Around the Kitchen Table - Thanksgiving Dinner Ideas Part 1

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table with my co-host Susan Sarah. And today we're going to be starting our Thanksgiving Day preparations because, you know, it's just around the corner. I mean, you Canadians, you celebrated it early already, so you're a little ahead of us. But we're looking at the very end of the month, isn't it, Susan? It's all the way at the end.

Yes, it is. And, and which is good for me. I have to move out of the sunlight a little bit, I see, because I'm in a kind of a makeshift area behind me. You see boxes, and I'll be— I just found out I'll be moving in 3 days. My Thanksgiving is going to be very interesting this year because I'm always the one who holds it. And, you know, it'll— but so better it's later for me. Better it's later.

I'll give you some time to at least get used to your kitchen. I know last year we had moved in here and we really weren't ready to have Thanksgiving. So we ended up going out and actually spent it at the Magic Kingdom, had a really not really great dinner, but at least we were there, saw a parade, and enjoyed ourselves out. But we weren't quite at home yet. But I think that'll definitely break in your house, especially if you have your family over.

Oh yeah, no, we'll be hosting, you know, a bunch of people. And I put together a little slideshow too today on— today will be For my part, I'll be talking about the table, kitchen table and decorating and how we can decorate easy or how you can go wild. I have both. Let me tell you, Chef, I have from simple to over the top, major over the top. So, you know, probably nothing I'll do on my table in my lifetime, but, you know, so, and I, you know, we have to talk about Thanksgiving. So what about you? What about you? I mean, today we're cooking Well, today we're going to start with some sides.

Everybody buys that crappy cranberry sauce, and it's not crappy. It's good cranberry sauce. Let me rephrase that because I've eaten a ton of it. The stuff in the can, all right, the kind that slurps out when you open it up. I've eaten way past my fair share of that, and I still do use it occasionally, but it's really easy to make your own cranberry sauce, and I'm going to show you how to do that today. Then we're going to take the very maligned sweet potato and yam and show you 3 different ways to make that.

Wow, 3! That's impressive.

You know, it's really pretty easy to work with, so we'll hope to. I have a head of cabbage here just in case we run out, we have extra time, that I can show you how to make coleslaw too. Other than that, then we'll move on to some other sides. I think you said you had a very good stuffing. Maybe we can talk you into making that.

Yes, I do. I have a world-famous stuffing, which— I don't know, should we get to that in this show or maybe one of the other? Because we still have a few.

Oh yeah, no, let's plan on that like towards the end. But maybe we can have dueling stuffings and we can both make them in our kitchens.

Oh yeah, well, I already won hands down. But we can go through the motions. We can go through the motions.

I'm not saying you're not going to win. But I mean, maybe it'd be nice for you to make something too.

I would love to. I would love to. Speaking of sweet potatoes, I have made— let me tell you, back in the day when I first got married, I got this cookbook. You probably don't even know of it. It was called at the time the Doubleday Cookbook.

Mm-hmm.

Did you know? Have you heard? Okay. So, you know, Doubleday Publishers, who knows why they came up with a cookbook. I have made this one single sweet potato recipe which, oh my gosh, it has honey, it has fresh oranges, fresh orange zest, it has the baking spices in it, it has everything wonderful, and I just can't not make it. So, you know, I think it— I, you know, there's always a conversation of traditional dishes versus maybe more modern updates or trying something new. What do you like to do?

Well, you know, we're pretty basic in this house, and usually since it's the two of us and whoever we invite in, we kind of stay— Lisa has something, you know, like a set that she grew up with, and I'm not that far behind. Our table is pretty basic, although this year I may be being a little more adventurous because I have my Orlando family coming to dinner with us. I have Greg Caperna— Greg Caperna— Greg Tirillo and Carolyn Caperna.

Nice!

And Jen coming over for dinner and possibly another couple over. But we stay pretty basic. It's always mashed potatoes, stuffing, coleslaw. We're not real big on the vegetables, so I might do some green beans or some collard greens or something like that. Neither of us really like sweet potatoes that much, so I generally don't make them. And then Lisa never eats cranberry sauce, so I mean, I could make the best in the world and she still wouldn't try it. But I make myself some cranberry sauce I do love good fresh cranberries. Then, of course, some pies, pumpkin pie, apple pie. It all depends if I'm in the mood, my pumpkin crunch cake. It depends on how much time I have.

