Thanksgiving Menu 2012

Since John will be making Thnskgiving by himself this year I am trying to make the menu a bit easier on him. I'll very much miss getting to cook with him. I love our Thanksgiving cooking time together.

So without further ado I present our 2012 menu, recipes attached where I can, more to follow, dessert not planned yet.

• Turkey with hot peppers If you've never stuffed your turkey with hot peppers, I very much suggest trying it. John will need to give you all the details, but his Turkey rocks! Things I know, he smears margarine in between the skin and meat, and adds peppers there. He cooks it upside down. It tastes better, is more moist, but less 'pretty' that way, but we don't carve at the table, so bring on the Yum! And FYI, the heat cooks out of the peppers leaving only oh so good flavor behind.
• Rolls (what kind will be decided by what time he has)
• Fruit Salad yes this has already been posted. But why mess with perfection.
• Sweet Potatoes Planning on doing this in a crockpot for ease, so I'm looking at all new recipes. I've got 2 for John to pick from. Either this one which looks basically like sweetened sweet potatoes or this one which I'm leaning more towards, if only for the fact that it has pecans on it. Though if we go with the second, we'll be using toasted pecans.
• Stuffing/Dressing whatever you want to call it, it still tastes good. We will also be trying this in the crockpot for the first time (yes we do have 2, actually 3, don't you?). All the recipes I found online are basically the same so here is one. I think it would work with any recipe, but not sure, we'll try this and then if it turns out well we'll branch off from there. 
• Mashed Potatoes and Gravy Bet you thought I was forgetting that, didn't you. NEVER! If you've never added celery root before, you don't know what you are missing. The recipe calls for half and half. In the past I've used a bit more butter and soy milk. This year though we found a fabulous product we'll be using from MimicCreme. We've tried their whipping cream (on fruit, it was good, not fabulous, but hey it didn't taste like coconut so I'll take it) and we used their Sweetened Cream Alternative and made super yummy (this is the best I've ever had, said my 7 year old) Orange Julius with it. So I think we will use that on the potatoes this year. My mouth waters in anticipation. 
• Vegetable yup, I'm being real specific here. I still need to look up some recipes John said he'd like either a 3 bean casserole or some kind of mixed vegetables, and that is what he shall have. Just need to spend some time on Google recipe search, which by the way, I am disliking the new format for. 

Dessert is not yet planned. Oldest daughter wants raspberry pie. I think we might end up with either a total cheater pie (pre-made pie crust and canned filling) or possibly an Apple Chop Suey Cake. Recipe to come soon.

And that's our Thanksgiving. Don't you wish you were coming over?