Mama Kay

This year I am so thankful that my girls are getting big enough to be a great help preparing our Thanksgiving Feast!

 

Here is this year’s menu (partially for my own reference):

Roasted Turkey from Smockity Frocks

This is similar to the Alton Brown version I usually make except you cook it at 500 degrees the whole time but put water in the pan underneath. I put an onion, apple and fresh herbs (sage, thyme, & rosemary) in the cavity. We roasted a 23 pound bird in 1 1/2 hours & it was so yummy! Crispy skin on the outside & juicy but cooked on the inside!

Cranberry Apple Sausage Dressing from Allrecipes.com

Everyone enjoyed this but it was a little dry. I think next time I will double the broth.

 

Mashed Potatoes (10lbs)

Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Marshmallows

I cook the sweet potatoes then mash them with butter, a little orange juice and pumpkin pie spices. We then put the mixture in a 9×13 pan and top with mini marshmallows. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Green Bean Casserole

1potato made this recipe this year. We made our own white sauce instead of using cream soup and added some sour cream to thicken it up. Then we mixed in greens beans that we boiled for 5 minutes and some fried onions. Baked for 30 minutes at 350.

 

Butterhorn Rolls from Balancing Bedlam and Beauty

These are a family favorite. We baked 4 dozen rolls and saved the rest to make cinnamon rolls  later.

Grandma brought the applesauce and cranberry sauce.

Pumpkin Pie

We roasted a pumpkin we grew this year but it didn’t taste very pumpkiny.

Apple Pie

I’ll have to post this recipe separately sometime. It is a wonderful recipe that uses 4 pounds of apples in 1 pie. It’s a little extra effort but so worth it!

Apple Cider from my uncle’s apples and my cousin’s apple cider press. YUM!

 

 

We had a wonderful day as a family and enjoying the fruits of our labor. We were able to incorporate many things that we grew ourselves and made ourselves!

Thank you Lord for the abundance you have provided for us and the time we had to spend as a family working and enjoying the day together!

Ingredients

6 lbs ground beef (or a mixture I like to use 1 part beef, 1 part pork & 1 part venison)
2 cups bread crumbs
1 cup finely diced onions
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 cups tomato sauce
6 eggs

Mix the ingredients together. Using a small scoop make meatballs and place them on a cookie sheet. (It is really important not to handle the meatballs very much as it makes the fat melt on your hands & thus dries out the meat.) Bake for 15 minutes at 400 degrees until cooked through. Remove to another clean pan and after cooling place in the freezer to flash freeze. (This takes an hour or so but it can wait on you.) After they are individually frozen put meatballs into bag.

These work great by themselves, served with BBQ Sauce, Sweet & Sour Sauce, in Stroganoff or with Spaghetti.

Makes approximately 120 meatballs

I got together with another friend whose family is similar sized to ours for a cooking day. A successful cooking day is made possible by spending a couple of days getting ready for the cooking day. We planned out our menu, made the grocery lists, went grocery shopping, did prep work and then finally spent 6 hours together assembling and cooking the meals on the actual cooking day.

Here is a list of what we made:

120 Meatballs
4 9×13 Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
4 9×13 Poor Man’s Casseroles
6 9×13 Sloppy Joe Casseroles
4 Gallons Black Bean Chowder
50 Beef, Bean & Cheese Burritos
40 Calzones

Chicken Tenders—were on the list but we decided to make them up separately since I forgot to thaw out the chicken ahead of time

Spent $332.33 for 56 meals which comes out to $5.93/meal or $0.74/person. (We both have 8 people in our families.) These meals are main dish only in most cases and will require additional sides such as bread, salad, etc…

Prior to cooking day we split up the following list of items to prep:
Cook ground beef
Cook chicken
Make chicken broth
Make bread crumbs
Chop onions
Chop celery
Chop carrots
Cook black beans

 

On cooking day we tried to be as efficient as possible. Here’s how we worked through the recipes.

1) Started the Calzone Dough
2) Made the mashed potatoes for the Poor Man’s Casserole
3) Made the white sauce to use in the Chicken Stuffing Casserole
4) Boiled the pasta for the Sloppy Joe Casserole
5) Assembled the Sloppy Joe Casseroles
6) Cut up the cooked chicken
7) Prepared the stuffing (from mixes)
8 ) Assembled the Chicken Stuffing Casseroles
9) Assembled the Poor Man’s Casseroles

10) Made the meatballs
11) Flash froze the meatballs
12) Took a break—yeah! look at all we accomplished so far!
13) Made the Black Bean Chowder
14) Assembled the burritos (the whole crew helped with these which resulted in some crazy looking burritos but boy were we done fast with 8 kids helping!)

15) Assembled & baked the calzones (again with all the kids helping)
16) bagged up the meatballs, burritos and calzones
17) bagged up the extra ground beef all cooked & ready to go
18) divided up the food and dishes

19) Cleaned up the mess (well, partly anyways)
20) Rested! Shew! That was a long day but so worth it!

I admit it. I have security issues. If my food stores are stocked I feel safe. If they are dwindling I am nervous. I justify it with feeling prepared for what may come be it a storm, the lack of a paycheck or increasing food prices. At this point in our time prices are continually rising so everything I put into our pantry is at a better price than I will be able to get it in the future. And so I am stocked and ready for winter!

This house as been such a blessing as far as space to store food. There was a small empty room next to the kitchen that my wonderful father-in-law converted into a pantry for me for Christmas last year. There is a long skinny room behind the garage that already had multiple shelves just the right size for home canned foods. Plus I have a chest freezer (we got from a garage sale), an upright freezer and a refrigerator in the garage. And of course a 27 cu ft fridge in the kitchen we go off of  Craigslist.

I buy grains, sugar, honey and beans in bulk and keep them in 6 gallon food grade buckets with gamma lids. I also shop at Costco and keep stocked up on pastas, tuna, oils, vinegars, etc… I canned as many jams, sauces, and pickles as I could over the summer. The freezers are filled with beef from a whole cow, half a pig, chickens, lots of corn, zucchini, peaches and apples I put up this summer.

Check out how other moms store their food: