Baked Sweet Potatoes with Poached Cranberries

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, we offer this healthy update to a classic holiday sweet potato dish. Sweetened cranberries take the place of the gooey marshmallow preparation. The colors are festive and bright, and the flavors are made for each other. 

Adapted rom Super Foods by Dolores Riccio

One 10-12 ounce package fresh cranberries

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 cinnamon stick

2 large sweet potatoes (about 2 pounds)

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375 F. Wash potatoes and stab them in a few spots with a paring knife. Bake them for 30-45 minutes, or until beginning to soften, but still firm enough to slice.

While the potatoes are baking, wash and pick over the cranberries.  Combine the sugar, water, and cinnamon stick in a deep saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil; cook for 3 minutes. Add the cranberries, and cook uncovered at a low boil, stirring often, for about 5 minutes, or until the berries have popped open, but retain their shape. Remove the cinnamon stick and set the poached berries aside to cool slightly (the sauce will thicken). The cranberries can be prepared ahead; if chilled, bring them to room temp. before proceeding.

Once the potatoes are done, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly. Cut the potatoes into thick, even slices, 4-5 per potato. Remove the peels, which will come off easily at this point. Place them into a serving dish, sprinkle with salt and ladle some of the cranberries on top. Leftover cranberries keep for weeks in the fridge and may also be frozen.

--Kayte

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Happy Thanksgiving! We’re getting this out early this week because the Hub will be closed on Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.

I’ll start with this week’s specials, and then give you some ideas of things to do with your Thanksgiving leftovers. By the way, did you hear that the average cost of a full Thanksgiving dinner for is under $50? And, according to the news story, that’s without using sales prices! I find that hard to believe. I had a hard time keeping my Thanksgiving dinner for 12 under $50 and I DID use sales prices.

But anyway, on to the sales. Watch the dates that the sales are good for. They’ve changed some because of Thanksgiving.

Marsh has “over 20 different varieties” of Washington or locally grown apples for 98 cents a pound in half peck bags. I’m not sure how big that is, but based on the size bags you usually see I’m assuming somewhere between 3 and 5 pounds. They have pork chops for $1.29 a pound and fresh ground beef (73% lean) for $1.99 a pound. Cucumbers and green peppers are 88 cents each. There are five $1 off “write your own coupons” that are good with a $10 purchase. I assume that requires at least $50 to use all five coupons. These prices are good Friday through Wednesday. They also have a deal on select gift cards – you get $20 off your next grocery purchase when you buy $100 or more in select gift cards. I don’t see any special dates for this, so it’s probably also good Friday through Wednesday.

Aldi still has 3 pounds of sweet potatoes for $1.49, a pound of baby carrots for 89 cents, 10 pounds of russet potatoes for $1.89 (Did you get a chance to try the roasted root veggies that were demoed last week? They were fantastic! Ask for the recipe the next time you go in.), a head of celery for 89 cents, and a 3 pound bag of onions for 99 cents. A 15 ounce can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just pumpkin) is 89 cents. Cans of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soups are still 49 cents each. Aldi’s prices are good from last Sunday through next Wednesday. They’re closed on Thanksgiving Day. They had some beautiful poinsettias when I was there on Monday. I think they were $1.99 each, but maybe they were $3.99. I wasn’t really paying attention. Eggs had come up to $1.49 a dozen on Monday.

Kroger has boneless pork loin for $1.77 a pound. That’s all I saw in their ad (which was very small). Their prices are good from 7 a.m. Friday through next Wednesday. One thing that may be good for other shopping – they’re giving 4x fuel points for gift card purchases. This deal is good now through December 11. Don’t forget that fuel points usually expire at the end of the month, so unless you need gas between now and Saturday, you might want to wait until after the first of the month if you plan to buy gift cards there.

OK, so what do you do with your Thanksgiving dinner leftovers? As I said in my earlier THANKSGIVING column, I had eleven people for Thanksgiving dinner a couple of weeks ago. There were lots of leftovers. Dinner plus the leftovers cost $47.21. My goal was to make a total of at least thirty meals from the ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner. Eleven of those meals were Thanksgiving dinner itself, so I need to come up with another nineteen meals. I didn’t quite make it. Sixteen meals for sure, but you’d have to squeeze pretty hard to get the whole nineteen. Unlike my usual columns, my Thanksgiving menus do include bread (in the dressing) and potatoes.