Oh, yeah.

It's a basic table, but you walk away and you just want to sleep for a few hours afterwards.

I know because it's all carbs. Once you just get past the— you have the rolls, you have the stuffing, you have the potatoes. You have the sweet potatoes, white potatoes, the sweet potatoes. It's all carbs.

Dr. Pompa: Then the turkey puts you to sleep, too. It's just like— no, the tryptophan in the turkey just knocks you out. It's definitely a day to unbuckle your belt, sit with family, and relax. Maybe watch a little football, and maybe not. Whatever it is, it is, and just enjoy the day. Hopefully we'll be able to go outside. Now this weekend we had sweatshirts on because it dipped down to 45 where we are.

Wow, now that is unusual, huh? Okay, that's all right, you got a little taste of the Northeast.

It felt like fall and it was nice. November 1st felt like fall and we were up on the beach on the Atlantic Shore on Cocoa Beach and Melbourne Beach and it felt like being on the Jersey Shore in November, so Lisa was really happy with that.

Yeah, that's great. So we have a full show. So let's get going.

Okay, so we're going to start and get my cranberry sauce started. And I have—

I make that fresh every year.

Yeah, it's not hard. And people, I want to show you this. There's really 3 ingredients to it. I have fresh cranberries, I have a little orange zest in here. I'm going to add a cup of water. This is 2 cups of cranberries and 2 cups of sugar. You know, and again, you can make a little less sugar if that like freaks you out. Cranberries are really tart, so they're going to take it really well. Then we're going to add in a little lemon juice. I actually have some Meyer lemon juice because the Meyer lemons— usually I buy Meyer lemons up north and they're not real big. These were huge down here, so I was real excited to get some nice authentic Meyer lemons.

Nice.

This is really just going to start cooking down. I'm just trying to get all the sugar dissolved or give it a start. These are going to cook down. They are going to thicken themselves up. We are going to want to let it sit for about, you know, overnight to let it really thicken up. That is all there is to it. While that is kind of cooking, we can move on to— I tell you what, why don't we do coleslaw because I have the potatoes ready to go while that is cooking.

How does that sound? Excellent. There is no excuse not to do cranberry sauce. It is so —And it's so good. And then, you know, the next day, the sandwiches. You put it on the sandwiches, the coleslaw.

—This is something you can do early in the week. You can do this Monday, have it put away, and you don't have to worry about it. All right, same thing with the coleslaw. You want to make this a couple days ahead of time. People see this, the easiest way to cut this is to cut it in half, and then you're going to have the piece here with the core in it. Then I just cut the core out of it real simply. Coleslaw is also one of the easiest things to make, but it's really tasty. It's really a nice thing to have on it. I don't know if you put it on your turkey sandwiches, but we put coleslaw on ours.

No. I have never heard about coleslaw for Thanksgiving. That's new to me.

In, I guess, our family area, you know, even in mine before, you know, Lisa's Polish descent, they always had it. Now I remember making it, her mother going, "That's not coleslaw, that's cream cabbage," because I'd cut it so small. Yeah. We run through a variety.

No, that's a new one. That's a new one for me.

Coleslaw is a biggie, and honest, try it on a sandwich sometimes. Turkey stuffing, cranberry sauce, and coleslaw. They call it a bobby down in the Delaware area. Here I'm just going to cut it and I'm going to try and get this as thin as I can. You could use a food processor if you want. I don't want to drag it out and get it dirty just for this little bit. And see how now I turn the head the other way and I start at this end. This helps me from getting cut. It helps me from getting off balance.

Oh, hey, Chef. Yes? We have a question from Nazim about making turkey. Now I'm sure we're going to do that in the weeks ahead, so I wonder if we should— What's the question? Okay, the question is, what's the trick to make a moist versus dry turkey?

