Thanksgiving Tid-Bits

Just to start this post off I'm going to make you all very jealous. 75 DEGREES baby!! We went to LA to my house and the weather was A-MAZAING. We had so much fun, we did a lot of cool things: Rocky Cola Cafe, delicious dinner and fun friends, Dance Dance Revolution, Star Trek, Ronald Reagan Library, fancy schmancy car wash, Taboo, meet sister's BF, approve :), 9 miles around the Rose Bowl, BYU vs. UT football, and the new movie 2012!!!

Honestly, what I really want to blog about though is the food we ate during our Thanksgiving Feast. One of my mom's strongest meals is Thanksgiving dinner, as in EVERYTHING that goes into it. I learned some CRAZY things that I thought I would pass on.

1) We "marinated" the turkey overnight in...MILK! Whole milk. An entire gallon of whole milk, the turkey was a 12-1b. We bought a huge, huge, ziplock, put the turkey in, filled it up, and put it in a cooler with ice till we cooked it. And the meat was SO TENDER! Even the white meat that is usually pretty dry, it was so so moist. So, I'm doing that every year of my life now. She also put a cube of melted butter, salt, and pepper all over the outside right before cooking. YUMMY!

2) Mashed potatoes, you won't beat my mom's. The secrets, first she rinses all the starch out of the potatoes BEFORE cooking them. She cuts them then puts them bit by bit in a strainer and runs it through water till its clear (meaning no more starch). Then she puts a ton of butter and EVAPORTATED (canned) milk in as she is beating them. They are fluffy, delicious, and don't clump together like nasty glue.

3) We did real yams instead of canned this year. SO MUCH BETTER. Brown sugar, allspice, nutmeg, and pecans on top and baked them!

4) Lastly, these are a family classic for Thanksgiving and Christmas Even dinner: Organge rolls, but dinner-style rolls not breakfast. I'm putting the whole recipe on here for those that think they sound good!

Holiday Orange Dinner Rolls

-get cheap pillsbury rolls (don't buy the fancy big ones because they don't work as well), they come 10 rolls in a can and 4 cans in plastic wrap together. This recipe needs 30, so do whatever with the other 10.
-get a pan that is kind of like a bundt pan, but shorter sides and no ridges in the bottom. If you can't find one, a regular bundt works fine enough.
-one largish orange, grate skin with super fine grater - grate it directly into small pan
-melt one cube of butter and 1/3 cup of sugar in pan
-juice orange and add juice to pan
-stir until everything is nicely mixed
-drop rolls, 2 or 3 at a time, into sauce, turn over 3 - 4 times with spoon, then
-stand up in pan, 15 rolls per pan (so they lean against each other in the circle around the pan), so this will make enough for two pans
-drizzle remaining sauce over rolls
-let sit for about 30 minutes, then bake at 400 for about 15 minutes, maybe a bit longer, take out when the tops are looking slightly golden brown.

Enjoy!


Thats it for my Thanksgiving tid-bits, but it was a fun holiday!