! Over the weekend I started to write down a quick list of recipe ideas, items I need to stock up on from the grocery store, and a handful of my favorite entertaining pieces I plan to pack up and take with me when we head to my family’s house! My siblings and parents give me a hard time because I arrive for the holidays as though I needed to bring my entire kitchen with me – but I’m loyal to my favorite cooking tools, and have some go-to entertaining pieces that always make prep and serving easier. I ‘ve done a post before on my cooking essentials, and thought it would be fun this year to share my all-time favorite entertaining pieces to expand my list!
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I’ve got one last minute recipe to add into the Thanksgiving mix for tomorrow, a savory, skillet-baked corn bread stuffing with apples and sausage. I didn’t grow up with corn bread stuffing (mom, we need to have a talk about this), but I love it and think it’s got such a savory and sweet flavor combination perfect for your turkey-dinner plate! Full recipe below:
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Countdown to Turkey Day is on! I cannot wait to eat all.the.stuffing. I’m not ashamed to admit it, I love the junky, classic, out-of-the-box stuffing. But one can never have enough stuffing, so I’ve been experimenting with some new recipes for this delectable, carb-y side dish. This recipe uses brioche which gives it a light and fluffy texture, and it has tons of flavor from the maple roasted squash and onions. Plus a little fresh sage adds that seasonal flavor that makes it just taste like Thanksgiving. It was a winner when I brought it to a Friendsgiving party last week so this one has earned a spot in my holiday rotations! Full recipe below:
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We’ve been in our house for exactly one month now, and are starting to finally feel settled (yay!), but aren’t in a place yet to be hosting a massive Thanksgiving dinner. I dream of this though! Maybe in the next few years we’ll be ready to host on our own, I mean, it’s basically the Super Bowl of entertaining and eating and I think I’d be a pretty strong contender at that game (ladies and gentlemen, the first time a sportsanalogy has ever been used on this site!). Even though I’m not hosting, I still have lots of ideas for a spectacular Thanksgiving tables to share, so I worked with Julie from Posh & Prep Calligraphy to come up with a few special details that are easy to translate to your own turkey day celebrations!
This recipe should come with a disclaimer: if you are on a diet right now please immediately close this window and don’t read any further — I can’t be responsible for what you do next after you’ve seen this recipe! At our annual friendsgiving celebration this past weekend I decided to test a fresh spin on scalloped potatoes and they were a hit. I heard lots of mmmms, and ahhhhs, and then a few shrieks when I told my girlfriends that the potatoes were boiled in heavy cream and baked with three cups of cheese in between them. I’m sorry I’m not sorry, but it was worth it. What makes these scalloped potatoes different? I layered in sweet potatoes with traditional yellow potatoes, and gave the dish a distinctive, nutty flavor with a mixture of gruyere and manchego cheeses. Full recipe for the calorie-brave below:
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Remember when brussels sprouts were that food you would use to describe what could only be the worst possible meal someone could possible force upon you as a child? Like, ugh, I’ll eat anything but brussels sprouts, yuck! And now I’m 30, and brussels sprouts are having their moment, and I’ve probably said out loud at some point in the last 6 months: “you should really order the pancetta skillet brussels sprouts, they’re the chef’s speciality” or, “I can’t stop thinking about those fried buffalo brussels sprouts with whipped blue cheese mouse from last night’s menu.” Funny how things like that work out, right? So while b-sprouts are in my culinary spotlight, I thought it would be a good time to mix up how I make them at home and tested this recipe with the intention of it being a Thanksgiving side dish.
It’s *almost* a salad — a way to get a little bit of green onto my gravy-soaked plate on Turkey Day. The good thing is that you can make it all on the stovetop — it’s always smart to have dishes that don’t take up precious oven-room on Thanksgiving. The dish also tastes great served hot or cooled down to room temperature. So go ahead, make sure you eat your veggies! Full recipe below: read more
- Mushroom caps
- Leftover mashed potatoes
- Parmesan cheese
- Leftover baked sweet potatoes (1 potato)
- 1 tsp Butter
- 1 tsp Honey
- Leftover stuffing
- Cooked italian sausage
- Salt and pepper
- Parsley (for garnish)
- Green Onions (for garnish)
- Crispy bacon (for garnish)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Clean the mushroom caps and remove stems.
- Using a small spoon or melon-baller, scoop out the inside of the mushroom caps to make room for filling (cup the mushrooms in your hand to keep them from breaking.
- For Mashed Potatoes: fill mushroom caps with leftover potatoes, sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
- For Sweet Potatoes: combine sweet potatoes with a drizzle of honey and melted butter; fill caps with mixture.
- For Stuffing: combine leftover stuffing with cooked and chopped italian sausage, fill caps with mixture.
- Arrange filled mushroom caps in a baking dish, salt and pepper to taste, and bake for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven.
- Remove and garnish: add green onions to the top of the mashed potato stuffed mushrooms; chopped crispy bacon to sweet potato stuffed mushrooms, and minced parsley to the top of stuffing filled stuffed mushrooms.
At the Wayfair + Boston Bloggers ‘Home for the Holidays’ Event last weekend, my Boston-blogging partner in crime Alison gave a great chat about planning your content around the holidays and one of her pieces of advice was resurfacing old posts to share when seasonally relevant. It got me thinking about some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes from blog posts past. As I’m sure you’re in a similar Thanksgiving menu planning mode that I’m in this week, I thought I’d round up four of my favorite that offer a fun twist on a traditional Thanksgiving food element.
To start things off: a seasonal cocktail that brings apple cider to the forefront, Apple Autumn Punch. A tasty appetizer that brings in the sweet flavors of apple pie but the savory balance of a baked brie, Baked Brie with Apple Compote. We always have mac and cheese on our Thanksgiving menu for the vegetarians, and this version is baked in cored apples; Mac and Cheese Baked Apples. For dessert, I’ve tried a bite sized version of pumpkin pies and used cookie cutters to spell out a message of thanks: Thankful for Pie.