Let’s start with what I have to work with. I had the following leftover ingredients:

A dab of whipping cream – about a fourth of a cup or so

Half a head of celery

6 pounds of potatoes

A cup of chopped walnuts

4 eggs

3 onions (a pound and a half)

4 ounces of cream cheese

More than half a liter each of diet and regular cranberry soda

That’s the leftover ingredients themselves. There were lots of leftovers, too. Things that had been cooked or otherwise prepared but not eaten:

About 12 cups of TURKEY (it’s hard to believe that there’s that much, but I measured it into freezer containers and that’s how much there is)

A couple cups of CREAMED SPINACH

Most of a pound of frozen peas (they weren’t very popular this year)

About 4 cups of MASHED POTATOES

A cup or so of SWEET POTATOES

About five cups of APPLE/CELERY/GRAPE/NUT SALAD

About a cup of GRAVY

A couple of cups of drippings and broth

About 3 cups of CRANBERRY SAUCE (I forgot to put it on the table)

A couple of cups of STUFFING

Most of a PUMPKIN PIE

About 2 cups of WHIPPED CREAM

The first thing to do is to make WALDORF TURKEY SALAD. This makes a good lunch dish. Make and eat this the day after Thanksgiving, because the apples don’t last very long once they’ve been cut.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with just plain leftovers. For four servings, reheat about 4 cups of leftover TURKEY and two cups each of MASHED POTATOES, STUFFING, and peas. If there’s not 2 cups, just use however much there is. Reheat the GRAVY, too. Each serving is 1 cup of turkey, and half a cup each of mashed potatoes, dressing, and peas, plus some gravy. Serve with the CRANBERRY SAUCE.

Next make TURKEY, BROCCOLI AND SPINACH CASSEROLE, using some of the turkey and the leftover creamed spinach, plus the last of the whipping cream and cream cheese.

  

The last thing to do with Thanksgiving leftovers is to make CARCASS STEW. It uses up the leftovers that you haven’t done something else with, so make it after you’ve made the other turkey leftovers meals. It's soup or stew made with broth from the turkey carcass and any leftovers you have left. A similar thing to do is to make TURKEY AND NOODLES. Like Chicken and Noodles, but with turkey instead of chicken. 

I just ran across this recipe for SHAKER CHICKEN PUDDING, which should work just as well with turkey instead of chicken. You do have to buy the mushrooms, but you should have everything else left from Thanksgiving. You’d have to make this instead of something else, of course. But it does sound good.

So there you have it. Sixteen or more servings made from just the leftovers plus a few carrots and a pound of frozen broccoli. The carrots cost about 35 cents ($1.39 for 2 pounds, or about 12 carrots, at Aldi) and the broccoli 99 cents (at Walmart). Which brings the total cost of Thanksgiving dinner for eleven plus sixteen more meals to $48.55. Twenty or more meals if you add a package or two of noodles. There’s still some leftover pumpkin pie and whipped cream, too, which you can add to any of these meals. And lots of potatoes that you can use to stretch any meal, and some eggs and celery and onions.

The only way I was able to stretch the holiday budget this far was because it did include a lot of carbs or “fillers” – especially the dressing and the potatoes. But then, they’re part of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, too, right?

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and thanks to you for reading my columns!

Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 (and Lots of Leftovers) for under $50

I’m going to do something a bit different this week and next. Since most of the ads are about Thanksgiving anyway, this week I’m going to tell you how I put together a Thanksgiving dinner for twelve last Saturday for under $50. And next week (watch for it early, since the Hub will be closed Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving) I’ll tell you how I can make four complete meals for four people each with the leftovers, a bag of broccoli and a few carrots. Altogether, that comes to 28 meals for under $50, and twelve of those meals are Thanksgiving dinner! Spoiler alert – because it’s Thanksgiving, I do include mashed potatoes and bread stuffing, which, as you know, I usually don’t.

But first, this week’s specials. Mostly Thanksgiving related, of course.

Aldi’s ad looks a lot like it has the past couple of weeks. Frozen Butterball turkeys for 99 cents a pound. Fresh Butterball turkeys for $1.29 a pound. Hams ranging from 99 cents a pound to $1.99 a pound. Three pounds of sweet potatoes for $1.49. Three pounds of onions for 99 cents. Ten pounds of russet potatoes for $1.89. Celery for 89 cents a head and cranberries 99 cents for twelve ounces. Baby carrots for 89 cents a pound. Butter $1.69 a pound and cream cheese 99 cents for 8 ounces. Stuffing mix for 69 cents a box, and instant mashed potatoes for 69 and 99 cents. (Though real mashed potatoes are so easy to make I don’t know why you’d want to get the fake kind in a box.) Canned gravy (in a jar) for 89 cents, though again, it’s so easy to make why get the fake stuff.

Marsh has frozen Butterball turkeys for 99 cents a pound and Norbest and Honeysuckle frozen turkeys for 69 cents a pound, but you have to buy $25 of other stuff to get them at that price. There’s a limit of one each. Fresh pork picnic roasts (the best tasting cut of meat as far as I’m concerned, though it’s got a big bone in it) are $1.29 a pound. “Jumbo” cauliflower is two heads for $5 or $2.50 a head, and bunch broccoli is 3 for $5 or $1.67 each. Frozen veggies are 4 for $5, or $1.25 each. Sour cream is $1.29 a pint (16 ounces) and heavy whipping cream is $1.39 a half-pint (8 ounces). Campbell’s cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soups are 5 for $5, or $1 each. I have no idea how good a price this is, but Maxwell House coffee is $3.99 for 29.3 to 31.5 ounce cans, if you buy $30 of other stuff. A 9.7 ounce bag of Splenda Granular (for baking) is the equivalent of 5 pounds of sugar and costs $5.99. (A lot more than sugar costs, but if you can’t eat sugar…)

Kroger has their store brand frozen turkeys for 77 cents a pound with $25 of other purchases. There’s a limit of two turkeys. Fresh Honeysuckle turkeys are $1.29 a pound with $25 of other purchases, again with a limit of two. Bob Evans breakfast sausage is two packages for $4, and the packages range from twelve to sixteen ounces (a pound). Various canned vegetables are two for $1, or 50 cents each. Fresh sweet potatoes are 59 cents a pound. Hams range from $1.29 to $1.99 a pound. Frozen vegetables are ten for $10, or $1 per bag, and the bags are 10 to 12 ounces each. Sour cream is ten pints for $10, or $1 per pint (16 ounces). Whipping cream is two pints for $4, or $2 per pint. Campbell’s cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups are ten cans for $10, or $1 per can. I think you can buy just a single item of any of these for the sale price; you don’t have to buy ten of them, or two, or whatever.

Thanksgiving dinner was last Saturday at my house. I had a bunch of guests, most of whom were associated in some way with IU, and many of whom will be out of town the week of Thanksgiving. So, since I like cooking special meals like Thanksgiving and I wanted to have them over, I decided to have it early.

Since I’ve been doing the Weekly Special blogs and a Food Stamp Challenge (I took a break on that for a couple of days while I had Thanksgiving dinner), food budgets and the cost of food have been on my mind a lot. So I decided to cost out my Thanksgiving dinner. There were eleven of us (there was supposed to have been twelve, but there was a last minute cancellation). Here’s what we had:

Turkey

Gravy

Dressing

Mashed potatoes

Sweet potatoes

Cranberry sauce

Peas

Creamed spinach

Apple/celery/grape/nut salad (aka Waldorf salad)

Pumpkin pies with whipped cream

Cranberry soda

It came to a grand total of $47.21. Whew! I was really trying to keep it under $50, and I just made it. In the interests of full disclosure, though, and just to keep things honest between us, this isn’t exactly what I had. If you’ve been reading my weekly columns, you know that I don’t eat grain of any kind, and that I’m diabetic and only use artificial sweeteners. So for my own dinner, I substituted sausage for the bread in the dressing, made the pie crusts out of nut flours instead of out of wheat flour, and used artificial sweetener instead of sugar. But other than that, this really was my menu.

Here’s what I bought (adjusted for the bread and sugar and such). As it happened, I had to buy almost everything specifically for Thanksgiving dinner, and I’m including the whole cost of what I bought, whether I actually used it all or not. The only exceptions were salt and pepper and some spices (estimated at 50 cents for all), half a cup of mayo, three and a half cups of sugar, and three cups of flour. I’m assuming that you have these on hand and won’t have to go out and buy them for this dinner.