Well, there really isn't a trick as much as how you got to baste it. You got to keep basting it throughout, and if you really want to try and get it to be moister, You want to loosen the skin up underneath the bird. Like, you want to take— go inside where the breast is, and you want to get your hand in between the skin and the turkey. And then you want to make some compound butter. Mix some butter up with your favorite herbs and seasonings and push it in between the skin and the turkey, and then pat it down. Now, I always coat my turkey with olive oil. Salt and pepper. That's it. You want to cover it for most of the cooking, and then you want to uncover it long enough to get it crisp. Now, a lot of the problems between a dry turkey is people take it out of the oven and then they want to cut right into it. And that's the same as a steak. If you cut it while it's still too hot, all the juices are going to run right out of it and it's going to be dry. So when you cook that turkey, let it sit out for an hour. It's been You're not hurting it. It's going to stay hot. You're going to serve it with really hot turkey gravy. It's not going to be— no one's going to be offended if the turkey's not steaming when you serve it to them on their plate. So that will give it time for all the juices to go back into the meat where they belong. So when you do finally cut it, it will be moist. So that's— I guess it is a trick.

Sounds good.

All right, so this is— Go ahead.

I was going to say that I'll be having a new oven, so I'll be experimenting. I mean, what a time to experiment with how the oven reacts.

Now, what kind of oven are you getting?

It's actually a professional range. It's a Dynasty professional gas range. Wow, very nice. Yeah, that'll be cool. Is it induction? I would think so. I'm not 100%. Very good.

In my coleslaw, I threw a little shredded carrot in here just for color. You could use purple cabbage. You could use both. You don't want a lot unless you really like that. You just want to have enough in there to mix. For a dressing, don't knock yourself out. You can even buy packets of coleslaw mix at the grocery store that are pre-shredded for you, all set to go. You mix mix it together, buy a coleslaw dressing. At least you're making something, and then re-season it to taste. You don't have to kill yourself on Thanksgiving. It's just nice to serve a few different items to it. For my dressing, it's really simple. It's mayonnaise, a tablespoon of sugar, a half a teaspoon of salt— or a quarter teaspoon of salt, and an eighth teaspoon of pepper. Some apple cider vinegar. You just want to get that balance of sweet and vinegar. You want to make sure all the sugar dissolves. Before you mix it into the slaw mix— that's pretty good. This is going to be a little more seasoned, like a little more salty, a little more sweet, a little more vinegary. Than you want it to be, because when you mix it with the cabbage, it's going to absorb all that. So don't be afraid to have it be a little on the heavy side. Let's see how our cranberries are doing. Nazim, do you have turkey in Italy? You don't have Thanksgiving, do you? I wonder what he's—

Yeah, I wonder. I wonder if he does. I wonder if he brings his traditions over. That's interesting.

I see him here. He says he's having pizza. As I watch this, what kind of pizza, Nazie?

Do you want him to answer?

Aslan is here. Hey, Aslan!

Elena, Coach, Coach, Coach!

Gotta love it, all of us here. So let's take a look here. Cranberries are starting to cook up nice. They're cooking away. You can see They're exploding a little bit, and you want to keep that a little to a minimum. You don't want them to go crazy. I'm going to turn this down a little bit. It's not hurting it because it is a whole berry cranberry sauce. I'm just going to give it a little bit of a— put it down a little bit of a rolling boil because all we want this to do is for the water to evaporate a little bit, cook down, let the sugar make it into starting to thicken it with the natural juices, the pectin of the cranberries. Okay. Sounds good. Alright, so once you think the sugar— let me grab a spatula. And one thing about coleslaw is we always tend to overdo it with the dressing.

You know, I think some of my coleslaw, I think I put celery seed in it. Do you ever put celery seed in it?

You can. I don't, but I know a lot of people do. Celery seed has a very nice flavor, and it can add another kind of texture to it that you get. So that's a nice thing to add to it. Celery seed, I don't know why I'd never— I think my one grandmother used it, and maybe she overused it. Which I don't know if you can really see, but this isn't real wet. It's just nice, nicely coated, and that's because as it sits, the cabbage is going to start to weep a little bit and add a little more fluid into it.

You know, I think that has to be critical, Chef. Maybe it's related I don't know. I went to dinner over the weekend and I had a Caesar salad, ordered a Caesar salad. It was drenched. It was just— and it was just, you know, it becomes too much. You don't need that much, do you?

No. It starts to lose something when they put too much dressing. But in the case, you know, with Caesar, a lot of things can go wrong right away. Oh, yeah. Are careful, but overdressing it is really like the biggest sin you can do with a Caesar. But this is pretty much done, alright, and it's pretty tasty, but it's too crunchy. It's not ready to eat yet because, you know, you want coleslaw and you want it to be crunchy, but you don't want to be like chewing like a cow over here, and that's basically what you do. So this has got to sit at least a day.

