Category — Holiday

I had fully intended to post my Thanksgiving tablescape today but I can’t let the opportunity slip by without wishing my most loyal follower, most frequent commenter, my best friend, one of my two favorite people in the world, my beautiful (inside and out) daughter – a Happy Birthday!

Marissa Lynn, I love you to the moon and back! Ever since you’ve lived away from home, basically since your freshman year in college, my favorite thing about Thanksgiving has been that it is so close to your birthday. You always come home for Thanksgiving, which means I always get to celebrate YOU!

I’ll keep with the Thanksgiving posts and show a few photos of the Thanksgiving centerpieces I made. How gorgeous are these Velvet Queen Sunflowers!

They really do look and feel like velvet. I found them at Trader Joe’s and went crazy over them.

I used my orange and green pumpkin soup tureens as the vessels for the flowers. I then set those, along with their lids, atop wood slabs that were set on top of dyed and natural burlap runners.

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Sometimes it seems as if sweet potatoes are the ugly stepchild at Thanksgiving dinner. The dish that is expected but not overly anticipated or appreciated.

I remember looking forward to them when I was a kid, but today we eat them more than just once a year. Sweet potatoes are in fashion all year long. Then there are sweet potato fries, which are offered and ordered nearly as often as their French fry cousins. If you’re like me, you select them over potato fries more often than not.

I have to admit that this was the case with this dish at our Thanksgiving buffet. Most guests took a small portion for their plate, but chose to fill up on the stars of the day; the turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

And that was just fine with me. These maple-roasted sweet potatoes made great leftover dishes for breakfast (sweet potato hash with eggs) lunch (added to a turkey taco) and dinner (part of a black bean chili or puréed and added to risotto).

When shopping for sweet potatoes, I bought three varieties in a pretty trio of colors.

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I don’t know how other bloggers get recipes up for the holidays before the holiday! I suppose I could write up this recipe and date it to post in early November 2017, but that seems like much more forethought than I ever want to have to think about!

Instead, I’ll post this and another Thanksgiving recipe, along with my Thanksgiving tabelscapes this week and remind you about them next year, that sounds more reasonable and realistic to me.

Two notes: The first concerns the brine bag in this recipe: While shopping, I was in a hurry and could not immediately find a brine bag at the grocery store. Instead of asking for assistance, I spotted slow-cooker liners and thought, “They’ll work!”

Yeah, not so much! The liner was a smidgen too small. I could barely gather it all up and seal the bag. I was paranoid about the bag opening and leaking, so I put it into another bag. I still wasn’t secure in the leakage possibilities, so I put that into another bag. By then, I’d used 3 of the 4 bags in the box, so I thought, “What the heck!” and put all that into another bag! All ended well, as the four bags held and not a drop escaped.

My advice – for peace of mind – search out and use a true brine bag!

Second: I was at Cost Plus World Market the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I found a yummy brine mix. I used 1 ¼ cups of it in place of the salt, peppercorns, and Italian seasoning in the recipe below. If you come across a good-looking mix, you can do the same or just follow the recipe as written.

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I saw two cute pumpkins on social media and I just had to do them both.

For each project, you need to get yourself a nice big pumpkin.

Cut out the tops.

And pull out all those seeds.

Once they’re all cleaned out, you’re ready to go.

The first is the Lazy Man’s Jack-O-Lantern. My friend, Bridget, posted it on Facebook and it is right up my alley!

I always struggle with deciding what sort of face I want to make. With this, there’s no thinking involved. Just use a skewer to poke out two little eyes.

Use the same skewer to score out a mouth…

…going deeper and deeper until you’re cutting it out. And that’s all there is to it. I think it’s adorable.

You gotta admit – he’s pretty cute when he’s lit up.

I found cool pumpkin #2 on the HGTV Instagram page. You’ll need your cleaned-out pumpkin, a box of wine, and some permanent markers for this one.

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At last, the final post from the 4th of July Pot-Luck Pool Party. It only took two weeks to get all the recipes posted, that’s not so bad.

If you want to see the menu in its entirety, you can always go to the link over on the left column of this page, click on the “Menu and Party Ideas” page and you’ll find not only this party but many others.

The good news is that the recipes for all the desserts we served at the party are already posted on this site. There is one more fun idea though, so don’t go running off.

First up is Tram’s Famous Key Lime Pies! Tram brought the pies to my 4th party two years ago, so the recipe is posted HERE.

