Thanksgiving is almost upon us....

Today I spent most of my day in the kitchen - cleaning and cooking. Mostly cleaning though. Now I'm pretty pooped and relatively determined that the first thing on my list to Santa this year will be a dish washer. You see, we don't have a dish washer. Well... we have one... it's from 1960 and doesn't work, though. We also don't have a garbage disposal. That's right, folks, we wash all of our dishes by hand and we can't throw whatever we want into the sink! So cooking is not just a matter of making dishes, but also one of CLEANING dishes. You have to think "how many times can I use this fork to mix this or that" while you bake. Or wonder whether the spatula REALLY needs to be thoroughly washed or if you can just give it a nice rinse with hot water. Because every dish you make you know you have to wash. It's quite tedious, really.

Usually Aj lets me off the hook - I clean, and he does dishes. But he didn't want to do the dishes last night and like a ninny I said it was OK. There were a lot of dishes!!! After about 3 hours of cleaning and cooking my back was tense and I was ready to sit down. But of course anything I didn't prep today would just mean I'd be waking up even earlier tomorrow. So cooking it was! Funny thing is, by the time I made it to dinner all I had energy for was heating up a can of Spaghettios... but I digress.

This blog is about recipes, right?! There's one dish I make every year. In my eyes, it's not Thanksgiving without Sweet Potato Casserole. Now a lot of people do crazy caramel pecan brown sugar streusel shenanigans, but for me it's the marshmallow topping! Yum!! This recipe was passed down to me from my father, and tweaked slightly. The photo is before topping is added, since I'm prepping in advance for baking it tomorrow. If you have a small family to feed, or want to make this on a regular weeknight, just halve the recipe, using 2 eggs instead of 3.


Sweet Potato Casserole

• 7-8 lbs peeled & cubed sweet potato, boiled until soft
• 2 tsp. Vanilla extract
• 2 Eggs
• 1/2 C. White sugar
• 1/2 C. Light brown sugar
• 1 stick of butter, cut into 1tbsp chunks
• 3 Tbsp. Flour
• 1/2 tbsp. Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. Nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. Cloves
• 1/8 tsp. Ground Ginger
• 1 Bag jumbo jet-puffed marshmallows
  

1. Mash together boiled potatoes and butter either by hand, or with an electric mixer, until creamy.
2. Add in flour, spices, and sugar and mix together.
3. Add in eggs and vanilla and continue mixing until creamy but slightly stiff. If potatoes won't stiffen, add a bit more flour.
4. Pour into a casserole dish and bake at 350°F for 25 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and cover with jumbo marshmallows, leaving small spaces in between each.
   
6. Return to oven for 5 minutes or until marshmallows are toasted.

I also made a pie tonight. Unfortunately, the ginger-snap crust became overcooked because the oven temperature fluctuates too high, and the pan was too close to the heating elements. Here is a photo of the pie before it went into the oven. Don't get me wrong, we're still going to eat it! It's just that the crust is a bit burned and we aren't sure we want to take it for Thanksgiving tomorrow. We might just eat the filling, which turned out delicious. I made the filling with pumpkin eggnog instead of the traditional cream or condensed milk. If it weren't for the burned crust, this pie would be DELICIOUS! I'll definitely have to try the recipe again and maybe I can post it when it's a little more tried and true!