Well, happy Thanksgiving to one and all. We’re so glad you joined us for this special edition of At Home today. This is our Thanksgiving Day preparation program. And I hope that you have a paper and pencil handy because for the last two years, we have been teaching you how to do the turkey, how to clean it, first of all, how to choose, how to clean it, how to stuff it, and carve it all of that. But this year, I thought, since you know all of that preparation of the turkey, we will make some new and different side dishes. So that’s what we’re going to be centering on today. Some different sweet potatoes souffle that has pecans in it instead of the old candy sweet potatoes. And of course you have to have mashed potatoes and gravy. When you have that turkey and stuffing, you have to have that I mean, you would never think to serve Scalloped Potatoes at least at our house, we wouldn’t. But, what happens is you usually get in a rut with the same things every Thanksgiving because, Aunt Minnie will say, “Don’t forget to make those candied sweets.” And then Uncle Tom says, “Hey, don’t forget, don’t put nothing else in that dressing, just make it the way you always do.” So you never get a chance to make some new things. Well, I think I’m gonna give you some ideas and I think Aunt Minnie and Uncle Tom or Ted will enjoy them anyway. So we’re gonna get started with Thanksgiving Day preparation in just a minute. I’d like to admonish you that before we start, would you please just take some time today and be very, very thankful for what you have in your life. You say, “But Arlene, you don’t know what I have in my life.” Well, I know that there is someone who is worse off than you, and there’s always something to be very thankful for. And I like to make it a habit in my own life of not just waiting till Thanksgiving to be thankful ’cause that’s the only one day out of a whole year. But every day, when I put my feet on the floor getting out of bed in the morning, I say thank you Lord for this wonderful day, I don’t know what’s gonna happen but I know as long as you’re there with me, it will come out all right. And you know what? It does. So let’s be thankful today. Look around see your children, be thankful for them. Your wonderful husband or your wonderful wife, your parents that you still have, your aunts, your uncles, family, your neighbors next door, just be thankful, it’s important. It’s Thanksgiving Day. Well, we’re gonna get started in just a minute right after this important message. We’ll be back to start Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s today’s At Home hint for Thanksgiving. Keep the turkey from sticking to the roaster by placing it on a bit of celery and carrot sticks. It adds flavor to the gravy later. Now 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, we’re going to begin our preparations, in this first one that we’re going to make is called Sweet Potato Souffle. What we have here is about three pounds of sweet potatoes that we have already cooked and mashed. We didn’t put any butter or any salt and pepper, nothing like that in them. All that is there is just sweet potatoes that have been mashed and we have them in our bowl. And the next we’re gonna do is take two eggs that have been slightly beaten and really this is very easy ’cause you just put everything in one bowl at one time and mix around the beater and put it into a wonderful casserole dish and put it in the oven, let it bake, we’re gonna put topping on it. This is the kind of things I like to do because if your Thanksgiving is like mine, it’s last minute preparation all the way ’cause I like stuff fresh and if you’ve got to play with something and keep fooling around with it, there’s no time for that on a Thanksgiving Day. Anyway, we’re gonna do that and we’re gonna mix these two very well with a beater, ’cause you wanna incorporate those eggs, that’s what’s gonna give it the souffle or the lightness, it won’t be a real heavy, sweet potato taste, okay? Now, what we wanna do, mix them up real well. You can either peel your potatoes beforehand and mash them like you do a mashed potato, or you can boil them with the skins on, peel them, and then mash them. And there’s no salt and pepper, we haven’t added anything, it’s just the potatoes. All right, when they look like they’re pretty well blended in, now we’re going to add 1/4 of a cup of brown sugar. Now, this is 3/4 of a cup so, you’re gonna take about 1/3 of this. And we’re gonna just sprinkle that in there ’cause the rest of it we’re gonna use as a topping. And, let’s see we have some 1/2 a cup of melted butter here but we’re just going to use 1/4 of a cup. And we’re gonna add that to our potatoes, and some salt, just a taste of salt, not too much and some cinnamon. And we’re just going to, as much as you like of that, to flavor whoever feel like a lot, use a lot if you don’t like a lot, don’t. Now, when you start to mix this