From Walmart -

17 pound turkey - $15.04

1.5 pounds frozen spinach - $1.98

3 apples (1.58 pounds) - $1.58

From Aldi –

3 pounds sweet potatoes - $1.49

2 boxes stuffing mix - $1.32

1 head celery – 89 cents

12 ounces cranberries – 99 cents

10 pounds potatoes – $1.98 (I only needed 4 pounds, but the 10 pound bag was cheaper than buying 4 pounds)

1 pound butter - $1.69

8 ounces cream cheese - 99 cents

1 pound frozen peas 99 cents

8 ounces walnuts - $3.99

1 dozen eggs - $1.29

3 pounds of onions – 99 cents

2 cans of pumpkin - $1.78

3 pints whipping cream - $5.94 (I use whipping cream instead of evaporated milk in the pumpkin pies. Evaporated milk would be cheaper. You could get two cans of milk and a pint of whipping cream for about $4.00.)

From Marsh –

Half a of pound grapes – 65 cents (Actually, I don’t know if I could have gotten just half a pound. I got a few pounds to take to church and used some of them for dinner. But then, I could have included them under the section for things I had on hand, so I guess it all comes out the same in the end)

2 liters of cranberry soda – 98 cents (I bought these a few weeks ago)

All of this comes to $45.31. As I said, I’m assuming you have some mayo, salt and pepper and spices, flour and sugar on hand. I used the current prices on these, adjusted for the quantities used, and came up with a total cost of $47.21. To feed twelve people. With lots of leftovers. For less than $4 per person.

What leftovers did I have? Well, to begin with, I had some ingredients leftover.

A dab of whipping cream – about a fourth of a cup or so

Half a head of celery

6 pounds of potatoes

A cup of chopped walnuts

4 eggs

3 onions (a pound and a half)

4 ounces of cream cheese

More than half a liter each of the cranberry soda – one liter is diet and one isn’t

That’s the leftover ingredients themselves. There were lots of leftovers, too. Things that had been cooked or otherwise prepared but not eaten.

About 12 cups of turkey (I actually measured it out as I put it in freezer containers)

A couple of cups of creamed spinach

Most of the peas (they weren’t very popular this year)

About 4 cups of mashed potatoes

A cup or so of sweet potatoes

About half of the apple/celery/grape/nut salad

A couple cups of gravy

All of the cranberry sauce (I forgot to put it on the table)

A couple of cups of dressing

Most of a pie

About 2 cups of whipped cream

Again, my menu was ROAST TURKEY, TURKEY GRAVY, DRESSING/STUFFING, MASHED POTATOES, SWEET POTATOES, CRANBERRY SAUCE, peas (just heated and buttered), CREAMED SPINACH, APPLE/CELERY/GRAPE/NUT SALAD, PUMPKIN PIES, WHIPPED CREAM, cranberry soda.

This is getting a bit lengthy (I know, I know – I’ve always been wordy!), so I’m just going to briefly tell you how I fixed things. The only thing that actually had a recipe was the pumpkin pie, so mostly it’s just going to be explaining what I did. Then I’m going to do another column next week telling you what I did with the leftovers, or what I could do with them. Mostly I put them in the freezer. I’m not quite ready to face them again just yet!

So there’s my Thanksgiving dinner. For twelve. For less than $50. With lots of leftovers. And mostly from scratch. And a delicious dinner it was, too.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Turkey and Noodles

(Part of the LEFTOVERS from my THANKSGIVING DINNER for 12 for under $50)

To get the very last meal out of the Thanksgiving leftovers, make Turkey and Noodles. Like Chicken and Noodles, but with turkey instead of chicken. This was my aunt’s signature dish. Make it like CARCASS STEW, but add a pound or two of noodles to the broth. Homemade are best, of course, but probably more effort than you want to make right after Thanksgiving. I like curly noodles, but whatever you like – or whatever is cheapest. Meanwhile, boil up some more potatoes, and mash them. You serve the turkey and noodles over the mashed potatoes. Talk about carb heaven comfort food! You can really stretch the last of the leftover turkey this way, because the broth gives a strong turkey flavor to the noodles even if there wasn’t much meat left. You should be able to get more than four servings of Turkey and Noodles, because you’ve got the noodles and the potatoes to stretch it. It depends on how much water you used to cook the bones. In fact, if you really need to stretch it, make the Carcass Stew up through taking the meat off the bones, but save the bones. Put the bones back in more water, add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar and some more salt and pepper and poultry seasoning, and simmer them all for at least twelve hours, and up to 24, or even 36. You’ll be amazed at how much flavor was left in the bones. You can use this turkey broth, along with the leftovers, to make Carcass Stew, and use the first bunch of broth to make Turkey and Noodles. That’s really stretching things, but both meals should still be good even if they don’t have quite as much flavor as if you just make one meal out of the carcass. 

