Sage Sausage and Cranberry Stuffing

How can you make a holiday meal without making any stuffing? In my opinion, I feel that the stuffing completes the meal. It usually doesn't get to be in the limelight, unlike the turkey but Thanksgiving wouldn't be Thanksgiving without the stuffing. So, I have saved the best for last. This is the final part in my four part series of simple Thanksgiving recipes. It's been fun sharing those recipes with you and I hope you will enjoy making them as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you.

This is another really simple but yummy recipe. Start off my melting 4 tablespoons of butter in a large pan. Then, crumble and cook 1 lbs of sage sausage until brown.
Next, add in approximately two cans (14.5 oz) of chicken broth.
Once the chicken broth comes to a boil, turn off the heat and add in one package of herb flavored stuffing. Gently fold in the stuffing into the broth and sausage mixture.
Finally, add in about 1 cup of dried cranberry and gently mix it into the stuffing mixture. Once, it is all evenly mixed, transfer the stuffing from the pan into a casserole dish. Then, cover the casserole dish with aluminum foil and pop it into a 325F oven for about an hour. There you go, another simple holiday recipe. Now, who says cooking for the holidays needs to be stressful? :D

Classic Green Bean Casserole

Here is another 'must have' on our holiday menu - the Classic Green Bean Casserole! You cannot go wrong with this recipe. It's really easy to make and it has become a staple in all of our holiday meals. It doesn't require many ingredients and it takes barely minutes to prep. Here's the recipe!

Start off by mixing 1/2 a cup of milk to 1 can of condensed mushroom soup. It doesn't HAVE to be Campbell's but I don't know, it always seem to taste better whenever I use Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.
Then, add in a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce and some black pepper. I like how the Worcestershire sauce adds in a little kick to the entire dish.
Next, add in 4 cups of frozen cut green beans into a baking dish. Then, stir in the mushroom soup mixture. At this point, you can choose to stir in some fried onions if you like. I really love fried onions, so I would usually stir in some. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil and pop it into a 350F oven for about 25 minutes.
After about 25 minutes (or once it starts bubbling), remove the baking dish from the oven and sprinkle on some fried onions. Pop it back into the oven (without the aluminum foil) for about 10 minutes. The green bean casserole is ready to be served once the fried onions are nicely browned. There you go, another super simple holiday favorite!

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Casserole

Firstly, I must apologize for the lack of updates. It's been a crazy few months for us and things are just beginning to get back to normal. I know I promised some easy to make Thanksgiving dinner recipes and so far, I have only shared the recipe for roast turkey. In the next couple of posts, I will be sharing with you recipes for some of our favorite sides. To get the ball rolling, here is the recipe for one of my all time favorite - the Sweet Potato Casserole. It's really yummy and the best part? It's also really simple to make! Here's how you make it.

Start off by cooking some sweet potatoes (or yams, depends on which part of the country you are from) in boiling water. Just leave the skin on. It's way easier to remove after it's cooked.
Once they are cooked and soft, take them out from the boiling water and remove the skin. The skin should just slide off without any problems. Be really careful though, cos those sweet potatoes can be HOT HOT HOT! Then, add in about 5 tablespoons of butter.
Mash the sweet potatoes with a potato masher. If you do not have a potato masher, you can just use a fork. It works just as well. Make sure that the butter is mixed evenly into the sweet potatoes.
Then, add in some maple syrup. I used pure dark amber maple syrup that we bought from Vermont but you can pretty much use any type of maple syrup that you like. Mix it into the sweet potato mixture.
Once you have mixed in the maple syrup, the sweet potato mixture should be smooth and creamy. If its not, then you would need to mash it a little bit more. Once your sweet potatoes have reached the desired consistency, transfer the sweet potato mixture into a baking dish.
Then, sprinkle on some chopped pecans or pecan halves. Make sure that your pecans are evenly distributed on the top of your casserole. Finally, cover the baking dish with aluminum foil. Pop the sweet potato casserole into a 350F oven. After about 30-35 minutes, remove the casserole from the oven and it's ready to be served! Now, wasn't that easy? Try it, I'm very sure that you will like it too!

