Cooking Vintage 1990’s Low-Fat Thanksgiving Recipes

Well, hello. Welcome to “AT HOME.” And may I be the first to to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. We’re doing our program a little bit earlier this year so that you’ll have a chance to write and request the recipes and get them back in time to prepare them for your own Thanksgiving dinner. And we hope that you’ll do that. Today’s recipes. You know, we’ve been on this low-fat trend, where we’re trying to cut some fats out of our traditional Thanksgiving dinner and that’s the roast turkey, the mashed potatoes the stuffing, the sweet potatoes, all of that. But, what we’re going to do when you request today’s recipe, which is number 206, you’ll get the traditional recipe of Thanksgiving and the directions on how to make a regular Thanksgiving dinner. But, we’re also going to include the low-fat Thanksgiving dinner. So, you’ll get double a double treat today. I got this in the mail just very recently and I thought this was great. It says, recipes for Thanksgiving, one trip to grandma’s, one family gathered together, a hundred gallons of hugs, a nice cozy fire, one sound of leaves falling from trees, a 20 pound turkey, perfectly roasted, mix the above ingredients together every November, sprinkle with lots of laughter and smiles, serve to all the people you love and store the memory safely in your heart. Please note, the love and the hugs maybe doubled. Isn’t that neat? I hope that this Thanksgiving you’re gonna be spending it with your family and really planning some beautiful memories in the minds of your children and your friends and your family. We’re gonna be back in just a minute to get started with today’s low-fat Thanksgiving dinner. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. Here’s today’s “AT HOME” hint. To make your turkey golden brown without adding loads of calories and fat, spray the prepared turkey with butter flavored PAM just before roasting. Please discard the skin before eating. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to “AT HOME HINTS”, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, welcome back. The first of the many dishes that we’ll be preparing for you. Now, you’re gonna have to hold onto your hats, ’cause we’re going to move quickly today. And all of these recipes are going to be available to you. If you just send a self-addressed, stamped, business sized envelope and ask for 206. We’ll tell you more about it at the end of the program. The first thing we’re going to do is that low-fat sweet potato casserole. We’ve sprayed PAM on our casserole and these are yams or sweet potatoes. You can use either one. We’ve boiled them, skinned them. Now, we’re just going to slice them. And we’re going to put one layer of sliced potatoes across the bottom of our casserole. And you can cut them any size, shape, whatever, that you’d like to, really doesn’t matter. Just make sure that you layer them just like that. Then we’re gonna take a layer of sliced apples and we’re going to be layering. This is what the whole casserole is. Just sliced apples, sweet potatoes that have been boiled and peeled, just like that. Then we’re gonna add a few raisins. You know, that nothing so far that I’ve put in here has any fat, except that little bit of PAM that we sprayed in the bottom of the pan. All right. Now, if you aren’t familiar with this. This is called Butter Buds and they are a butter substitute. And all I’m going to do is just take a little bit of Butter Buds. It gives it the flavor, but there’s no fat in it. And we’re just going to sprinkle that over the apples. And again, cut another sweet potato. This is gonna bake in the oven, 350 degree oven. You know, I always tell you, be sure you have it good and hot when you put your vegetables or breads or whatever you’re putting in the oven. Make sure it’s good and hot. It needs to be because it will affect the outcome of your product if you don’t. And we just chunk them up. These are nice, big sweet potatoes, big yams. These come from our friends at the Jordan Banana Company. They’re great. Again, we’re gonna layer some apples. The thinner that you cut the apples, the quicker it will cook. It’s good to remember if you’re in a hurry and you thought, oh, I forgot to do this, the casserole, you can do it. Just cut them thinner, then they won’t take so long. Again, we’re going to add some raisins. And we had a real treat. In the studio with me today is some very special people. These are some friends that dropped by. They’re from the Eliza Manor Personal Care Home. And I want to say hello to all these fine ladies. Aren’t they a beautiful bunch of girls? Wave to me, girls. How you doing? Good to see you. Nice to have you here with us today. And let me say happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Okay. Now, we’re gonna come back and what I want to put on this now is some maple syrup. This is how we’re going to add the sweetener to it. It’s maple syrup. Just like that. And again, we’re gonna slice those sweet potatoes over the top. Now, the last layer you want to make it nice and even because that’s the one you’re gonna see when you bring it to the table. You know how I always am preaching about presentation, how important it is for that to look nice when it gets to the table. Well, that’s what you’re gonna