Oh, wow, so that's great.

I mean, yeah, I mean, you can eat it like, you can eat it in 4 hours, it'll be okay. But really, it takes a good day for it to break down. And then, like I said, you'll start to see it get a little like, you'll wonder who snuck in and put more sauce in it, or more dressing in it, because it'll look like there's more. And if it gets a little too watery, you can always pour a little water off.. But this is plenty for— because you're just seasoning the cabbage a little bit and it will be nice and tasty. And trust me, if you've never had it on a sandwich, try it on a turkey sandwich one time.

I haven't. I haven't. I'm not sure if I would do it with the cranberry sauce, but just—

That's the best part. If you like mayonnaise on your turkey sandwiches, just think of it as mayonnaise and a different kind of lettuce. Anyway, that's that, so that's done. And I see Nazim says he has some expats to get together. How big is your table, Susan?

How big is my table? You mean my actual table or the—

No, how many people do you have?

You know, it's funny, I have had— I have pictures that I'm going to show you in the slideshow. I've had as many as 25, 26 people. And then I've had as few as 8, and usually it tends to be around 12, you know, around 12 people, I guess. So, you know, that's a good size. And you know what? Elena is saying, nice tan, Susan. The funny thing is I think it's the afternoon and I'm flushed. I think I moved my desk because we're moving. So again, pardon the boxes. So I don't really have a tan. I don't go to the tanning salon, I promise, but But that's good. Better a tan than looking white as a ghost. Right.

I'll take it. Yeah, I'm looking a little bit like Casper in this light because I have so much light coming.

Yeah, you're light. You're light in that light. So where do we go from here?

Well, you got a slideshow for us. Why don't we hit that?

Oh, sure. Excellent. Okay, so I will be talking in the next weeks about function for Thanksgiving in the kitchen. Lots things to talk about there. But today I think we'll talk about the table, some light decorative things. Tell me your tips, please put in your tips for other people, and this is just, just some light ideas. So, oh yes, screen share would be helpful. Here we go. Okay, okay, so this is actually a table, one of a few. I don't remember when this was, but this is one of my tables that I set. And, you know, it's— you can look at it a few different ways. You could look at it as traditional. You can look at it as clutter. You can look at it as, you know, colorful. I have— those are roses from my garden. In November, I had a huge rose garden, and I was able to get tons of roses and cut them all out and then put them on the Thanksgiving table. So that was when I had the big garden. Now I only have about 100 roses. And yeah, here's a shot, you know, flowers are so nice to have anywhere around the house, Thanksgiving table, you know, mixed in with hors d'oeuvres, of course. This is also on a Thanksgiving table. Oops, I'm getting a phone call. Okay. It'll stop. Yes, so some beautiful flowers again from the garden that were just at the end of the garden. Here is my Thanksgiving table one year where I actually had 3 tables. These are 2. You should really look at your space and think outside of the box. It'll be surprising how you can configure your tables. Here you see 3 tables. You know, you don't necessarily have to do the one long table. Maybe two tables make sense. Maybe even three tables make sense. So in this case, I thought I would try it. And you know how they pack you in at a restaurant. It's okay. Pack in the tables. Everyone's happy. You know, as long as they have a plate in front of them and a chair. You know, so experiment. Look at your space and you can try to move the table in the opposite direction. See what happens there and so on. So here's another shot of, you know, the 3 tables in this room, which I never knew I could actually do. Here's another Thanksgiving where there was one, just, you know, the stretched-out table, you put in the leaves, you know, and there you go. And of course we have chaos in the kitchen and everyone ends up in the kitchen. So this is a shot of a typical chaotic kitchen and don't you just love the chef Everyone goes in the kitchen and they are in front of everything. Oh my goodness.

They always do that. And Lisa's looking at me and the steam coming out of my ears, and she starts herding everybody back out of the kitchen at that point.

Oh yeah. But you know, I want to go back because one thing I want to mention on these tables, I have the 3 different tables. You can see these are just very simple, inexpensive folding tables. And on another table, we actually had a round table and we made a wider round plywood top and put it on top because then you have the tablecloth over, so who knows. And that, you know, you don't have to spend a fortune on a dining room table.