Turkey Carcass Stew

(part of the LEFTOVERS from my THANKSGIVING DINNER for 12 for under $50)

The last thing to do with Thanksgiving leftovers is to make CARCASS STEW. It uses up the leftovers that you haven’t done something else with, so make it after you’ve made the other leftover meals. After you’ve picked most of the meat off of the TURKEY bones (and I do mean most of it!), make turkey broth out of the carcass. Put the bones, an onion, and a couple of stalks of celery in a big soup pot, then add enough water to cover the bones. You should have at least six cups of water, and eight or ten cups isn’t too much. Add a bay leaf if you have it, and some poultry seasoning, salt and pepper. Add any leftover drippings, too, that you didn’t use to make the GRAVY, and the broth from cooking the turkey neck and giblets. Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at least a couple of hours. Pour the broth through a strainer (Don’t forget to save the broth! I did once. I carefully poured it all through a strainer and right down the drain. I’d forgotten to put a big bowl under the strainer.), wipe out the pot to be sure there are no tiny bones left in it, then pour the broth back in the pot. Add the leftover GRAVY, MASHED POTATOES, STUFFING and peas. Leftover SWEET POTATOES are good in it, too, as is a bit of CRANBERRY SAUCE. Not too much cranberry sauce, though. No more than half a cup or so. Add a cup or two of sliced celery and a chopped onion or two. Bring it back to a boil, then simmer it for about 30 minutes. You could add a chopped carrot or two or three. Meanwhile, take the remaining meat off of the bones. You’ll be amazed at how much meat there was left! Add the meat to the soup. You should end up with 10 or more cups, depending on how many leftovers you had. If there weren’t very many leftovers to put in it, dice a few potatoes and add them when you add the celery, onions and carrots. This should make at least four very generous servings. 

Turkey, Broccoli and Spinach Casserole

(part of the LEFTOVERS from my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

3 or 4 cups of leftover turkey, diced

The leftover creamed spinach

1 pound frozen broccoli

4 ounces cream cheese

1 cup chopped onion

Cook the frozen broccoli with the chopped onion. If it was chopped broccoli, great. If it wasn’t, run it quickly through your food processor before you cook it so it ends up as chopped broccoli. If you process it after it’s cooked it’s likely to turn to mush. Combine everything and mix well. Put it in a casserole dish and bake it for about 40 minutes, or until it’s hot and bubbly. 

Whipped Cream

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I put about 2 cups of whipping cream in a medium-sized but deep bowl and whipped it with my mixer. When it was thick but not stiff, I added about a fourth of a cup of sugar and kept whipping it until it was as stiff as I wanted it.

Apple/Celery/Grape/Nut Salad

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

We always used to have this at Thanksgiving and Christmas, except we used raisins instead of grapes and we added marshmallows. The grapes and no marshmallows were to make it a bit lower carb so I could eat some, too. Either way works. I cut three apples, or a pound and a half (I happened to use one each of three different kinds, but use whatever is cheapest) into eighths, cored them, and then sliced them cross-wise. I cut half a pound of seedless black grapes into halves, and cut about a fourth of a head of celery into thin slices. (I just cut it off of the end, instead of pulling off the stalks and cutting them. It’s a lot easier.) I mixed the apples, grapes and celery with a cup of chopped walnuts and about half a cup of mayo and it was done. 

Creamed Spinach

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I sautéed a chopped onion and a minced clove of garlic in a couple of tablespoons of butter until soft, then added about half a cup of whipping cream and 4 ounces of cream cheese. Meanwhile, I nuked a pound and a half (one bag) of spinach until it was hot, then added it to the cream mixture. I stirred it up good and it was ready to go. (Thanks to Dana Carpender for the recipe which is in one of her books.)

Cranberry Sauce

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I just used the recipe from the bag, except I used Splenda instead of sugar (I assume you’ll use sugar), and I added a stick of cinnamon. So for a 12 ounce bag of cranberries, I put a cup each of water and Splenda in a saucepan, then added the cranberries and a stick of cinnamon. (You could use ground cinnamon if that’s what you have.) I brought it to a boil, then reduced it to a simmer and cooked it for about 5 minutes or so, or until the cranberries had mostly popped. I let it cool, then stuck it in the fridge, where it remains to this day, since I forgot to get it out for Thanksgiving dinner.

