Life at a "Swell's" pace: Family and Home

For the last two years I have been cooking and baking everything from scratch on Thanksgiving. I hate cooking, and only enjoy baking a little throughout the year. On Thanksgiving, though, I enjoy prepping and cooking from Monday until Thursday. It's the only day of the year I actually enjoy it.

Cranberries are always an easy one and I like to get those done on Monday.

Mashed potatoes with paprika on top. All of these get covered and put in our wine refrigerator.

Pumpkin pies, and Belvoir Elderflower Lemonade I found at Whole Foods. It was delicious! I will definitely be looking for this each time I go into Whole Foods.

Skylar helped me a lot this year. Last year he was working, but since he has been getting ready for college, he has been home to help me with a lot of the "heavy lifting." He helped me with the mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes. And of course, Hardy is always right there where the food is.☺

Costco had a large bag of onions and it was a better deal for the amount of stuffing I make. Plus, the leftover onions we always like to sauté onions and have them with lunch or dinner.

Nothing is better than homemade apple pie. Be sure to use Granny Smith apples with cinnamon. It always makes the pie taste so much better. The apple peeler I use I've had for years, but I wouldn't use any other one. It peels and cores it all with the crank of a handle. It also works great for potatoes, too.

Homemade biscuits. These have yeast in them, but I am not afraid of using yeast. I have been interesting in sourdough, but I haven't played around with it yet. Maybe one of these days I will get brave and give it a shot.

I also made spiral ham, brown gravy, roasted carrots, deviled eggs, stuffed celery, black olives, baby dill pickles, baked green beans with bacon bits, corn. We always cook and bake with organic ingredients. It was a full spread that we ate on all day and again for three days. Thanksgiving in our house is always a good time to rest, reflect, and give thanks for all the wonderful things we had come our way throughout the year. We always take the time to say the things we are thankful for and also use this time to reflect on things we can make better.

Happy Thanksgiving, from our house to yours!