I love Vons (aka Safeway in Hawaii!) and Vons.com has a lot of great Thanksgiving recipes and ideas to make your meals easier, tasty and fun to prepare. There are even some alternatives to turkey in case someone in your family has an aversion to poultry. *ahem*

Sure Vons has some great holiday ideas but of course the one that caught my eye was a dessert, Pumpkin Ice Cream Sundaes with homemade brittle. Yikes. I’d eat that year ’round.

Putting on a several course meal can be stressful and pricey. Lucky for you Vons has offered to help out this holiday season with a free $100 gift card for a lucky reader! Who couldn’t use a little extra help planning and buying groceries for holidays?

To enter just leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite dish to make/eat during the holidays. You have until Black Friday, November the 25th – the biggest shopping day of the year. If you win, you’ll already be ahead! Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: I received a gift card as a thank you from Safeway for participating. Opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by any form of compensation.

Turkey for one, anyone? Actually, you can probably get a few meals out of this, one turkey breast is quite huge. But if you don’t want to spend all day in the kitchen tending to a giant bird – throw this in the crock pot, and in few hours you have your thanksgiving meal!

ingredients:
1 apple, sliced
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 turkey breast
1/2 cup craisins
1 (8 oz) can apple juice
3 teaspoons thyme
3 teaspoons rosemary
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

In the crock pot place the sliced apples, onion and carrot in the bottom. Place the turkey breast on top and rub in the spices: thyme, rosemary, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Add the craisins on top.

Pour the apple juice into the pot, turn it on to low for 6-8 hours and serve!

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was an important part of my childhood. I looked forward to watching it every year.

Everyone remembers Charlie Brown’s fateful menu made by Snoopy – of buttered toast, pretzels, popcorn and jellybeans. What kid didn’t want that for Thanksgiving?!

I decided to recreate this famous holiday meal in cupcake form. Makes perfect sense…right?

First I printed out a cute Pilgrim Snoopy and glued it to a popsicle stick. This would serve as the backdrop for the treats.

ingredients:
pumpkin cupcakes (recipe here)
whipped cream cheese frosting (recipe here)
mini toasts
mini pretzels
popcorn
jelly beans ( I used jelly bellies because they are smaller)

Then I assembled all the pieces of the ‘holiday meal.’

This makes an adorable addition to pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. A sweet and tasty homage to my childhood memories.

My mom is the turkey maker, and hers is the best – we look forward to it every year. We start by brining the turkey in advance, something that really helps keep the turkey moist and flavorful:

How to brine a turkey (recipe, here)

One of the best things about Thanksgiving is the dessert of course. Sure there’s pumpkin pie and ice cream, I’m not going to pass that up, but sometimes you want to do a little something different. These cupcakes combine side dish and dessert. Perfection.

Sweet Potato Cupcakes (recipe, here)

When all is said and done, and you’re preparing for going Black Friday shopping the next day – an easy way to get going is to take the leftovers and build the perfect holiday leftover sandwich.

Post holiday leftover breakfast (recipe, here)

Have a great Thanksgiving!

I like bundt cake, but it always feels like it needs a little ‘something’ extra. So I CHOPPED it in two and lathered it with maple whipped cream. Ah, there – perfection.

ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pumpkin
1 (8 ounce) container sour cream

Maple Whipped Cream (recipe, here)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep a bundt pan by greasing it with melted butter. A lot of people will tell you to grease AND flour it. I say heck no. Butter alone is the best way to get those suckers to pop out. For this particular cake I went for an old skool bundt pan. No fanciness, just nice rounded edges.

In a large bowl whisk together the four, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer beat the butter, sugar and brown sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla until combined.

Mix in the pumpkin, and then alternate in the dry ingredients with the sour cream. Combine everything until you get a nice pumpkin-y batter.

Pour the batter into your prepped bundt pan. Place the pan on a baking sheet, just in case there is spillage – also it’s easier to transport it in and out of the oven. Bake for 50-60 minutes depending on your oven. 55 minutes seems to be the magic number for me. Test the cake with a long skewer for doneness.