Kevin's 'Not So Secret' Roast Turkey Recipe

I really do not understand why people make it seem so difficult, when it comes to roasting a turkey. From the way people talk, I used to think that it must be really difficult to roast a turkey. It wasn't until Kevin showed me how it's done (about eight Thanksgivings ago, when we first started dating :P) did I realize that it's really not that difficult at all. Really, it's no rocket science. Anybody can do it. In our household, Kevin is the one in charge of making the turkey. So, here's Kevin's 'not so secret' (cos we are sharing it with all of you, right?) roast turkey recipe.
If you have a frozen turkey, the most important thing you need to do is to remember to thaw it! Leave it breast side up in the refrigerator, with the wrapper unopened. It takes approximately 1 day of thawing for every 4 lbs of turkey. Once it's fully thawed, you would want to remove the neck and giblets from inside the cavity of the turkey. Some people would use it to make gravy but we would just throw it away. Come on, we don't have time to make our own gravy. We would just get it from a bottle :P Alritey, so once you have removed the neck and giblets, rinse the turkey through cold water and pat it dry. Then, cut up some apples and stuff it into the cavity. Kevin would also sometimes use oranges and/or cranberries with the apples, it really depends on what we have available at that time.
Now, the secret weapon in making the perfect roast turkey - OVEN BAGS! I personally feel that oven bags are the best. They keep the turkey all moist, juicy and once it's done, the meat practically falls off the bone. So, just shake about one tablespoon of flour in the oven bag to coat it, set it in a roasting pan and place the turkey in the bag. Tie up the bag with the ties that comes with the oven bag and you are done! Make sure the bag doesn't touch the turkey, cos it might stick to it while roasting. Also, remember to poke some holes in the bag, to allow the steam to escape while roasting.
Then, pop it into a preheated 350F oven. It takes approximately 2 1/2 hours to roast a 12 - 16 lbs turkey. However, we are going to set the timer for 2 hours.
After two hours, its time to make the glaze. Combine brown sugar with any type of soda. We would usually use Sierra Mist, Sprite or Ginger Ale but any type of soda works. Slowly add in the brown sugar in the soda, while stirring, until it thickens (the consistency should somewhat be like BBQ sauce).
Once the glaze is done, it's time to remove the turkey from the oven. At this point, it's not fully cooked yet. Just cut open the oven bag and brush on the glaze. You gotta be really careful when you open the oven bag. It's really hot and you do not want to burn yourself from all the steam.
After glazing the turkey, cover the entire turkey with aluminum foil and pop it back into the oven for another hour or so.
You can remove the turkey from the oven after an hour to check it's internal temperature. If it hits 180F, you are good to go. If not, then just pop it back into the oven for another 15 - 20 mins. Once it's done, allow the turkey to rest for a bit and it's ready to be served! Now, that wasn't so difficult, was it?

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

How is everybody enjoying their Thanksgiving so far? We just had a yummy dinner, so our tummies are all full and we are just about ready to go into a turkey induced coma! Boy, thank God for elastic waistbands :P Kevin's mom is visiting us from Pittsburgh, so we made the traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Contrary to popular believe, it's really not that difficult to make at all (compared to say, Chinese New Year dinner and stuff like that). Over the next few post, I will show you how to make a simple Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes and green bean casserole. I know many young couples (like us!) who gets overly stressed out when they have to make a big dinner, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas. Let me tell you this. Chill, it's not that difficult! Once you break it down, it's becomes really really easy to make. Trust me! So, watch this space for the recipes. Til then....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade 2009

As promised, here is my post about us heading down to the city to watch Macy's 83rd Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. We've always watched the parade on TV every year but it's our first time watching it live. Usually we would be back in Pittsburgh or will be too busy cooking/hosting Thanksgiving dinner to even think about going to the city. However, since we didn't go back to Pittsburgh and it's just the two of us this Thanksgiving, we decided to go check it out.

