My family has always made a big deal out of holiday feasts. If you haven't noticed we like food. :) Even though we like to eat as healthy and as natural as possible we have always used canned or bagged products for certain recipes. For example the cream of mushroom soup in our green bean casserole has traditionally been Campbell’s.
After I discovered that a wonderful thing like marshmallows could be made at home and the quality was far greater than anything you could purchase at the store, I began to take more advantage of my kitchen. I have been making all sorts of things at home with much less effort then I ever thought possible. This year I decided to make everything from scratch. The only thing I did not do was grow my own ingredients or lay my own eggs ... oh, and I did not toast my own onion toppers for the casserole ... but I'm sure I can learn how to do that for next year.
The meal was AMAZING!! At least I thought it was. There was a bit of a salt issue with the turkey. Steve and Nathan both still like the texture of the Campbell’s mushroom soup better but they agree that the taste of mine was good. I left the turkey up to mom this year. She did such a great job on her smoked Thanksgiving turkey that I wanted to let her repeat it. This time she decided to do a salt brine and then smoke the bird. Having never done this before we had no idea how salty the final product would be. She followed a recipe and we learned that for us cutting the amount of salt in half would’ve been just fine. Lesson Learned. Still tasted good though.
I learned that jellied cranberry sauce turns out perfect even if you add the sugar at the wrong time. I learned that making soup is time consuming but tastes wonderful and frozen mushrooms create a lot of liquid. Dinner rolls are super easy. Did you know that bread stuffing can be made with moist bread and not dried bread crumbs? I didn't know that. I was running out of time for our 6 pm dinner schedule and realized I had forgotten to dry the bread crumbs, following my mother's advice I just added less liquid and it was great! White mashed potatoes are just buttery goodness; I can't really say more than that. Freshly ground nutmeg and cinnamon mixed in mashed sweet potatoes baked with homemade marshmallows on top can be eaten just by themselves as a delicious dessert. I do have to say that my pumpkin pie was not a perfect 10 like the one I made for Thanksgiving however, it would still get a score of about 8. If you love whipped topping you have got to make it yourself at least once in your life. It is so cool! It only takes about 3 minutes and it looks like flawless white puffy clouds ... and the taste ... oh ... you just have to make it yourself to know.
There are two reasons this Christmas dinner was wonderful. One is the fun I had preparing it along with the knowledge and experience I gained while in the kitchen for 6 + hours. And the second is the fact that everything I prepared was Jacob friendly. I made sure that the ingredients I chose to use were all natural and because I made everything myself, there was no need for extra chemicals and preservatives like the ones found in store bought foods.
As my time management skills improve I will begin to incorporate more homemade cooking into our daily lives and not just on holidays.
I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we did!
After I discovered that a wonderful thing like marshmallows could be made at home and the quality was far greater than anything you could purchase at the store, I began to take more advantage of my kitchen. I have been making all sorts of things at home with much less effort then I ever thought possible. This year I decided to make everything from scratch. The only thing I did not do was grow my own ingredients or lay my own eggs ... oh, and I did not toast my own onion toppers for the casserole ... but I'm sure I can learn how to do that for next year.
The meal was AMAZING!! At least I thought it was. There was a bit of a salt issue with the turkey. Steve and Nathan both still like the texture of the Campbell’s mushroom soup better but they agree that the taste of mine was good. I left the turkey up to mom this year. She did such a great job on her smoked Thanksgiving turkey that I wanted to let her repeat it. This time she decided to do a salt brine and then smoke the bird. Having never done this before we had no idea how salty the final product would be. She followed a recipe and we learned that for us cutting the amount of salt in half would’ve been just fine. Lesson Learned. Still tasted good though.
I learned that jellied cranberry sauce turns out perfect even if you add the sugar at the wrong time. I learned that making soup is time consuming but tastes wonderful and frozen mushrooms create a lot of liquid. Dinner rolls are super easy. Did you know that bread stuffing can be made with moist bread and not dried bread crumbs? I didn't know that. I was running out of time for our 6 pm dinner schedule and realized I had forgotten to dry the bread crumbs, following my mother's advice I just added less liquid and it was great! White mashed potatoes are just buttery goodness; I can't really say more than that. Freshly ground nutmeg and cinnamon mixed in mashed sweet potatoes baked with homemade marshmallows on top can be eaten just by themselves as a delicious dessert. I do have to say that my pumpkin pie was not a perfect 10 like the one I made for Thanksgiving however, it would still get a score of about 8. If you love whipped topping you have got to make it yourself at least once in your life. It is so cool! It only takes about 3 minutes and it looks like flawless white puffy clouds ... and the taste ... oh ... you just have to make it yourself to know.
As my time management skills improve I will begin to incorporate more homemade cooking into our daily lives and not just on holidays.
I hope everyone had as wonderful a Christmas as we did!