want to do because you know, if you’ve taken the time to prepare it and then it doesn’t look nice and it Isn’t an eye appealing, people are going to say, oh, just kind of looks like you… Like Sandy always tells me that Roy tells her, oh, you just put it on the table. He’s expecting a parsley and all of that. That’s really not necessary. But, that’s the way some men like you know, they want that attention. Again, we’re gonna drizzle some maple syrup. No fat now. We haven’t got no fat in this yet. Okay and I would just add a few crowning raisins on the top, just like that. We’re gonna place this in our oven. This is going to bake. Okay? Like I said, have the oven good and hot. There we are. There it goes. Now we’re going to prepare. You say, well, you know, I have to have pumpkin pie. You’re right. You have to have a pumpkin pie or it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving. Would it? I have a pumpkin pie that is called, almost no fat pumpkin pie. And honest, that’s the truth. It is so incredible. While we have taken to make the crust because usually the crust, the pastry is flour and butter or lard or Crisco or whatever. This is a Graham Cracker crust. And what you use in it is this product here. These are the no fat, cinnamon, graham snacks. They have no fat in them. You take a package of those and you crush them. All right? You crush them up with a rolling pin. You add a couple of tablespoons of sugar. And again, we use the Butter Buds, which is the substitute for butter and you make a crumb and you press it into the pie plate, just like we have. To save time we’ve gone ahead and done that. Now, I’m gonna make filling for you. This is what the egg beaters carton looks like. You can see it here. We’re gonna to put that into our bowl. Next, we’re gonna add about a cup of solid pack, not the one that’s prepared already, just the solid pack pumpkin. And that’s just one cup. Okay? Next, it’s going to be a half cup, maybe a little bit less, of sugar and some cinnamon. You could have also added cinnamon to the sweet potato casserole. If you want to. It’s your option. And a little bit of ground cloves. That’s how I measure how closely, not very close at all. Some ground cloves and a little bit of ginger. Go light on the ginger ’cause it can be pretty potent, just a couple of taps. All right? And we want to mix that around a little bit. And this is a good time for you to use your whisk, if you have one of those little whips, you know? They work marvelously. And mix it around. It’s gonna look a little lumpy, but it will be all right. What I have here is about 3/4 of a cup. It’s evaporated milk. That is skimmed evaporated. Make sure when you buy that can. And you’ll notice the consistency is a lot thinner than a regular evaporated milk because they’ve taken all the fats out of it, for the most part. So, you want to put about 3/4 of a cup of skimmed evaporated milk. I’m gonna use the whisk here. Okay? Because that’s what will help to get all the little lumps and bumps out of here. You just need to whisk it around. And you’re gonna pour this into your pie plate that has already got the graham cracker crust. And let me get that pumpkin off there ’cause I like it to be good and strong with pumpkin. Yeah, make this a day when you’re preparing your foods in the kitchen, make it a family day. Get the kids in there. Let the kids make some celery, you know, stuffed with cream cheese or let the kids get involved in the pie making or let them make a Jell-O salad, let them be involved. Let them cut the cubes for the dressing or for the stuffing that you’re gonna put in the turkey. Let them be a part of the preparations. If you do that, they’re going to be so excited about holidays. And you’re going to create such memories for them, that they’ll never never, ever forget what those holidays were like at home. That’s what my mother did. I tell you I value them. I can remember standing out on the porch on a warm Thanksgiving, just cooling down the filling for some pies that mom was wanting to make, some cream pies. Now, I have one baked for ya. I don’t have room in my oven. That bakes for about 40 to 45 minutes. You have to get the recipe ’cause you have to start it at a higher temperature then reduce it. It really bakes for almost an hour. That is 1/10 of one gram of fat per cut, per 1/6 of the pie. That’s pretty good. Alright, moving right along. Let’s see, we’ve got the sweet potatoes. We’ve got the pumpkin pie. These are all traditional things that you have for Thanksgiving. Now, we’re gonna talk turkey. And the turkey that we’re going to talk. You know, the turkey is so good for you as opposed to the other meats that have more fats in them. And what I wanted to do is develop something that we could enjoy it. Now you’re going to have to be careful with how much turkey that you eat. And remember that the white meat has less fat than the dark meat. We all know that the dark meat is not as dry as the white meat. That’s the reason, ’cause there’s more fat in there. So, if you’re watching and being very careful, go for the white meat. What I have done to make a really, really low-fat dressing is you want to use bread that has no fat or low-fat, depends upon which area you’re in. You can find no fat breads. I would not use a sourdough. Some people might, but I wouldn’t