Green Bean Casserole

It's getting close to the end, which means better dishes right?

Perhaps.

Well, I think this is a better dish and that is all that matters. This is part four of a five part series on my personal favorite Thanksgiving dishes. Parts one, two and three are a quick click away.

Part four of this little series covers one of my favorite holiday recipes: the green bean casserole.

Now for those of you that know me well, you should notice one thing that just doesn't make sense with this dish...

...I cannot stand mushrooms. I just don't like them. Period. With one exception.

The traditional green bean casserole made with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup is one of my all time favorites. There is a mix of creamy sauce, savory vegetables and crunchy onions that come together in a wonderful way.

While the cranberry sauce demonstrated my purest ways when it comes to holiday traditional dinners, I am hoping to experiment with mushroomless cream sauces in the future. For now, it's all about tried and true. Follow after the jump for the recipe.

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

As you hopefully know by now, this is the third part of a five part Thanksgiving series. Here are parts one and two.

The post today is a Thanksgiving classic. Almost everyone loves mashed potatoes. I prefer mine with garlic. A good amount of garlic. If you do not like garlic, I would not recommend coming over to my house for most meals served.

While it's a fairly easy dish with basic ingredients that most of you already know how to prepare, maybe my recipe will offer you something different to try, check it out after the jump.

Sweet Butter Rolls

As I mentioned in my first post, I am in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner recap with some of my favorite dishes of the season. This is dish two in a five part series. The first began with cranberry sauce done two ways.

If anyone who has gotten close to me can attest (and as I have mentioned in previous posts), I love bread. I love bread in all forms. It definitely is a type of food I will select meals around. I also do not discriminate. All bread is welcome.

Enter the dinner roll. Every Thanksgiving dinner needs some sort of roll. And I'm not talking about these (although they are quite tasty).

I romped around the good ol' interweb and found this little recipe that had excellent reviews. The rolls did come out quite good although I had one little complaint. In the linked recipe, it is stated that the rolls are a bit more dense than crescents but not as much as dinner rolls. I would disagree. They were quite dense in my opinion. I do not want to write-off this recipe as the density might have been my own doing due to over-kneading so I will make these again and update the post with the results.

Cranberry Sauce Two Ways

Better late than never, right?

So the next series of posts are based off the standard Thanksgiving dinner menu. In fact, I made these dishes a week before Turkey Day just because I knew I wouldn't be doing any of the cooking during the holiday weekend. What's funny is that I am the only one to have enjoyed this meal.

The following posts will cover what I believe are five of the more common Thanksgiving dinner options. They also are my top must haves at a holiday dinner. I will begin with cranberry sauce.

I love cranberry sauce. I use it instead of gravy on potatoes, I smother it over turkey and I drown my bread in it.

Normally I use the out-of-the-can stuff but as this is a cooking blog, it had to be from scratch. As I researched recipes and checked out possible options, one underlying theme came into light...

Making this stuff from scratch is ridiculously easy.

For that reason, I have below two recipes for cranberry sauce. One is a standard traditional recipe. The other has a bit of a twist. To find out about the twist, check out after the jump.

Garlic Roasted Potatoes

The potato. The most popular tuber vegetable in the world. The potato originated in South America and most of the world's species of potatoes are derived from a single subspecies in Chile. The average person consumes 73 pounds of potato every year. Being Irish, I value the importance of the potato. 

This recipe is the oldest recipe I have and its roots begin in 6th grade. While I was in 6th grade, students were required to take an elective rotation series that included art, computers, drama, and home economics. In the home-ec class we were required cook a meal for our families. One of the dishes I made was garlic roasted potatoes. While I do not remember where I got the recipe initially, I have kept this one in my back pocket.

Now that you have way more information about potatoes and my childhood than you ever wanted to know, I will get to the dish.

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus

Bacon in an omelette? Good.

Bacon on a burger? Great.

Bacon wrapped around a filet mignon? Awesome.

All these foods are made better with bacon, so why not asparagus?

That's what I thought.

I actually like asparagus as a stand alone vegetable. It grills very well and is super easy to make: just add some olive oil and pepper and you have a quick and healthy side. For this dish, I added bacon for the sole reason that it was going to go bad soon. Pair it with a vegetable and at least you can think you are consuming something good for you.

Pesto Garlic Bread

Pesto Garlic Bread 

I love bread. 
I really love bread.
Understatement? Very likely.

Ode to Bread by PR

Be it flat, a stick, a twist, or a roll. 
Be it with garlic, cheese, or other spread. 
Be it corn, banana, or sour dough.  
It is wonderful, this food we call bread.

Wow. Okay.  I will not do that again, but you get the point and so onto the recipe after the jump.