Now that's an excellent idea. Oh yeah, no, we've done that forever.

And here's another, you know, all the action in the table. I always want to communicate with a cook. And now here's a table one Thanksgiving. There's my Thanks. Here's my Thanksgiving things, Chef. I have my stuffing. I have all kinds of things, my sweet potato. But this is a small table. So this was a small Thanksgiving and, you know, so intimate, so nice to have it small. So now we're going to go with over-the-top dining spaces. And wait till you see these. These were taken— I took these shots at the Architectural Digest show in New York, and there's just all kinds of ideas here. You know, you go from different kinds of chairs and a white theme and lights. Here's another look at it, very rustic. You know, you don't have to have everything formal, not at all. Just think about rustic elements you can add. I'll tell you, the past few Thanksgivings, I have a ton of ivy in the back of my house. So what I've done is I've taken these long strands of ivy, I've stretched them from one end to the other, put them on the table, and it is so nice. You can also take large branches of greens or bare branches, tie them with twine, put them in a tall glass vase, or add several small vase with these natural greens, um, these natural greens, you know, and put that on the table. Easy, free, you know, rustic, beautiful. Also, I'll tell you something, dead flowers. If you have flowers that have, you know, died from the, you know, the daisies or rudbeckia or whatever, you know, they're beautiful in their own right. So you add them with some ivy, some other greens, and you create these in beautiful vases, and they're lovely, they're lovely. So here we have lime green crazy, here we go. Now I don't think I'll have this in my house in my lifetime. What do you think of this, Chef?

That's, that's modern, and that's not where my taste goes, but it's beautiful.

Yeah, it is, it's really pretty wacky. Another thing I think could be interesting is to, if there are any little kids, Oops, let me move this. If there are any little kids in the family, have them make a picture for each place setting. Very good. You know, I think that would be lovely, really, really lovely, colorful, that type of thing. Oh, look, now here we have a single red chair and then some red accessories. Why not? Here's a white, cold, icy sort of— maybe this is better for Christmas or New Year's.

Yeah, that would make a wonderful New Year's or winter party.

Yeah, and see what you could do with lighting. I mean, lighting, you know, we don't think about lighting, but we can get colored lights. Why not? I think I'm going to look into that. Here we go. Now everyone can do this every Thanksgiving, right? That's pretty crazy. Look at that. Oh my gosh, nuts. So that was you know, over the top, over the top. But fresh flowers, everyone loves it. Here's— this is very modern. Look at those lampshades, you know, kind of cool. And, you know, your basic brown. And here, I'm not quite sure what that is in the back. Maybe it's some kind of graphic, you know, mural type of thing. You know, why not put a— get a mural, put it on a panel and bring it out on different holidays and have one made for, you know, Lori from customizedwalls.com. Have a Thanksgiving mural. Sure. And just bring it out when you need to. Here we go. Is this— this is, I think, a disco. This is a disco table. I don't know what this is, don't even ask me what this is. And then that's it. So a little bit of inspiration for the table. Pretty cool.

Yeah, you know, I think you're just saying to use your imagination bring some fun colorful elements in there. And nothing like that, I wouldn't have thought of using dead flowers, so that's pretty cool.

It can have that modern but soft kind of look, definitely. Great.

Yeah, the, the cranberry sauce is done. I just, I let it cook down, I pulled it out of the pan, and I put it in a little bowl here. And you can see how it's thickening up already. It's still really hot. It will gel, and it will become a naturally— it won't be quite as thick as you get out of the can because they do add things to it. We're just adding sugar and juice to it, so that's what you're getting, and it's natural. If you don't want to use regular sugar, you can use coconut sugar. If you don't want it to be quite so sweet, you can cut back the sugar a little bit. I would just experiment with it at that point. There's all kinds of things you can do and still have a lovely dish. Now we're going to move to some sweet potatoes. Let me get this pan on. I'm going to show you how to do the plain old open up a can if you want to. If you don't have time, and I know not everybody has time to do everything, and there are some things that are going to be almost as good as if you cook down some fresh sweet potatoes for them. Not everything has to be difficult for you, reinventing the wheel. This could be something simple. We're going to throw in some butter. We're going to add in some brown sugar. We're going to put in a squeeze— where I've got some lemon already squeezed, we're going to put in a squeeze of lemon. We're going to put in some fresh orange, and you could use your orange juice from that you have already in the refrigerator. You don't have to use use a fresh orange if you don't want to. Let's say we want to jazz it up just a little bit. I'm trying to get the carrots off my grater. We could put a little grate of lemon in there or a little grate of orange or both because this peel has a lot of flavor. The natural oils in it are really what adds a very nice citrus flavor to it. Here we've got this. The only other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to add a little bit of vanilla.

