It is almost Turkey Day! It is one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite. You get to have your whole family together and eat copious amounts of food. The bonus is you don’t have to worry about buying a gift for anyone or sending cards. It is all being thankful and eating. Perfect!
We are having about fifteen people for dinner. There will be the usual suspects to eat such as turkey, potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, corn, cranberry sauce and then of course dessert. To the main dinner menu I am adding glazed carrots this year (recipe to follow). My Mom used to make them. Dessert will be pumpkin pie cake (my kids’ favorite) and lemon meringue (my favorite). I am adding a molasses cake to the mix this year and I will be sharing the recipe in this post.
Before I share my Thanksgiving recipes I want to share a soup recipe that I made recently. It was delish! It is a yellow split pea soup. My brother-in-law, Hank, likes this kind of soup and he was the first one to introduce me to yellow peas. It is a big deal in Canada and Sweden.
Yellow Split Pea Soup (powerhungry.com)
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/2 cup chopped celery
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 cup dried yellow split peas
- 4 cups water
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 teaspoon salt + pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup diced carrot
- In a medium soup pot, sauté onion, celery, and garlic in hot oil over medium-high heat for 3 to 4 minutes.
- Add remaining ingredients (except carrots) and simmer, covered, for 35 minutes.
- Add carrots and simmer, covered, an additional 10 minutes.
*You can also just throw everything in a slow cooker on low and let it cook all day.
Now, onto the two Thanksgiving recipes. My Mom used to just make glazed carrots with brown sugar and butter. I am going to add cinnamon to that and see how we like it that way. I also love cooking in cast iron so I am using that rather than a traditional casserole dish. I think it adds something to the flavor.
Glazed Carrots
- 10 Carrots, peeled and then cut in half OR 2 dozen baby carrots.
- salt & pepper
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 6 tbsp butter, diced
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Put the carrots in a cast iron skillet and sprinkle them with salt, pepper, cinnamon and brown sugar. Mix them up.
- Sprinkle the diced butter in the pan on top of the carrots.
- Roast for 25-30 minutes or until the carrots are cooked through. About half way through, mix the carrots up to ensure even baking.
- Pour any leftover butter on top of the carrots in your serving platter.
Molasses Cake (recipe from Romaine Hohenstein)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. After 10 minutes of baking you will lower the temperature to 350.
- 4 cups of flour
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup shortening
- 1 cup molasses
- 2 cups hot water
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
Mix both sugars and the flour in one bowl. Cut in the shortening until you have the consistency of a crumbly pie crust dough. Reserve one cup of this mixture.
In another bowl dissolve the baking soda in the hot water. Once completely dissolved add the molasses and mix. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix but don’t over mix. Pour in a greased and floured 8″ by 10″ sheet pan. Sprinkle the 1 cup of crumbs that you reserved on top of the cake batter. This forms a little topping for the cake.
Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes and lower oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake for approximately 30 minutes (baking time varies in individual ovens). Test with a toothpick for doneness.
The way I first had the cake was just as I shared above. I am going to try it with a marshmallow icing for Thanksgiving. I think it will be a nice compliment to the cake. Although, it is delicious as written.
Marshmallow Frosting (liluna.com)
- butter (make sure it’s at room temperature)
- marshmallow fluff
- powdered sugar
- vanilla extract (extract, not flavoring)
- Beat butter and powdered sugar until fluffy and well mixed.
- Mix in fluff and vanilla by hand and mix well.
This is super easy and really light and delicious.
So, let’s do some life hacking, shall we?
The safety pin was invented by Walter Hunt who lived in New York state in 1849. He received a patent for it in that year. Walter was a prolific inventor and continued inventing until his death in 1859. (Wait a minute. I think my teacher is showing. Old habits die hard.) In any case there are a lot of uses in today’s world for the lowly safety pin.
- Keep your keys close during trips to the beach or amusement park by attaching to your clothing with a safety pin.
- You can also use a safety pin attached to a zipper tab to lengthen your reach.
- When wearing certain items of clothing like a razor back tank you can use a safety pin to attach your bra straps to each other. They won’t show!
- When putting away pairs of items like socks, gloves or mittens you can attach them to each other with a safety pin so they don’t get separated.
- A safety pin can also be used to clean out tiny holes like those in a garlic press.
- If you’re going to a crowded event or city, loop a safety pin around your bag’s zipper, and then pin it to the strap or purse’s fabric. This will make it much harder for unwanted hands to sneakily open your bag.
- If you have static cling in your pants, skirt or dress attach a safety pin near the hem. No more static cling!