Let cool for about 15 minutes or until the pan is just slightly warm to the touch. I like to carve off the risen top (which will eventually be the bottom) so that it’s nice and even.

Then go for the gold and flip the cake over and if all went well it will pop out nice and easy. Let cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make your Maple Whipped Cream (recipe, here). When the bundt is fully cooled, take a long knife and slice it across the middle. I just eye it, but if you’re not comfortable with that you can measure it.

The cake still might be a little warm in the middle. Let the two sides cool completely.

Then add the maple whipped cream to one side. Top with the other side and…

You have a lovely, creamy, pumpkin bundt! DEEELICIOUS.

This is an easy recipe where you just mix it all together…I promise you, you will LOVE these. They don’t taste sweet-potatoey at all, more like a lovely, moist, little spice cake. They came to me in a dream. Seriously. I wondered, if pumpkin cupcakes worked, these wouldn’t be that far off. They turned out better than the pumpkin ones, then again…the marshmallow topper is KEY.

ingredients:
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter melted, cooled
2 large eggs – beaten
1 cup roasted sweet potatoes
1 teaspoon maple syrup
3 TB orange juice

If you haven’t already done so – roast two sweet potatoes (prick them with a fork) on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven for one hour. When they come out the skin will peel off easily and they can be mashed – you don’t even need a food processor. Set aside 1 cup for later.

Preheat the oven to 350. Prep your cupcake pan with liners and set aside. In a medium sized bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, white sugar, butter and add the eggs. Add the dry ingredients and whisk until smooth. Stir in the sweet potatoes, syrup and orange juice.

Divide batter evenly among the cups, it should fill 12 easily about 2/3 full. Bake for approx 20-25 mins depending on your oven. Let cool on a wire rack.

Now for the topping so it’s just like REAL sweet potatoes! No involved frosting here (although I have a recipe for that if you like) no, I was going for more of the traditional sweet potato side dish look – by simply topping it with a roasted marshmallow. But how?

Take 2-3 marshmallows and put them in a microwave safe glass dish. Microwave for just 20 seconds. They should come out nice and puffy. Using an offset spatula I carefully lifted one whole puffy marshmallow on top of the cupcake. I did that for each, then put them on a baking sheet, and broiled until the tops were just bruleed.

Lovely. Toasty. Delish.

ingredients (leftovers):
garlic mashed potatoes
butter
ham, chopped
one egg
dash of milk
garlic salt
pepper
rolls
cheese

Take your leftover mashed potatoes and shape them into small patties, about the size of the palm of your hand. Heat some butter in a skillet on medium high heat. Place the patties in the pan and don’t move until the underside has browned. Then flip them over and brown the other side. Remove to a plate and set aside.

In a small bowl crack your egg, add a dash of milk and some garlic salt and little pepper. Add the chopped ham and scramble up with a fork. Add a little more butter to the pan, then scramble the egg. It will sit a little better on your roll if the egg is more firm.

Place the egg scramble on the roll, top with a small slice of cheese and serve with your potato pancake. A lovely homey holiday breakfast.

Get a giant pot for the stove top. Combine all the brine ingredients (not the iced water) to a boil then cool down to room temp. Now add the iced water to the brine, and mix.

Get a large CLEAN bucket and pour in half of the cooled brine. Make sure you only put half! The weight of the turkey will make the water level rise.

Then lower the bird into the bucket – partially filled with the brine…Now pour in the rest of the brine, covering the turkey as best you can. Cover with foil and place in the fridge overnight. Approx. 8 hours.

In the morning, remove the bird from the brine and pat the turkey dry. Mix up a rub of garlic, thyme, salt and pepper and rub it on the outside – don’t forget the inside too…very important for flavor!

Now to add even more aromatics, chop an apple in half and throw it inside the cavity. We just happened to have an apple but you can use an orange or an onion just as well.

Throw that sucker in the oven. The best way to test to see if a turkey’s done is to use a probe thermometer. When it reaches approx. 165, you’re pretty good to go.

Here is the lovely finished product. Make sure you let the turkey rest for at least 20 minutes before you carve it, or else you will lose all of those vital juices.

Now eat up, you deserve it.