Sweet Potatoes

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I fixed them very simply. I roasted them in their skins at 475 until they were soft, about half an hour or so. (Roasting them at the high temperature caramelizes them and makes them extra sweet.) I let them cool a bit, then peeled them. (The skin comes right off when they’re done.) I put them in a big bowl, added about a fourth of a cup of butter, and whipped them until they were smooth. No sugar or sweetener or marshmallows needed.

Mashed Potatoes

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

And they were really mashed, too – not whipped! But whipping works just as well and you may not have a potato masher. I peeled 8 potatoes (they were pretty small) and cut them in fourths. I put them in cold water (you want to start with cold water so they cook evenly), brought them to a boil, then reduced the heat and simmered them until they were done. I should have salted the water but I think I forgot. When they were done, I drained them, but saved the water. I put the potatoes in a big bowl and added about half a cup of the water they cooked in, and mashed them a bit. Then I added about a quarter of a cup of whipping cream and a couple of tablespoons of butter and mashed them until they were nice and smooth and creamy. If you were going to whip them, you’d do the same thing except use a mixer instead of a potato masher. I tossed the rest of the water they cooked in, but you could save it and use it to make soup or bread.

Dressing

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I chopped two onions and thinly sliced about a quarter of a head of celery, then sautéed them in a quarter of a cup of butter. I added them to stuffing mix and some broth from cooking the neck and giblets. (Actually, since I don’t eat grains, I cooked the celery and onions with some sausage and mushrooms, and didn’t use any butter or broth. Most people wouldn’t recognize what I made as dressing, but it serves the purpose as far as I’m concerned.)

Turkey Gravy

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I took most of the drippings from the turkey and skimmed off some of the fat. I put the drippings in a skillet. Then I mixed a couple of tablespoons of flour with some water and added that to the drippings, stirring constantly. I added some salt and pepper and poultry seasoning and that’s it. (Actually, because I don’t eat any grains, I used another kind of thickener, but flour is what’s usually used.)

Roast Turkey

(Part of my Thanksgiving Dinner for 12 for under $50)

I thawed the turkey, then put it in one of those oven bags. I rubbed a couple of tablespoons of butter over the skin and under the skin on the breast, then baked it for about 3 hours. I find that the turkey comes out a lot moister when I roast it in the bag, even though it doesn’t look quite as nice. But it’s cut up before it goes on the table anyway (mangled is more like it, the way I carve it!) so it doesn’t really matter that it isn’t as pretty as if it had been roasted out of the bag. The time that the directions with the bag give are pretty close, and quite a bit shorter than if you roast it out of the bag, so be sure to use those directions and not the ones that come with the turkey itself.

Roasted Acorn Squash with Wild Rice Stuffing

The acorn squash serves as a bowl for individual servings. An excellent balance of savory and sweet, this pilaf stuffing is autumnal and flavorful. The stuffing is versatile, try different grains, or other varieties of winter squash. This dish is gluten free, and can be made vegan by replacing the butter with olive oil or coconut oil. It works well as a vegetarian main dish at a Thanksgiving meal.

3 medium acorn squash (about 1 1/2 pounds each), halved lengthwise and seeds removed

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar

1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

2 medium shallots, finely chopped (or just use the other half of the onion)

4 celery stalks, finely chopped

1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme leaves (or 2 teaspoons dried)

2 cups cooked wild rice mix (or brown rice, quinoa, cous-cous or a mix of cooked grains)

2/3 cup pecans, toasted and finely chopped

1/4 cup dried cranberries, finely chopped (or raisins or other dried fruit)

1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed

Heat the oven to 450°F and arrange a rack in the middle.

Place the squash cut-side up on a baking sheet, brush 1 tablespoon of the melted butter over the tops and insides of the squash halves, sprinkle with the brown sugar, and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven until just fork tender, about 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, place 1 tablespoon of the melted butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. When it foams, add the onion, shallots, and celery, season with salt and pepper, and stir to coat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until just softened, about 6 minutes. Stir in the thyme and cook until just fragrant, about 1 minute.

Remove from the heat and stir in the rice, pecans, cranberries, and measured salt and pepper.

Divide the rice filling among the roasted squash halves (about 1/2 cup for each) and drizzle the remaining tablespoon of butter over top. Continue roasting until the squash is completely fork tender, the edges have started to brown, and the filling is heated through, about 20 to 25 minutes.