Life has been hectic as usual around here. Winter came in hard, although it did come in late, which was nice. We've had bad combos of snow and ice the last week, making for some pretty hairy driving conditions and we've already had to shovel two feet of snow off of our deck, and it could probably use another shoveling already. Life in the North. What can you say *laugh*.
I do feel pretty darned good this year on my Thanksgiving preparations. Since the earthquake it has felt like we've just shot from one crisis to another (not excluding the 2018 quake). For some odd reason, even with my crazy welting incident a few months back, some horrible health issues my half sister is dealing with across the country and other stuff, I am still feeling pretty together this holiday season, which is nice. Lack of anxiety sure does help to make you feel better about the holidays.
This week I focused on getting some fun stuff done for Thanksgiving. I made four different desserts (we'll choose which one to eat for Thanksgiving and then eat the rest over the coming months for fun desserts) and also some sourdough rolls to eat with Thanksgiving dinner. The cranberry relish is already made up and in the freezer from previous holidays (by the way that stuff freezes AWESOME! I am still using up cranberry relish from 2020 that still tastes great as soon as it is defrosted! I am super duper happy about with it!), ready to be pulled out and defrosted the night before Thanksgiving. The rolls are now in the freezer, ready to be pulled out on the big day. Stuffing is also all ready to go. Basically, on top of having some fun desserts to choose from (I've been using Farmhouse on Boone's recipe for sourdough pie crust and it is awesome! I just mix mine all up in the food processor and it comes together great!), I already have done a bunch of things I always have to do for Thanksgiving (including getting the turkey into the fridge on Wednesday, so it has plenty of time to defrost before I put it into the brine the day before Thanksgiving). Basically, at this point all I have to do on Thanksgiving is make the turkey, the green beans, the cheesy potatoes and heat some stuff up. I'm thrilled as this will make my day a lot less stressful and a lot more relaxing :).
So, for fun, I thought it would be neat to share the dessert and treat recipes I have made for this holiday season so far, why I chose some of them and hopefully give you guys a few, actually pretty easy, recipes to make if you are trying to save time and sanity this holiday season.
This is, by far, one of my favorite holiday recipes to make as it is SO good!!! You would think that cheesecake in a pecan pie would make the pie incredibly heavy to the point it is inedible, but it is the exact opposite. It makes the pie lighter, somehow, and less sweet, so it is the perfect pie to me as I love both cheesecake and pecan pie :).
This year I took a page ala Alton Brown on an old Good Eats episode and replaced the corn syrup (I am out) with Lyle's Golden Syrup (it is kind of hard to source in the US, but if stores don't carry it, Amazon does, which is where I got mine). It came out looking so pretty and I can not wait to try it out :).
I made this recipe because my evaporated milk is in a container that is currently buried under about a cubic ton of donations for the used store that were sourced from my bedroom closet and I was just too tired to dig it out. So, I found this recipe that calls for sweetened condensed milk instead. That I have in the pantry, so I went with it. I have to say it came out looking wonderful from the oven. It didn't crack or anything. I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped it in tons of plastic wrap and aluminum foil for the freezer, but if you look at the pictures on the site, mine turned out pretty much just like theirs.
3. Apple pie
Really, I doubt that one needs a recipe link since I just used some canned pie filling, added a jar of home canned apple slices to it and then sprinkled some additional cinnamon on top of it before adding the top crust. It came out really nice, probably the prettiest from scratch pie crust I've ever made, but I forgot to take a picture of it before putting it into the freezer (I'll try to remember to share a picture when I serve it).
This recipe is really good and it only takes a few minutes to put it all together, and the ingredients are few and simple. I've never tried to freeze it before, but I am going to and see how it goes. My plan is to serve it with fig jam on top as one of my favorite appetizers is to take some home made Heavenly Fig Jam on top, so I figure that a fig cheesecake HAS to be good!
I made these so we'd have snacks on Thanksgiving. Have you guys SEEN the price on crackers lately??? No way, Jose for me. Way out of my budget. So, I did this instead. They came out OKAY...biggest complaint I have is that they needed more salt and came out kind of bland. I think they needed salt in the actual cracker itself (even 1/4 tsp would be enough I think), but I sprinkled Parmesan cheese on them while they were still warm and that helped to up the saltiness a tiny bit, which made them much less bland.
And there you go folks. Some of the things I've made this holiday season. My life has been hectic, so sorry about the erratic blogging schedule. Hopefully that will improve soon.
Hope you guys are having a great holiday season and getting to spend it with people (or animals) that you care about. If I'm not online next week, have a Happy Thanksgiving (for my friends in the US) and be safe and warm!
Enjoy!