- You can also create do it yourself plate hangers by gluing a safety pin with hot glue to the back of a plate. The end of the pin with the closure should be down which leaves the loop part up providing the loop you need to hook onto a nail.
- You can use a pin to rethread a drawstring in a hoodie or pair of pants. Just attach the pin to the string and use it to feed the string through the clothing.
- Always keep a safety pin in your first aid kit.
Thanks Walter Hunt!!!
Discounts! Discounts!
Whenever you purchase anything, book a hotel room, rent a car, book a flight ALWAYS remember to ask about a discount. Some popular ones are AAA, AARP, Senior, Military, and Teacher. I recently found out that my garbage pick up company has a senior discount. It all adds up! As my Mom used to say, “Add it up over a year and it is worth it.”
- Cut costs with scissors. When you are at the end of a tube of moisturizer, toothpaste, etc. use your scissors to carefully snip the tube open. You’ll get few more applications.
- If you want to try an expensive restaurant do it at lunch time. The lunch menu is always cheaper and you can see if you like it in an less expensive way. Happy hour is another option where you can try appetizers, usually at half price, and save a bundle.
- Start a new load of laundry while the dryer is still warm. It saves on having to heat up the dryer again.
- Remember to compare drug prices at your local drug stores. They can vary wildly from one to the other. I need a medicine for my dog once. I called around. It was $90 at one, $40 at another and just $9 at a locally owned drug store.
- When traveling in the summer you can sometimes rent dorm rooms at universities while their students are not in residence. You can find this in Europe especially.
- Many of the major credit cards like American Express, MasterCard and Visa often provide extended warranties for many products at no extra charge. Be sure to check before buying a warranty at the store.
- “Intraday Stays” are a thing. Many hotels offer 8 hour stays during day with no over night at as much as 75% off. You have use of the room, the pool, spa, exercise center, etc. To check this out go to HotelsByDay.com and Between9and5.com
- If you are an AARP member you can take a defensive driving course online and save on your car insurance for 3 years.
- Buy gift cards for people on your Christmas list at up to 35% off through CardCash.com or CardPool.com.
- If you want to stream a movie or get an e-book for free just google it. There are many ways to get these! If you hold a library card you can do it too. My local library has an app called Libby where you can have “one tap reading”.
Crafts
You know me by now. I always have a project or two or three going. It makes me happy. Since we last visited I have had a few and I have picked 3 to share with you.
Rag Balls
So easy and yet it took me a long time to get around to this project. I priced styrofoam balls to use as a base for the rag balls (you know, so I didn’t have to use so much material) and the cost, for me, was prohibitive. Then I happened to think about the bag of tennis balls I had hanging around for my dogs. Our tennis coach at school gave me the used balls so I had quite a few. If you don’t have that option you can always ball up newspaper or foil to form the base for your rag balls.
I had a lot of old jeans and some patriotic material left from a project. I decided to use these for the rag balls. From Memorial Day until Labor Day they will grace my coffee table.
I simply cut the fabric in strips and using a hot glue gun to secure the ends began wrapping the tennis balls.
They are displayed in an old wooden bowl used for butter.
Christmas Wreaths
My cousin, Linda, and I get together periodically throughout the year at one of our houses to have lunch and do a craft project. The latest project was a Christmas wreath using an embroidery hoop.
Materials;
- 12 inch embroidery hoop
- Fat quarter of fabric in Christmas pattern
- Greenery, etc to add spice
- iron on letters spelling “Joy”
1.Apply your letters in the center of the fabric.
Then stretch the fabric taunt in the hoop. We used vinyl letters that didn’t require ironing which I cut using my Cricut Explore Air 2. This allowed us to apply the letters after they were in the hoop.
Then we cut the excess fabric from the back of the hoop. You could secure it with glue if you feel you need to but ours looked like it would be okay without that step.
Using a hot glue gun we then added our adornments to the top of the “wreath” which also hid the joint of the hoop. (The joint makes a nice hanger for your wreath.)
Viola!
The next wreath I put together at home using some cookie cutters from my vintage cookie cutter collection. I simply had a small wreath and using my trusty hot glue gun affixed the cutters to it. (Using hot glue on an item such as the cookie cutters allows you to easily remove them if you want to display them in a different way in the future.) A bow was all it needed!
Finally, I would like to leave you with this great idea! We have several stray cats in our neighborhood and I saw this idea online to keep them warm and protected during our cold and snowy winter. You can cut a hole in a cooler and it makes a nice little shelter for a cat. I have one cooler, my daughter has two and a friend donated one to the cause. My son is going to cut a hole in each one for me and I will cover the raw edges with something so the cats won’t get hurt.
Have an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and/or family! I will post again next month. See you then!