up, if you feel like it’s too thick, because sometimes, depends on the kind of potatoes that you get. If it seems like it’s just too dry, wanna make sure that brown sugar gets incorporated really, really well, try to get the lumps out of it. If this feels like it’s dry, you can go ahead and add a little bit of orange juice. That’s really a good flavor to add to sweet potatoes is orange. That some people even great some orange rind or the peel in there because they really like the taste. I’m just gonna add a little bit here. Oh, maybe a tablespoon. And again, that’s to taste you don’t have to add a lot, you can add a little, this should be very creamy. And they’re getting there. Now, the secret to this is that the topping that you put on top, which is pecans, brown sugar and butter is so incredibly tasty. You’ll love it. I think we’re just about there, okay? Clean it all out real good, let’s get rid of these beaters. And, now we’re going to just pour this into our greased casserole. And I don’t go for the deep casserole as much as I go for one that will spread the potatoes out because, you want that topping to cover over so a lot of people get to taste the topping. If you put in a deep casserole or deep bowl, all the toppings on a small area and I think it’s better this way, you want everybody to enjoy it. Another way you can serve this, which is a really nice idea and my friend Linda Rowan told me that her mother-in-law gave her a recipe, what she does is she takes sweet potatoes and makes like a souffle like this and then when it gets baked, she serves it in an orange cup. Like you take an orange and hollow it, I cut it in half and hollow it out, put some of the orange pulp in the sweet potatoes and then when you bake it, after you bake it when she serves it, she just puts a lot of it in little cups and sets a cup, an orange cup on a saucer, one for each person at the table. I think that’s a really nice idea. I like to try new and different things when it comes to serving and presenting the food once it has been prepared, because again, that’s what’s everybody’s appetite. But I’ll tell you what, you don’t have to worry too much about that on Thanksgiving, at least not at our house. Everybody comes prepared and brings a large appetite. But that’s what you want them ’cause if you’ve taken the time to prepare, it’s nothing like someone enjoying what you have made. Well, that’s just about there, lemme get rid of these. Now we’re gonna combine the brown sugar and some of the butter here, and these are fresh chopped pecans. We’re just gonna mix those together. And that’s what’s gonna make our topping on top of… My brown sugar has gotten a little dry here, let’s see if we can liven it up with that butter in there. I think maybe we can. But what you’re just gonna combine this and spread it over the top and that will go into the oven, that bakes for 375 degrees for just about 20 minutes. Now, if you want to, you can drizzle the butter over the top. You can either combine it or drizzle it either way it’ll be fine. But I think this way, the taste gets over the whole topping and this will be fine, okay? Now what we’re… I’m just gonna take that, and this is not hot because the butter has cooled down and just spread this all over the top. Now this will have the same flavors, I believe, except for the pecans as your sweet potatoes, your candy sweet potatoes. I’m gonna do this evenly, get to the edges. Isn’t it fun to try new things? And I always like it because then I’ll say, well, do you like the one I did last year or do you like this one better? And then they’ll say, “Well, you know, I like last year, but boy, this is something new and different.” And that to me is what it’s all about, making people enjoy what you’ve prepared. When I get to Thanksgiving, I always remember the letter I received from the lady who said, “You know Arlene, for 15 years I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner, and every year, my family, my boys would say, ‘boys, this doesn’t taste right Mum, what’s the matter with this or that doesn’t taste good.’ Or ‘boy, Mom, that just doesn’t taste right.’ And she said, “I only continue to do it because I knew that I had to make a meal because that was my family and I wanted them to have a nice holiday.” But she said what happened? She said, “I followed your recipe, I made everything that you made on the show.” And she said, “I felt like a queen for a day Arlene, they kept saying, ‘Oh Mom, this tastes so good, oh Mom, that’s great, oh, Mom.’ That’s the satisfaction you get when you do something and everybody enjoys it. So, I hope that you will try some of these dishes on your family and I hope you’ll enjoy them. It’s really important, that they’re enjoying what you’re making because that’s your gratitude, that’s your reward for all the work you go to. Well, next we’re gonna make a salad that my mom used to make and it’s a lime jello salad. And you’re gonna wanna use a large package of the lime jello. And we will put one cup, I believe it’s one cup of water, we’ve got our water boiling here. Again, this is a measuring cup for liquids, okay? And what I’ve learned, mom always told me Arlene, “when you’re gonna add fruit or anything to a jello, you wanna go a little less on the water because if there’s moisture on that fruit, sometimes it won’t set up.” It’s just a good thing to remember. So we’re going to dissolve our jello with our cup of water, okay? And to quick set this because sometimes I’m in a hurry, when I… Sometimes you can regularly set it with the cold water net, but then sometimes I forget and it’s too much done, ’cause you have to add some things to this. So I just use the ice cube method, which is once it’s dissolved, we go and put some ice cubes in here and let them dissolve. When they melt down, then you can pull out the little pieces and it’s just about ready, the right consistency that you’d want it for this dish. So, I would put about the whole tray. Now, to conserve time, I’m not gonna do that because we really got so many things I wanna show you. All I’m gonna do is just stir this a little bit to get this to the consistency that this should kinda be a little bit syrupy, not set. If it’s set, we learn the hard way, if it’s set it just doesn’t work. Mom used to make this, this was something that we would look forward to every Thanksgiving. And what you do while this is setting up, you take your 13 by nine glass dish and you’re first of all gonna put some shredded carrot. This is a great vegetable type salad. Put all your, that’s about couple of large carrots, just shred them down. I love the colors ’cause this looks like harvest to me. As you can see, always think of the orange and yellows and greens and browns during a harvest time. And we’re going to take some celery, this is about a half a cup of celery and we’re just going to scatter that evenly over a pan or dish, all right. And next what we’re going to use is, this is crushed pineapple. And again we’re just going to evenly, this should be drained and we just want to spread this evenly over our pan. I love the fruit taste with any kind of poultry like turkey or chicken, I’ve told you that before. It just makes a nice combination, oranges and pineapple and that type, that is great when it comes to poultry. So we let those spreads a little more evenly and they all lay in the bottom of the dish. I hope that while you’re preparing some of these things that you’re enjoying some of the parades that are on because that kind of sets the tone for the holidays for me because you think, “boy, in a couple of weeks it will be Christmas and I’ve got so much to do.” Just enjoy today for today, don’t worry about tomorrow, don’t worry about Christmas, don’t worry about all the shopping you gotta do, let that come a day at time and it will. It doesn’t never skip you by but just enjoy today for the day. Okay, we’re gonna take these ice cubes. Now normally I would try…There are directions on the box for this fast, the quick set it’s called. So I would probably do this a little bit longer. But to save time today, we’re going to go ahead and take them out, take all the little bits of ice cubes out and then you just have your cool jello. Now what we’re going to add to that, is an eight ounce package of cream cheese that has been softened. I hope that’s soft enough. If not, we’ll soon know , doesn’t matter. Anyway, well, here we go. You want to I always have fun with this. You want to incorporate the cream cheese in with the jello and it makes a lime frothy look. It’s very interesting and it really looks good. Now, I just trynna soft them on till it gets starts to get incorporated because if you don’t, it’ll go flying everywhere. Don’t let the kids do this. This is not something that kids ought to be playing around with. We’re having a problem here with our… Here we go. And just keep it going, if it splashes you shall have to clean it up ’cause it’s important at this point. If you let that get real cold and try to do the cream cheese with it, you’ll sometimes get little bits of cream cheese everywhere. You don’t want that, you have to do when it’s still a little bit warm before it’s ever got refrigerated. Then what you’re gonna do, now this may take a little time and I may have to go ahead because I wanna show some other things to you. What you’ll do is just beat this until it’s really really creamy and frothy, and almost like a mint green color. That means that all of the… Well we got a little problem going here, let me wipe this up before it’s all over my pie crust. Okay, we need a bigger kitchen for all the things that we’re trying to bring to you today. But it’ll be alright. Anyway, you’re gonna continue to beat this. It may take a few minutes and when you’re done with it, then you’re gonna pour that over top of the vegetables and the pineapple, you can