use a sourdough bread, which has no fat in it because I think it’s too heavy for stuffing. But anyway, this is a loaf of, now, here it is here. This is a low-fat bread. And what I would add to that is in our skillet. Remember now, we’re not using. What aren’t we using? Butter. You got it. We’re not using butter, but we’re gonna use Butter Buds. And we’re gonna start to brown. It’s amazing. This, it smells and it tastes like butter, but there’s no fat. So, that’s great. That’s what we’re looking for. Right? And we’re gonna add some onion, some celery. Now, you could add mushrooms to this ’cause there’s no fat in mushrooms. You could add a green pepper. Someone told me they always add green pepper to their stuffing. I never did. I like to add grated carrot and I just started doing this. It really tastes good. I’ll tell you, I used to add like pecans or walnuts. Some people used to add sausage. That’s all full of fats. And that’s where we’re getting into a problem because we’re using a lot of those things that aren’t really healthy for us. And I have the Butter Buds in there, but you’ll notice that they really evaporate quickly, but that will give you the taste. So, what I’m using is this product here, which is a defatted chicken broth. It’s kind of a healthy type of a chicken broth. That’s very good to use in anything that needs a chicken broth in it without the fat. So, I have some here and I’m just going to let this saute in this little bit of chicken broth. Now, while we’re cooking these vegetables we’re gonna take a break and we’ll be right back. Stay with us. Well, as you can see, our vegetables are doing nicely. They’re sauteing nicely. Now, what I like to do is take, I’m using this product now. This is Healthy Request and it has a lower fat. It’s about 98% fat-free and it’s cream of chicken soup. And I just add a half a can of that to my vegetables that are cooking. This will add a lot of that good flavor that we really, really enjoy. And that we really like. Let me tell you that one of the best ideas when you’re stuffing your turkey and I’m gonna be trying to give you some of these hints along the way is, you know, what I miss is that butter flavor that you get by constantly basting the turkey. And you’re not gonna get that because we’re not using the butter. You could do it with Butter Buds, but somebody sent me the hint and I wish I could remember her name, that all you have to do is take the butter flavored PAM and spray the outside of the turkey once it has been prepared. I think we even talked about this on the hint, if I’m not mistaken, you just spray that on the bird and then it browns evenly. It’s beautiful. I can’t tell you how nice it is. If this seems just a little bit thick and you like a little moister flavor to you’re stuffing. Now let’s talk about stuffing and dressing. If you’re from the South it’s dressing and it’s corn bread that you make. And then you spoon the corn bread out and that’s what becomes your dressing. If you’re from the North. Now, this is what I’m understanding. If you’re from the North, you make stuffing. Like we always made from the time that I was a little kid my mother made stuffing it’s out of bread cubes. So, if it’s stuffing or if it’s dressing or whatever you want to call it, it’s still good. And it’s a big part of the holiday scene for Thanksgiving. Okay, I think this is just about there. What I’m gonna do is add some sage to my dry bread crumbs. This is just powdered rubbed sage. I like a lot of sage ’cause I like that flavor in there. All right? And now, turn my fire off and we’re gonna mix this and this is really ready to go into the turkey. You know how you have to be meticulous about getting it clean, go in there and don’t forget the little bag that’s in the neck. Okay, I have friends that forgets that all the time and then they wonder, what in the world is that smell? Well, it’s the bag cooking in the turkey. It’s not a really good smell at all. Anyway, if you find that this feels like it’s a little dry use some more of your chicken broth. That’s what it’s there for because there’s no fat. You’re not adding fat. You’re adding flavor. And by all means, don’t forget to add some salt and some pepper. Now, if you wanted to add mushrooms, you know, chop mushrooms, cook them in a skillet. That would be good. You could add green peppers. You could add really, just about whatever you like within reason. Just try not to add fats. That’s really important. Well, this is a little bit of salt. This is ready to go in to the turkey and you want to salt down the turkey just a little bit, If you’re not on a restricted salt diet. If you are, if you have to watch your sodium, don’t do that. This is low-fat. This is like, very low-fat. I don’t want to say no fat, but it’s very low and it’s very tasty. That little bit of carrot in there really adds some flavor to your stuffing mix. All right, I’m not gonna do it because at the end of the program we’re going to show you what it looks like with the turkey that’s cooking. All right, now I’m going to make something. Mom always had some kind of a Jell-O salad on the table and some of my family didn’t particularly care for the taste of cranberry, but that’s a traditional thing. So, mom would try to camouflage it. Sometimes she put it into, she’d make like, take the little oranges and