Thanksgiving experiments?

Manwaithiel

List the acitivites, culinary or otherwise if you have some fun stuff to share, that you are experimenting with.

Mashed potatoes: I will be mixing yukon golds and reds. The butter from the yukon and the skins of the red should be reallyyyy tasty. Hopefully.

Stuffing: FI and I are using Hawaiian bread to make the bread cubes for our dressing. YUM!

Hosting my parents. That's right. We've just gotten our new apartment and we have been scrambling like mad cows this past weekend to make everything presentable. It looks so good and I really hope my parents like it. And we're going to go Black Friday shopping (there's an amazing outlet mall about half a mile from our apartment.

Your turn.

kathrynhabibti

We're doing Thanksgiving over here (still at IL's house) and I'm not entirely certain what I'm going to do. I'd love to experiment a bit, but FIL is a very picky eater :^| Like those potatoes? Damn, Kate, that sounds so tasty - but FIL refuses to eat the skins, even in bits when the potato's mashed up. Sigh.

mkrupar

I'm a big fan of cornbread stuffing with sausage and granny smith apples. Yum! I also found a recipe online a couple of years ago on oceanspray.com for Roasted Garlic Cranberry Risotto. It was fantastic!

frogurt814

We are deep frying our turkey.  FIL deep fried turkeys last  year for TG and they were fabulous!  H and I are hosting my family at our house this year, and H really wants to fry the turkey so we borrowed the turkey fryer from his dad.  I also like this because it will leave the oven completely open!

Everything else will be pretty normal.  Green bean casserole, stuffing, special potatoes that I make every year (really yummy...they have butter, cream cheese, and sour cream in them), pumpkin pie, etc.

frogurt814

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-party_thanksgiving-experiments?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:37Discussion:a98fe0cf-e22d-4fe7-acc8-c6409f176547Post:6c002213-67f7-4ea6-88dd-13aacafa4d67">Re: Thanksgiving experiments?</a>:
[QUOTE]Be careful with the deep fried turkey, Frogurt!  It's way too easy to set yourself and your house on fire doing that.  There's an excellent episde of Good Eats all about the best and safest way to deep fry, highly recommended.
Posted by aerinpegadrak[/QUOTE]
H's uncle actually caught is garage on fire a few years ago while he was trying to deep fry a turkey.  We weill place the deep fryer far enough way from our house/garage so that we don't burn it down.  H's dad gave us plenty of pointers on deep frying the turkey so I'm hoping all will go well and there won't be any injuries.

aerinpegadrak

Best of luck!  I still do recommend the Good Eats episode, if nothing else, it's entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEPH2Zsi0Jc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZE51ynJkLk&feature=related

MyNameIsNot

Our new thing this year will be moving T-giving to Friday.  My sister is an RN at a hospital, and she's working on Thurs, so we'll just move the whole thing.  Other than that, everything is pretty much the same.  I'm adding maple & roasted pear cheesecake and pumpkin muffins to the mix, but nothing terribly different or exciting.

We're fried a turkey every year for about 7 years now.  It's so good, and not that hard if you know what you're doing.  Just put it on concrete, away from any buildings, and fill your oil correctly.  

Oh, and be sure the turkey is really thawed when you put it in there.  A frozen turkey in hot grease can easily turn into a missile.  

Manwaithiel

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-party_thanksgiving-experiments?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:37Discussion:a98fe0cf-e22d-4fe7-acc8-c6409f176547Post:f1fbf8f7-de3b-45a3-8fa8-e01105ea5c83">Re: Thanksgiving experiments?</a>:
[QUOTE]Our new thing this year will be moving T-giving to Friday.  My sister is an RN at a hospital, and she's working on Thurs, so we'll just move the whole thing.  Other than that, everything is pretty much the same.  <strong>I'm adding maple & roasted pear cheesecake </strong>and pumpkin muffins to the mix, but nothing terribly different or exciting. We're fried a turkey every year for about 7 years now.  It's so good, and not that hard if you know what you're doing.  Just put it on concrete, away from any buildings, and fill your oil correctly.   Oh, and be sure the turkey is really thawed when you put it in there.  A frozen turkey in hot grease can easily turn into a missile.  
Posted by MyNameIsNot[/QUOTE]

Would you pleaseeeee share that recipe? *puppy eyes*

megk8oz

I think the only thing my family has at TG that's not "typical" is kielbasa, which is essentially Polish sausage, if you've never heard of it. My [very Polish] family has it at pretty much every holiday. I honestly didn't think it was weird that we had it until I brought DH to a holiday for the first time and he had no idea wtf it was (He wound up loving it), then later on, he was talking about it with a bunch of our friends, and none of them knew what it was either. ~shrug~ It's delicious, that's what it is.

MyNameIsNot

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_wedding-party_thanksgiving-experiments?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:37Discussion:a98fe0cf-e22d-4fe7-acc8-c6409f176547Post:6a2a38c1-0db4-478c-be82-d8a2d7ebead4">Re: Thanksgiving experiments?</a>:
[QUOTE]In Response to Re: Thanksgiving experiments? : Would you pleaseeeee share that recipe? *puppy eyes*
Posted by Manwaithiel[/QUOTE]

<div>But of course!  <a href="http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/maple-cheesecake-with-roasted-pears">http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/maple-cheesecake-with-roasted-pears</a></div><div>
</div><div>I'm still trying to work out how to add booze to this one.  </div>

Manwaithiel

Thank you!!