It’s fun to go back and read that post since Zak & Zoey were only 4 months old at that gathering.

So sweet! As is Tram’s pie.

Next, I baked my super easy All-American Berry-Cherry Flag Pie. It is going to be at every 4th party from here on out. Maybe next time I can convince someone else to make it though.

I posted the recipe for these Mason Jar Lid Hand Pies on July 3rd. But how cute is this bakery display stand? I found it at The Painted Fox, one of my favorite shopping websites. Love it!

Lastly, we have the Mason Jar Ice Cream Bar. Above you see the cute sprinkles and toppings displayed.

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This is the second of the two main courses from the 4th of July Pot-Luck Pool Party.

Have you heard of Frogmore Stew? How about Lowcountry Boil? The Boil, I knew about, the Stew I didn’t. Or at least I thought I didn’t. Turns out they are the same thing.

Here is the history of this dish, according to Coastal Living Magazine, “Once called Frogmore Stew, this one-pot wonder was created by a National Guardsman when he needed to cook a meal for 100 soldiers. Richard Gay, who learned the recipe from his family, had everyone remembering his stew. The dish was named Frogmore, where Richard was from, by the guards who teased him about home. The United States Postal Service eliminated the name Frogmore, which changed this popular dish to Lowcountry Boil.”

You can use whatever type of cooked sausage you would like. I prefer Aidells Pineapple & Bacon Smoked Chicken Sausage, which I find at Costco. I also get the shrimp at Costco. It is already deveined and ready to drop in the pot.

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The first of my two main-course dishes for the 4^th of July Pot-Luck Pool Party is a pulled pork recipe that came from Williams-Sonoma. I altered the recipe to fit my needs.

Need #1 – I did not want to buy a jar of the Williams-Sonoma pulled pork starter. It cost too much and after going online and looking at the list of ingredients, I had all of it on hand anyhow, so I made my own.

Need #2 – I buy my pork shoulder at Costco and a 2.5 pound piece (which is what the Williams-Sonoma recipe called for) would be a joke at Costco. Mine weighed in at a whopping 15 pounds. This meant I needed to quadruple the original recipe, which was more than fine because the original served only 4 to 6 and I had more than 24 mouths to feed. I realize that 15 pounds is 6x as much, but the remaining ingredients only needed to be 4x more.

The big trick to the thing was cooking it in a slow cooker in two batches. It wasn’t difficult and took less time and effort than I expected it would. I thought about calling a neighbor to borrow a second slow cooker, but I was too lazy. That is a good option though.

Another issue was that it never even crossed my mind to take a photo of even one sandwich. I have photos of the pork in the chafing dish and of the slaw on the platter. But no individual sandwiches pics or of the cute setup I had for the little sandwich baskets and paper liners that I worked super hard to get all fixed up. Darn it! As you can see, I had to improvise with those “close-up” images. Sad, but it’s all I got.

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I had an abundance of watermelon to use up at the 4^th of July Pot-Luck Pool Party. The week prior, I had purchased four small seedless watermelons to make these tasty treats. Kim, Peggy, Anne, and I were planning to get together at Kim’s new house for a little housewarming happy hour. At the last minute, plans changed. Without the party on the horizon, I don’t know what I would have done with them all!

I used them up in a non-alcoholic watermelon-strawberry-lemon slushy and in this refreshing watermelon salad.

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If you know me, you know that when I have a theme, I carry it out to the nth degree. Here is my train of thought, “Red, white & blue is the theme, so we absolutely have to have a RW&B salad!”  This one did not disappoint. Well, except for the fact that I forgot to add the almonds and didn’t remember until after I took the photos, and more discouraging until after nearly half of the people had made their plates. Oh well.

There was some left, although there probably wouldn’t have been if I’d remembered the darn almonds! Anyhow, I pulled out the lettuce leaves and packed them away in the fridge.

Two days later, I was home alone and thinking about dinner. I was looking at the container of leftover salad trying to decide if I should add new lettuce to it or just toss it in the trash. Suddenly I had an overwhelming craving for pancakes. Seriously, is there anything better than breakfast for dinner? So I whipped up a batch of pancakes and topped them with the leftover, kind of soggy, berries, burrata, and fresh (not soggy!) almonds – delish!

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I know that yesterday I mentioned that I’d highlight the 4th of July main courses and dessert next, but that was before I remembered that in addition to all the wonderful salads and sides my friends brought, I also made a few sides and salads myself. So let’s get to those first.

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