add raisins to that you can walnuts to it, anything you want to. I’m just gonna tell you, put that in the refrigerator, let that refrigerate until it’s firm. And will show you at the end of the program how we’ll serve that. You can put a dollop of sour cream or a little pad of mayonnaise on top. Some people like it that way some people like it with the mayonnaise, but either way, it’s fine it’s according to what you like. I’m not gonna go through, I have what I’m gonna show you at the end. All right, let’s continue right along. How much time do we have here Dale? I don’t wanna run out of time. Okay, we’re making a raisin walnut pie as something entirely different than what you normally would make because the pumpkin is what we normally make all the time. And in here I have 1 1/3 cups of water, I’m gonna add two cups of raisins, we’re making the filling for our pie this is… We kind of, mom always made mincemeat. Then we got away from mincemeat, we just didn’t care for too much and so I started to make this raisin pie my dad loved it. Mom never cared too much for the raisins, but boy, dad and I we enjoyed it. So this is one of the easiest ones to make. We have the water, the raisins, here’s a couple of tablespoons of corn starch. And that will be used as a thickening for the raisins and the other filling ingredients and make sure you get it all out there. Next we’re going to add some teaspoon of orange peel and lemon peel fresh please. I know you can buy in the store and those little spice jars, but really, there’s nothing that tastes or smells as good as the fresh. So we have orange, we have the lemon, now I’m going to add about a 1/3 of a cup of orange juice to this, this I wonder if I just put everything in the pan at one time and this is about three tablespoons of lemon juice, fresh squeezed lemon juice. Now we’re gonna put this on the heat because this is going to start to cook and it’s gonna thicken up but thicken up real fast faster than you would even imagine. So you have to keep an eye on it because you sure don’t want it to burn. But, you’re gonna make sure that that cornstarch dissolves. So one thing that’s nice about using cornstarch for thickening, even when you do your gravy, make sure that you use cornstarch and maybe some flour together half and half because the cornstarch never lumps up. You can see I put that in there with you, I thought I put flour, there been a little bumps of flour in there. And you can see that the orange peel and the lemon peel are floating to the top. But once this starts to cook, it’ll thicken that fast and we’ll have our filling made. Then we’re gonna add about 3/4 of a cup of walnuts to it, but not until it’s done cooking. When it’s done cooking, then we’ll add the walnuts. Meanwhile, we’re gonna get our pie crust ready. See, I keep moving all these dishes over. And we’re just gonna take a nine inch pie shell, and we’re lining it. When that gets thickened, we’re going to put this, put it in and put a crust on top. Now I wanna tell you secret, I like to use my own pie crust when I have time to make it. But I don’t put myself under the pressure of coming up with a homemade pie crust on a day when you’re making everything else homemade. Unless you want to, if it’s no problem for you, and you make it real quick and easy, do it. For me, I buy those little refrigerated ones that come like this. Everybody says, “Oh, that’s delicious crust.” And I take that pressure off myself. I know I can make a pie crust, but I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. Nobody’s gonna give you a bigger star because you made your own. They’re just gonna say, “That pie tastes good.” Period. If this is gonna help you not to have to drag out the crisco, drag out the flour drag out, do it not to worry, okay? Nobody’s gonna be saying, “Hey, you didn’t do it right.” Let me show you a real neat trick and this is fast, the kids can do this. First of all, it’s called frosted grapes. And what you do, you take, we’re going to use the egg whites only. Well you can start out with two eggs, and then go to three if you need to. But this is nice because the kids can feel like they have been part of getting the celebration ready. Or maybe if grandma has come they say, “Oh, we’re gonna make these for grandma.” Kids love to do this. And it’s so easy, it is just the egg whites. And wanna make sure you don’t get any of the yellow in there, okay? Now, you whip those with a fork until they get frothy and have on hand a sifter full of powdered sugar and some really wonderful…You can use this great great big I think they’re called Ribier grapes. They’re about this big and they’re as black as can be. Jordan send them to me when they have and they’re wonderful grapes. You can use the red seedless or the white seedless like I have here. Any kind of a grape really, you can do this with. Like I said, this is something that the kids can do. Beat up the egg whites