We woke up bright and early (we left the apartment by 6:30am) and headed to Journal Square to take the PATH to the WTC station. Look at Kevin's sleepy eyes and unshaven look...yup, it's early! :P Even though the parade only starts at 9am, many people would go early just so that we can get a decent spot to watch the parade. We learnt from various past parades in the city that you have to arrive at least 2 hours before the parade to get a decent spot or you will end up just looking at the back of other peoples heads.

From the WTC PATH station, we took the C train uptown to Columbus Circle. You can see from the crowd forming that there will be lots of people at the parade. You see all those people standing behind the barricades? That's not even part of the parade route. They were just hoping to catch the big balloons in a distance!

Here is the parade route. This year, they unveiled a new route. For the first time ever, the parade will skip Broadway. As usual, it will begin at Central Park West and 77th St. It will then make it's way down to Columbus Circle and turn into Central Park South. It will then go down 7th Avenue, pass Times Square, make a turn on 42nd St and ending in Macy's (of course) Herald Square. We decided to watch the parade from the corner of 57th St and 7th Ave, just by Carnegie Hall.

I'm glad we arrived early. Look at the crowd forming behind us! There were only about one to two layers of people in front of us, so we had a pretty decent view! :D

The parade started at around 9am up on 77th St. So by the time it made it's way down to us, it was already about 9:20am. The parade opened with the Macy's marching band and the Radio City Rockettes marching down the street. The atmosphere was just electrifying. It's something that you can't see or feel from watching it on TV back home. Everybody was excited and cheering, a pretty amazing feeling.

The first giant character balloon that came down the street was the giant Spiderman balloon. It's one of the four new balloons introduced to the parade this year. The other three are the Sailor Mickey balloon, Pillsbury Doughboy balloon and the Ronald McDonald balloon. Here are some of the other giant balloons from the parade.

This is my favorite float from the whole parade. The Sesame Street float! I've pretty much grown up on Sesame Street and to actually see the cast and muppets in real life was really cool. Most of the cast looked way older than I remember them to be, but of course. I'm not exactly that young anymore myself :P

There were all kinds of floats with various themes. In total, there were 24 floats, 10 marching bands, 15 giant character balloons and 35 novelty or ornament balloons, balloonheads and balloonicles. Seen here is Miss America 2009, Katie Stam and NYC Men's Marathon winner Meb Keflezighi on the Spirit of Liberty float and The Pizzarelli Quartet riding on the Marion-Carol Showboat float.

Apart from floats and giant balloons, there were also a whole lot of performers and entertainers. In fact, the parade featured a total of 800 clowns and 1,500 dancers, cheerleaders, singers and performers! How cool is that? :D

With fancy floats, giant balloons and a host of clowns, performers and entertainers, what else could a parade offer? Celebrities! Lots of them! Some of the celebrities that took part in the parade were Gloria Gaynor, Carly Simon, Cyndi Lauper, Bello, Andrea Bocelli, Keke Palmer, Grandma and the cast of the Big Apple Circus, the cast of Hair, Boys Like Girls, DJ Lance Rock and the cast of Yo Gabba Gabba!, Kermit the Frog and Tiffany Thornton, the cast and Muppets of Sesame Street, Jimmy Fallon and The Roots, cast of Billy Elliot, Sarah Hughes, Jane Krakowski, cast of Bye Bye Birdie, Ziggy Marley with Judah Marley, Miss America 2009 - Katie Stam, the Radio City Rockettes, Katharine McPhee, Mitchel Musso, The Pizzarelli Quartet, cast of Shrek and Jay Sean. Not only could you spot celebrities in the parade, but you can also see them watching the parade from the balconies/windows of their expensive West Central Park condos. Among those spotted were Antonio Bandares and his wife Melanie Griffith as well as Michael Douglas and his kids. Seen here in the pink castle is Cyndi Lauper and you can also see Jimmy Fallon and The Roots on the giant Les Paul guitar.

