Day Three hundred and eighty-four

Latkes! Oh yeah!  I have a recipe- it's awesome- I'll put it here very soon, I promise.

Hanukkah dinner (I think).  Latkes with apple sauce and sour cream, roast chicken, and carrots.

Pumpkins! Lots of them.  From my aunt and uncle's farm in Iowa.  I pureed these after roasting, made some into bread, and froze the rest.

Roasted butternut squash!  Also from Iowa.  Some made into soup; the extras pureed and frozen.

Pumpkin seeds... from the pumpkins... self-explanatory.

Pumpkin bread... from the pumpkins.  Noticing a theme?

School lunch: Yogurt, apples, trail mix, almonds, and a cookie.

Day Three hundred and twenty-six

Lunch: Pizza muffins (with butternut squash mixed into the sauce) on gluten-free english muffins, baby spinach, and strawberries.

Dinner: Brown rice penne with chunks of chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and spinach.

Tomorrow's school lunch: Leftover chicken from dinner, cheese with gluten-free crackers, baby spinach, and orange slices.

Day One hundred and twenty-five

Lunch: Spinach salad with hard-boiled eggs.

Dinner: Roasted turkey breast, mashed sweet potatoes, butternut squash, gravy, and healthy creamed spinach. Somehow, we ended up with a mini-Thanksgiving in the middle of a snow storm!


Purees for the freezer: Butternut squash

Day Seventy-five: Thanksgiving

Cornbread and chicken-apple sausage stuffing... about to go into the turkey

The turkey... just stuffed and headed for the oven. We roasted it breast-side down for the first 1 1/2 hrs, and then breast-side up for the rest of the time.

The turkey... all roasted and ready to be carved. Carving is my dad's contribution to the meal. :)

Indian corn pudding... made by my mom

Carrot-herb biscuits... these are a tradition in my family, and SO yummy. Made with half whole-wheat pastry flour.

Pumpkin soup, made by my mom. Garnished with sour cream, toasted pumpkin seeds, and applewood bacon.

Sweet potato casserole... with marshmallows

Butternut squash... made by my grandma

The stuffing (from inside the turkey)

Gravy.. made by my mom

Mashed potatoes

Green beans with carmelized shallots

The meal... turkey, gravy, green beans, stuffing, cornbread pudding, biscuits, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and butternut squash. I'm full just typing that out!

The aftermath. I don't normally put pictures of people up, but when my husband fell asleep with his head in his dish, I felt I'd done my job. ;)

Pecan pie. As a rule, nothing store-bought goes on the table; but my husband woke up wanting pecan pie, and ran out to buy it while the turkey was roasting.

Maple pumpkin fudge, made by my mom

Apple pie, made by my grandma

Pumpkin pie, also by grandma

Thanksgiving butter cookies... also by grandma.

Day Forty

Dinner: Vegetarian chili (red and white beans, spices, diced tomatoes, butternut squash puree, corn, some leftover rice, a splash of maple syrup) with sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese, whole wheat cornbread (cauliflower, zucchini, and corn purees; recipe: Sneaky Chef), spinach salad, and bananas.

Day Thirty-nine

Purees for the freezer: Butternut squash. This typically goes into pasta dishes, chili, etc.

Lunch: Annie's mac & cheese, baby spinach with ranch dip, and sliced apples. My girls were home sick w/colds, so I treated them to "boxed" mac & cheese. Sadly, they love it as much as the homemade kind. For it's ease, I do, too, but don't tell anyone. ;) Oh, and I had to make peas for my little one, b/c her spinach was "yuck."

Dinner: Hashbrown Casserole (crockpot; recipe: Make it Fast, Cook it Slow). This came out so well! I used spinach instead of the red peppers it called for, b/c I don't care for peppers in breakfast food, and steak fries instead of hash browns, b/c they are healthier, and it's what I had in my freezer, and Trader Joe's chicken apple sausage, b/c they are just about the only ones to make a poultry sausage and not put it in a pork casing).


Using up my basil plants before the next freeze: Pesto sauce. I think my recipe is from Cooking Light. I add everything but the cheese, then freeze in jars. Each jar is enough for one lb. of pasta.