until they’re frothy just like this, and then have your grapes nice and clean and dried off. You stick the grapes down in the egg white, just like that all right? Let the excess, drop off. Now you’re gonna have a rack inside of a cookie sheet. You’re gonna lay those grapes there, let me do a bunch of little red ones too. Okay, they’re falling off. This is not what I had in mind. See if I can find another group. Well, I’ll use this bunch. Just drop them in there, turn them around, drop with the excess drop off. Okay? Now, you’re gonna take your sifter, and you’re just gonna start sifting over the egg white. Don’t let the egg white dry, until you have you have sifted the powdered sugar all over and you keep turning them. Now you have to do this a couple of times. These are called frosted grapes, frosted grapes. And you’ll turn them like that, you’ll turn them on all sides, and just keep turning them and turn them. Now, see what happens, the moisture will evaporate and what you’ll have when you’re done, because you’re gonna keep turning these, let them dry a little bit, a couple of minutes then let the kids come back and dust them again. And what you’ll have when you’re done are little grapes that look like this, frosted grapes, that nice. You can use them on your cornucopia on a centerpiece. Every time I make these, the centerpiece gets eaten. Do you know what I mean? If you have bunches of these and you can do great big bunches. Look these are the big red seedless ones. Aren’t they beautiful? And they’re so appealing and they had that little bit of sugar on them. And so people say, “Oh, those grapes are glorious, what did you do to the grapes?” They’re just called frosted grapes. Very simple, very easy to do. The other thing I would add to this meal that I want to show you, but I don’t have time but I can tell you about, is take some frozen tiny pearl onions. And if you wanna look at them over here, I can show them to you. These are the tiny pearl onions in the frozen food section of the Foodland Markets. And what you do is, go ahead and cook them according to the package direction and don’t drain them just leave the water on. Then I add a can of baby le sueur peas, okay? Just add them right in there, don’t let them boil. Let them come up to they’re nice and hot but don’t let them boil. So you have the peas and the pearl onions and then you’re gonna add a chunk of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and then we’re gonna cream them. You cream them with some milk and some flour. You make a paste, when they start to get real hot, you pour it in there, and they’re creamed beautifully. Well, we’re gonna come back in just a minute with my very special guest at our Thanksgiving Day dinner table, and I’ll show you everything that we’ve prepared in just a minute, we’ll be right back.
[Narrator] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes, be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.
Well, I hope that your Thanksgiving table looks similar to the one that we’ve put together for you, specially for you and your family. You can see we’ve added Tom here, he’s in the center because he’s always the center of attention, wonderful stuffing. We’ve added some mashed potatoes and some gravy. There’s our frosted grapes that we put on the dish with our vegetable salad and oh my goodness, that sweet potato casserole with that delicious pecans on top. Next to it is the pearl onions with a le sueur peas, creamed peas, some wonderful gravy, and of course our raisin walnut pie and what would be Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce? I think it’s a meal fit for the king and the king in my family is my husband, Paul, happy Thanksgiving hunny.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Yeah, we’re glad that he could be here with us today, he doesn’t very often get into the kitchen. Well, sometimes he does, but I mean to cook with me. But I’m glad that he could be with us and I hope you’re with your family today. And if you’re missing someone very special, maybe you lost a loved one during the year it’s alright to celebrate, it’s okay. It’s gonna be hard this first time, but please be thankful today, God’s been so good to all of us and there’s always something that you can be thankful for. Whatever it is, just pause and take that time to be thankful and express your thanks to the Lord that we serve. Well, thanks for being with me today and thank you for being with us because it wouldn’t be the same without you right here At Home. Happy Thanksgiving, happy Thanksgiving Paul.
Happy Thanksgiving Arlene.
Let’s pray.
[Narrator] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana wholesalers fresh fruits and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholeys, your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less from Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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