The parade lasted over 2 hours and the finale to the parade was an appearance by the big man himself - Santa Claus on his sleigh! With that, it officially marks the beginning of the Holiday Season and the end of the parade. With such a big crowd, you would think that it was a pain to get home. Well, we figured that out from the start. We chose a spot that was only a few steps away from the elevator that takes us down to the subway. From past experiences, we knew that the Santa Claus was always the last to appear in any parade. So, the moment Santa came by, we just made a dash to the elevator, took it down to the subway and jumped on the first train there is out of that area. With that, we managed to get out of the area fast and also avoided the crowd. So, where did we go after that? Ahhh, keep on reading. That will be in the next post! :D

* For more photos of the parade, all the balloons and floats, head over to my Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade album on Facebook. Just click here

What a great Black Friday outing!

Did everybody have a good Thanksgiving? I know we did. Since, we didn't go back to Pittsburgh or host Thanksgiving dinner here this year, we decided to scrap all the big time turkey dinner cooking and headed out to the city to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade instead. We then went to Chinatown for a delicious Peking Duck (hey, at least we had some sort of fowl :P) lunch. I'll blog about all that later on. The thing I was looking forward to this Thanksgiving (apart from going to the parade) was the Black Friday sales! I went through all the Black Friday ads and decided that we would go to Kohls this year. Actually Target and Walmart had pretty good stuff too, but seriously, we were just too lazy to join the crazy crowd, stand in long lines and get stuck in traffic in more than one place. So, we chose Kohls :D

We woke up at 3:00am (well Kevin did, I decided to just stay up all night) and managed to get ready and left our apartment by 3:34am. It takes about 10 minutes or so for us to get to Kohls and the doors open at 4:00am, so we were making good time. There wasn't much traffic on the roads, so all is well :D

When we pulled into Kohls parking lot, it was already filled with cars! I have never seen the parking lot at Kohls so packed before.

Check out the line waiting to get in. This is not even the full line. It's so long, I can't even get a full shot of it!! Can you see the last guy in line with the cap? Kevin was standing behind him, and behind Kevin, there was at least another 70 to 80 people, and the line was growing by the minute. As I was standing in line, I remembered that one of the Walmart staff was trampled to death when the doors opened in Walmart last year. I really hoped that the crowd wouldn't get crazy and stuff here.

Well, the doors opened at 4:00am and surprisingly, everybody was just moving along in line and there wasn't any mad dash or anybody pushing and stuff. I had already made a list of all the things that I wanted and had an idea exactly where they were. So, the moment we got in, we just headed to the small appliances department and picked up the stuff. I nearly got run over by only two shopping carts (considered very good for Black Friday) and managed to find everything that I wanted (they sort of hid the breadmaker in some corner, but Kevin managed to find it). We finished our shopping in 10 minutes and made it to the cashier before long lines started. Look at my happy face. It says "Mission Accomplished"! We managed to get some really good deals, without having to really deal with the crazy crowds and long lines!

Checkout my wonderful husband. He woke up at 3am just brave the Black Friday crowds with me. He also stood in line to save our spot while I went around taking photos. Not only that, he also went all over the electrical appliance department to look for my breadmaker (and found a few hidden in some corner), carried all those heavy boxes (since they ran out of shopping carts) and followed me all around the shop. Best of all, he paid for everything...yay! Thank you thank you thank you :P You are the best! *hugz*

This are some of the stuff that we bought. The original combined price for all those four kitchen appliances is around $220. After the sale, we paid a total of $128! Sounds good? Wait, it gets better. There is also a mail in rebate from Kohls for all those four appliances. After the mail in rebates, we only pay $78 in total! Also, Kohls has another promotion going on. You get back $10 in Kohls Cash for every $50 spent, so we got back $20. So, with the sale, mail in rebates and cash back....we paid only $58 for all those four items! Can you believe that? Only $58 for a Breadmaker, Toaster Oven/Broiler, Flip Belgian Waffle Maker and a Quesadilla Maker. Was it worth waking up for at 3am? You bet it was! I can't wait for Black Friday to come around again next year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We would like to wish all our readers

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

May you have a great time with love ones this holiday season...