Originally Posted by
GingerK
We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving last month, and for our family, Christmas is the big get together and meal. Thank you for all the 'make it easier on yourself' suggestions. I am thinking about trying the stuffing muffins this year. They could be made ahead and just warmed up before the meal. It would certainly free up space in my oven.
We've always made a stuffing that had everything you could think of in it: bread cubes, sausage, raisins, apples, onions, turkey giblets, and lots of butter, turkey broth and herbs. It was fun, but a lot of work on the morning of Thanksgiving. So this time I made something very similar, with maybe a little less butter, and I used packaged stuffing cubes. The giblets were still raw in the bird at the time, so I sneaked in a little bacon instead. I added 3 eggs for the 15 oz package of bread cubes, and then used a round ice cream scoop and baked them on a sheet of parchment paper. I did it a few days early and froze the baked stuffing balls. I let them thaw in the fridge the night before and baked them briefly again while the turkey rested. They were a hit, and I'll be doing it this way from now on. I'm tired of doing the hosting, and ready to pass the baton to one of the younger families, but realistically, that's not likely to happen until I'm 6 ft under, if ever. We have the roomy kitchen and dining room, and I have a lot more time than the younger people with fulltime jobs. I just have to simplify and spread out the projects over several days so that they don't overwhelm me. One of my favorites in recent years is one I call Dumpkin Cake. You make a double batch of pumpkin pie filling, but reduce the canned milk (or buttermilk) by half. Pour it into a pammed 9X13 cake pan, sprinkle dry yellow cake mix over the top, scatter pecans over it, and pour a stick (or more) of melted butter over it. It takes about an hour to bake. The pilgrims would have approved! We have a family member who is diabetic, so the pumpkin part has Splenda and one portion is baked for him without the cake mix and butter in a small casserole. Some of our guests bring beverages and side dishes. It was a simple feast for a small group this time. We had only our kids and one grandson. One son and his family couldn't come because some of them were sick, so that left only 6 people around the table, but we did that 3 nights in a row. Night 2 was leftovers, and night 3 my son and DIL brought BBQ from a restaurant. It was a good time, except we missed the ones who couldn't come and also missed my brothers' families, who had their own smaller gatherings this year. It was much better than last year when we were in the scary few days before DH's heart surgery.