she’d cut them out and she’d fill them and try to disguise it. The brothers that didn’t like it. They’d say, oh, mom you got cranberries in there. I know I can find them. Well, this was a way that you can do it if you have a family member that doesn’t particularly like cranberries. And yet, it’s something that everybody can enjoy. First of all, you’re gonna take a large pack of raspberry gelatin. Okay? That’s the big six ounce pack. Remember that. And we’re gonna take two cups of boiling water. It’s always good to dissolve. Be very careful that the children don’t get too close when you’re doing this. All right. Amazing how that spits at you. We’ll go pour to the side. That might be better. Two cups to dissolve this package. And I used a whisk for this too, because it really does dissolve faster. Sometimes you use a spoon, you don’t realize there’s a little bits still in the bottom of the bowl. So, you just have to be careful. And normally what I would do is set this aside because this would need to cool down some, you don’t add the cold water to this, just let it cool down a little bit. Set this aside until it’s kind of room temperature or that it’s not hot. But for time’s sake, I’m gonna go on and proceed like this has cooled down. Then we’re going to add, this is two cups of seedless, red grapes. I’m gonna put those right in. Just like that. And one can, this is the 20 ounce size, I believe, of crushed pineapple. It should be drained a little better than it is here because when it sits around a while, you’ll get more. Because remember, if you don’t get all the moisture out, your salad will not set up as good as it could. So, we’re gonna add our pineapple. Okay. And then here it is. It’s the whole berry cranberry sauce. Now, if you don’t particularly like whole berry, you can also use the jellied. I was told that. And you just mix it up. Now this can also, if you’re not watching your fats, you could put some walnuts or pecans in with this. This would be great. This is one of those real full bodied fruited Jell-Os that are so good and goes so well with turkey. I mean with turkey, that taste is incredible and it’s so good. Look how nice and thick that is. You just want to mix it long enough so that you’re sure that cranberry sauce is not in a big lump there in the bottom. Okay? And obviously I have it in my whisk here, but that’s all right. We’ll dig that out later. Now we’re gonna pour this into this nice glass baking dish. Careful that you don’t splash it on you. Okay? Look how nice. It’s almost like a chutney or something. It’s so thick. It’s wonderful. The smell is delicious. And we’ll just serve this with a nice piece of lettuce and a little dollop of either a cool whip or we could even put some mayonnaise on top of that or some sour Cream. Just want to distribute this. This should refrigerate overnight. So, it’d be nice for you to do this the night before. Anything you can do to get prepared before the big day ahead of time, you should do that. In other words, if you can make the salad the night before go ahead and do it. You can’t hold the turkey from the day before. I don’t think you’d want to do that. But, if you can peel the potatoes when you’re making those mashed potatoes, you say, well, I have to have mashed potatoes. Yeah, you do for it to be Thanksgiving you do, but make them and use Butter Buds instead of butter and use either skim milk or that no fat coffee creamer that comes in the quart. Use that in your potatoes and whip them. It’s wonderful. Let me show you what you can add to your mashed potatoes. Fat-free chicken gravy. I mean, everything is so much help out there and this is not bad tasting. It really is good. We’ll be right back after this important message on how you can get today’s recipes for Thanksgiving dinner.

[Instructor] If you would like a free copy of the recipes from today’s program, please send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to AT HOME, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499 Be sure to include the number of today’s recipe with your request.

Psalms 105 says, “Give thanks to the Lord, “call on His name, “make known among the nations what He has done. “Sing to Him, sing praise to Him, “tell of all His wonderful acts, “glory to His Holy name, “let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. “Look to the Lord in strength, seek His face always.” We’d like to extend a very, very happy Thanksgiving to you, to your family. I hope you’ll be sitting at a table kind of like what you’re seeing on the screen right now. This is a bountiful God that we serve who blesses us in so many ways. And one of them is giving this country so much to enjoy, so much to be blessed with. And we want to thank so many people who pray for us and undergird us. Most of all, we want to thank God for good health, for good strength, for sound minds and bodies. And I hope that at some point on this Thanksgiving day you’ll gather your family around you. If it’d be at the table or later on, it would be in the living room or wherever it would be that you would pause just briefly and give a prayer of thanks to God for His goodness to us. Be sure to join us the next time, because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here “AT HOME”. Happy Thanksgiving.

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