The Ferrell Boys and Me . . .: Thanksgiving Food -- Yum!

So I make the same dishes every Thanksgiving. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does that. It's something nice about the tradition of eating the same special food for each holiday. Sometimes . . . Thanksgiving is the ONLY time we eat certain foods.

My menu is typical for a traditional Southern Thanksgiving meal.

Turkey, Dressing, Gravy, Ham, Sweet Potato Casserole, Green Bean Bundles, Macaroni & Cheese, Cranberry Sauce, and Rolls, and Pecan Pie for Dessert.

Last year, my sweet sister-in-law, Marlana, brought a cake and a pot of baked beans so I added those dishes to my menu.

My mother has always made our Cornbread dressing the same way her mother made it . . . by memory without any kind of recipe being written down.

That doesn't work for me. So the first year that Dave and I were married, I had Thanksgiving for my family at my house, AND I persuaded my mother to make her Cornbread Dressing by measuring everything out . . . even though she doesn't normally do that . . . so that I could write it down to have.

Here's my well-used copy . . . which look! Also has Aunt Laura Mae's Chocolate Icing recipe! Yum!

Our family's dressing recipe is a little different from most dressing recipes because we mix the cornbread with crumbled up biscuits instead of bread or crackers. So every Thanksgiving morning, I cook up a big pan of biscuits for breakfast so I can use the leftover biscuits for the dressing later that day. Here's my cornbread dressing from this Thanksgiving:

This Thanksgiving . . . I did something different with my menu . . .

First I totally changed the way I cook my turkey! Usually I follow the directions that come on the turkey wrapper. This year I decided to make the turkey the way Trisha Yearwood makes hers! No kidding! I love her cooking show, and she made "A Yearwood Thanksgiving Meal" a couple of weeks ago . . . and I decided to try making her No Baste, No Bother Roasted Turkey Recipe. I Loved It! It was truly no bother to make!

You just prepare the turkey according to her recipe. I didn't have a carrot so I stuffed my turkey cavity with an onion, a celery stalk, and an apple. Rub butter on it and salt and pepper it and put it breast side up in the roasting pan. (It is at this point I must confess something . . . my turkey did not look like Trisha Yearwood's when I put it in the roasting pan. For one thing, my butter wasn't softened enough to spread prettily . . . mine kind of globbed up. And my turkey was not a whole turkey. I bought a turkey breast and apparently without the legs . . . it wouldn't sit up right! It kept falling over on its side. Oh well . . . )

You pour 2 cups of boiling water into the roasting pan and put a top on the pan. Put the turkey in a preheated 500 degree oven for 1 hour. And then when that one hour is up . . . you cut the oven off and leave the turkey in there for 4 to 6 hours . . . never opening the oven door. We cut our oven off at midnight (after it had cooked for an hour) and went to bed.

The next morning . . . Marlana and I hesitantly lifted the lid off the roaster . . . and the turkey was golden brown and still warm and completely done! It also tasted so good and moist. This is how I'm going to cook my turkeys from now on! I wish I had taken a picture . . . but I didn't!

I also baked a spiral ham on Friday afternoon. I used Trisha Yearwood's Brown Sugar Honey Ham Glaze on it. Pretty much the best ham I've eaten in a while. Dave loved it!

I made my homemade macaroni and cheese but instead of baking it in the oven, I put it in one of my crocks of my double crockpot. I added a little extra milk to my recipe and cut the pot on low. It turned out so good.

They ate it all up! Who would have thought macaroni and cheese would taste good cooked in a crockpot!

Since I was using the double crockpot . . . I needed something in the other crock. . . . what to make?

Crockpot Baked Apples!

You can get the recipe HERE! They were soooo good! I think the apples were my favorite dish.

Marlana made her yummy baked beans, a mandarin orange congealed salad, and green bean bundles.

My sweet daddy made a pecan pie and a sweet potato pie. My sweet momma made the sweet potato casserole (which was Dave's favorite). She puts pecans on top of it and that's what Dave loves. :)

I decided to make a pumpkin pound cake for dessert as well. My friend Karen made one for our Ladies' Retreat in October and it was soooo good. I was surprised because I have never cared for pumpkin. I will have to ask permission to share the recipe. My cake was good too. :)