Thanksgiving Day is nearly here. It'll be here in less than a week. This can be a stressful time, especially with all the work that goes into creating a lovely Thanksgiving meal.
So this year I'm going to cheap out. I figure I can cut down costs if I stick with these ingredients:
* Sliced turkey deli meat
* Loaf of bread, thin sliced (59¢ at HEB!)
* Can of cranberry "sauce"
* Can of green beans
* Box of instant mashed potatoes
* 1 Packet of gravy mix
* 1 Can of pumpkin pie filler
* 1 Can of Yams or sweet potatoes
See, you take two slices of bread, put some turkey slices on it (thin sliced is best so you can kind of crumple up the turkey and make it look nice). Open the can of cranberry "sauce" (it's more of a jelly to me) and slice off a round and put it on the turkey. Close up the bread and you have your main course. Since stuffing is made out of bread, you get that with your turkey, too.
The green beans and yams (or sweet potatoes) can be heated up in a microwave.
The instant mashed potatoes is probably the most labor intensive portion. But here's a tip: you don't really need butter and milk to make it. You can do it just using hot water. If you're hot water heater is set to high you can probably do it with tap water. You could probably do the same for the gravy mix.
No Thanksgiving dinner would be complete without dessert, and I budgeted that in. Frozen pumpkin pies are way too expensive, so we're going to make one. It's not really a pie, though.
1. Take two pieces of bread and cut the crusts off
2. Take a couple of spoons of the pumpkin pie filling and place in the center of one of the slices of bread.
3. Take the remaining slice of bread and put it on top of the pumpkin stuff.
4. Squish down the edges of the bread so you meld the top and bottom together while leaving a pocket of pumpkin in the center.
Et viola! You have a pumpkin… thing… for dessert. If you wanted to get fancy you could probably deep fry it. That might kill you, though. Seriously.
Obviously you can make substitutions. Changing the turkey for ham, for instance. Or the green beans for any canned vegetable of your choice. You could even go "Old World" and use pumpernickel bread. I don't know how that would taste with pumpkin pie filling, so you may want to replace that with peanut butter and jelly.
If you have any money or time saving Thanksgiving ideas don't hesitate to let me know.
It appears that there are people who believe that meals should start with soup and salad. I've never heard of having soup on Thanksgiving Day but, hey, it takes all kinds.
I've heard of soup after Thanksgiving. Turkey soup, to be specific. And turkey sandwiches, turkey pot pie, turkey casserole, turkey salad, turkey nachos, turkey quesadillas, turkey dip, french fried turkey fingers, turkey a la mode, and other crazy things that people do to use up all the turkey from Thanksgiving.
Anyway, here's my recipe for home made tomato soup. On the cheap.
You'll need:
* A bowl
* Hot water
* Lots of ketchup packets
I recommend going to a food court in a large shopping mall to get your ketchup packets. Just breeze by all the fast food places and grab a handful. With the attitude those teenage counter workers have this day (so apathetic) they'll probably give you a bag of them just to "stick it to the boss man." If you like your tomato soup spicy then make sure you hit up the Taco Bell for some hot sauce. You can probably use regular store bought ketchup, too, but I didn't budget my Thanksgiving dinner for soup so I didn't try it.
After you have your ketchup (some places have 'catsup') you're ready to start.
Heat up your water until it's hot. Pour it into a bowl. Then open up all those ketchup packets and empty into the hot water. Stir vigorously! If you have any Taco Bell hot sauce packets, now is the time to add them.
If your soup is too thin, add more ketchup. Your neighbors will probably lend you a cup of ketchup if you ask nicely.
If you're adventurous in the kitchen (wink, wink) then you may want to experiment with different packets for different soups. Like mustard soup, relish soup (or a combination of mustard and relish with sliced hot dogs), soy sauce soup, or mayonnaise soup. I don't know that you'd want to eat any of those, but making them would be a breeze.
As far as the salad goes, well, put some lettuce and tomato on your Thanksgiving Turkey Sandwich.
If you can think of anything else that comes in a packet drop me a line. That's all I could think of.
