Turkey Day Without the Turkey

Top 3.5 Side Dishes for Thanksgiving

1. Crescent Rolls with Walnuts
2. Cranberry Nut Bread
3. Mashed Potatoes with Garlic
3.5 Butternut Squash

I should preface this by saying these are Lucie’s and my favorite side dishes, period, regardless of the holiday, which, honestly, is not that big a deal to us. We don’t get excited by the prospect of cooking and eating a gigantic bird and scarfing down a dozen different pies until we’re sick to our stomachs. We don’t care about football. We don’t even celebrate Thanksgiving as a national holiday. (Did the Pilgrims really have dinner with the Indians? Doubtful.) In fact, we pretty much ignore it every year.

What we do like are the side dishes. And this year, we have been invited to bring a couple of our faves to the Heffernans. Yay! Thanksgiving at Reggie’s! I think this is our first Turkey Day dinner at someone else’s house…is that right? Wow, I think it is. A huge milestone in our lives and it will be honored with buttloads of food.

Okay, so the first dish: Crescent rolls with Walnuts (and you’ll notice we have 2 dishes with walnuts in them which is just because Lucie and I hardly ever have walnuts in the house so when we do, we have to use them up since it’s it just the two of us). You need a roll of refrigerated dough that comes out in triangles. Walnuts. Cinnamon. Sugar. Heat the oven to what the package says. Then unwrap the dough and put the triangles on a cookie sheet. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together in a little bowl then sprinkle some of the mixture on the long end of the triangle. Add a few walnuts. Then roll from the long end to the shorty end and bend in a half moon shape. Bake for the time specified on the package. Voila! Yummy!

Second dish: Cranberry Nut Bread. All right, here’s where you cheat. You buy a package at the store and use that but! Add your own walnuts to the mix and then sprinkle them on top. I’m sure there are lots of recipes out there where you use flour and sugar and baking soda and stuff but if you’re making a whole lot of side dishes, you don’t have the time. Save yourself the trouble here so you can spend time on other things like…

Mashed Potatoes with Garlic. You’ll need potatoes, garlic powder (or real garlic if you’re ambitious), and butter. Microwave the potatoes until they’re soft. Get a huge bowl and start mashing them up in there – with the skins on! If you have an electric mixer, you can use that so they will get smooth – but don’t get them too smooth like they came from a box. Keep them a little lumpy so people know you made them from scratch. Then while they’re still warm, add pats of butter. Mix them in so they melt. Add garlic powder or fresh crushed garlic and stir until it’s all mixed in. A little salt and pepper to taste and you’re done. Hint: refrigerate the potatoes after you make them and then reheat, adding more butter. When they’re stiff like that, they get nice and lumpy.

Getting honorable mention today is the Butternut Squash. You, and by “you,” I mean “I,” really should eat more vegetables and potatoes don’t count, since they are technically legumes and just a yummy load of delicious starch. But this veggie is easy. Grab a few butternut squashes and slice them in half. Then place them upside down on a baking sheet. Bake them at around 300 degrees until they’re soft enough you can stick a fork in them easily. Take them out. Turn them right side up and serve with butter. Easy peasy. And seriously, just about any vegetable is better with butter on it.

Now which two to bring to Reggie’s? I’m thinking the crescent rolls and mashed potatoes since they’re easiest and I can make a whole lot of them for the family. I know they’ll have other things but I want there to be enough for everyone to try and this includes Reg’s big family (and big brothers!) and any other relatives they’re having. Lucie said she would help me but her help is, well, limited. At first she’ll say she’ll buy the stuff for me but then she’ll call me from work and say, “what kind of walnuts should I get,” or “how many potatoes do you need,” even though I will have written the exact amounts of everything on a piece of paper so I will eventually end up meeting her at the grocery store and picking everything out myself while she samples the trail mixes. Then she’ll say she’ll get up early and help me put everything together but she’ll hit the snooze on her alarm a million times and by the time she gets up, pretty much everything will be done except to add the garlic to the potatoes or to maybe drizzle some honey on the rolls, which she will do very reluctantly and only under my direct guidance, and then when we’re at dinner, someone will compliment our dishes and she will wrap her arm around my shoulder like it was a team effort and smile and say, “thank you so much, it was a lot of hard work.”

So…I’m thinking crescent rolls and mashed potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!