I am loving my Thanksgiving holiday! First off I get a four day weekend which is always a great thing and I got two great dinners in as many days! :) In my family we go to my in-law's houses on Thursday and we celebrate with my family on Friday. This is because I'm an only child and my husband isn't so this just works better for all involved. Dining with my husband's family is trickier because I am at their mercy as far as gluten goes. Sadly it is never 100% safe to eat food prepared in a non-gluten free kitchen. All it takes is a little flour or a bread crumb to drop into an otherwise safe dish and contaminate it. Someone stirs with the wrong spoon. Tons of room for errors. It really depends on how sensitive you are whether or not you want to chance eating anything at all. Yesterday I felt brave so I made a plate. For today's dinner I did a lot of the cooking. I made sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, wild rice stuffing, chebe rolls, pumpkin cheesecake struesel bars, coconut pie and eggnog ice cream. Basically I was in the kitchen for over 5 hours! I love cooking so that was good with me! :)
First up was a
Sweet Potato Cranberry Bake recipe I found on All Recipes. I followed the instructions exactly except for subbing pecans. I'm not crazy for walnuts. This was so good and different from the usual. I LOVE cranberries and orange together.
This dessert doesn't look wonderful but it tasted heavenly! I found this recipe on the Live Gluten Freely website and I used the Betty Crocker yellow cake mix I received from My Blog Spark to make it.
Pumpkin Stuesel Cheesecake Bars. Everyone claimed this as their favorite dessert. So good. I made a second recipe from the same site and it was also very tasty.
Impossibly Easy Coconut Pie. This uses gluten free Bisquick and it is impossibly easy. I think I will definitely be taking this to potlucks in the future!
I made Chebe cheese rolls. They are small but so, so good. No one missed the gluten! They are kind of more like hush puppies than rolls in size though.
Strangely the most popular recipe of the night is the one that all pictures of disappeared! Well unless you count this one. See that little black dish behind the ham? That would be the
Wild Rice, Sausage, and Apple Stuffing. It was so delicious! I could've eaten the whole pan, I just love rice. I left the onion and celery out of this recipe because we don't like them. Onions are known as the Devil's Fruit in our home. :P Also I used country style ground sausage instead of Italian and Lundberg's wild and brown rice blend. It was kind of like dirty rice with a granny smith apple. So delicious!!!
Mom made the turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, and green beans. Everything was so good! I love Thanksgiving and I was hardly deprived due to gluten issues that's for certain!
Notice the plates and silverware in this picture and the platters for the turkey and ham above? These are all plastic ware!
My Blog Spark send me this Mozaik 8 piece place setting, serving plates, a serving bowl, and serving spoons free to try.
Mozaik is perfect for events where you want something classier than paper plates but don't want to break out the fine china. These are durable enough to wash and reuse but inexpensive enough to be thrown away. I am going with the wash and reuse because I'm thrifty and it's more environmentally sounds to reuse them.
Here is the smaller dessert plate. Featuring a scoop of my eggnog ice cream! I say it all the time but my ice cream maker has got to be the best kitchen appliance I have ever bought!!! Ice cream is so easy to make!
EGGNOG ICE CREAM
1 cup of low fat eggnog
1 cup of heavy whipping cream
1 cup of half and half
2 tsp of rum extract
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of nutmeg
Stir all ingredients together and pour into ice cream maker. Process for 25-30 minutes.
So as for the Mozaik Giveaway....Nothing complicated. Just leave a comment telling me when and why you would choose to use Mozaik. A winner will be chosen at random. Enter by next Friday December 3rd at midnight!
I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving! I sure did! I am so blessed with an amazing family and terrific friends! :)
I love these dishes! It is so much more elegant to take these to the Hollywood Bowl or Picnic in the Park. They are also great by the pool. I especially appreciate the green factor- you can't reuse paper plates.
ReplyDeleteYour Thanksgiving looks yummy.
Kind regards.
Oh my, that coconut pie looks amazing! I will have to try it for sure! The Mozaik would be great for me. I am a single Mom and always have a house full of boys. It's great that they don't have to go into the trash.
ReplyDeleteThose dishes look awesome! I must try the sweet potato cranberry one. Like you, I prefer pecans to walnuts. Walnuts always seem kid of bitter to me.
ReplyDeleteHi Ang,
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my blog. I'm glad that I found your blog. Your food photos look wonderful! I plan to try some of them. I'll be back and following you.