You don't have to. Nice, nice.

Add a little bit. There you go. This is just making a little syrup for it. Again, depending upon what you need, you could add a little bit more to it. You could You could add a little honey to it. Very nice. A little maple syrup. Then I'm just going to put the drained canned sweet potatoes back in. Let me get a spoon. It's really that simple. Let's add a little cinnamon. If you like nutmeg, you could put a little nutmeg on it. If you have a fresh piece of nutmeg and you want to grate it on.

Oh yeah.

A little bit of salt. Just toss this around. Let it get coated. I would top it with a little bit of fresh parsley and add a little color to it. You see one of these potatoes did break up a little bit. If you want to keep something like that out, if there are too soft. It's not going to ruin it, just put it at the bottom. But that's really that simple. See if I have some parsley.

You know, I do a similar recipe, but what I do is mix it in the mixer and then put the— actually, there's baking soda or baking powder, either one, I can't remember, in it, and then You know, put it in the oven.

Sure, make a casserole. Yeah, that's actually— and you could do that with this, and you could use fresh if you want to use freshly potatoes or yams. These are actually yams, but that's all there is to it. That fast to heat them up. Dress it up a little bit, and that's it.

Wow, that is easy.

Okay, so again, it does not have to be super complicated. Now we're going to move on to one that I'm actually going to make from scratch. But you can get— I mean, and you can get a reasonable amount of food on the table if it's just a few of you. You don't have to go crazy making. All right, so let's turn this off. This over here. Nice. Okay, now I did cook— now those were yams. I did cook some fresh sweet potatoes.

I wouldn't know the difference. I have no idea what the difference is.

No, I used to really know and I can't think of it now, but it's a matter of how much starch is actually in them.

Oh, I want the one with more starch.

I think it's the yam. I'm probably wrong, but I think it's the yam. So anyway, I cooked some fresh sweet potatoes. And you know, there are some beautiful red sweet potatoes out there. There are some purple ones. I mean, if you can get a hold of something with a little more color, it's definitely not going to be a bad thing. So in this, I'm just going to add a little bit of butter. I'm going to mash these up. You can do these in your mixer. You can do these by hand with a potato masher. There's a lot of different ways you can make these unique. I'm going to add a little bit of salt in these. You always want to balance any sweet and salt. I hadn't put any sugar in. But what I am going to put in, I can open this, is a little—

that looks like— what is that, applesauce? Apple butter. Nice.

So I'm going to add in, get a spoon.

That's not going to work. I hate when that happens. Applause for the apple butter. That's a new one on me. I need to freshen up my repertoire.

Couple tablespoons of apple butter. Now, you could go traditional. You could put some cream in here and just the butter, salt, pepper, and make a nice whipped one. But, you know, the apple butter, a little bit of cinnamon. You always want to pop in just a little something acid, little squeeze of lemon juice. There we go. And you know, it's okay for them not to be totally smooth, just like a mashed potato. You know, you want to see some chunks because they know you made them from scratch.

Go ahead, Susan. I forgot what I was going to say. Oh no, I know. I also put in eggs in my sweet potato recipe. Why do I put in eggs? I don't know why.

Well, you're going to bake it then. Yeah. Okay, uh, if you're going to bake it, adding the egg in will actually— and that was the next step I was going to talk about— makes it more like a casserole and you— something you could bake, get out of the way, and taste it and make sure you can taste the apple butter. Now, if you do want to make this into a casserole, and this would also be something you could add some Greek yogurt into, give it a little bit of a tang instead of cream. That would be very nice. Now put your eggs in here, maybe just a little bit of sugar, taste it, see how the sweetness is, and then put it in the casserole, top it with marshmallows if you want, and bake it. Nice. And it's going to be kind of like a fall sweet potato pie. Or if you want to put it into— once you put those eggs in it, it will solid up a little bit more, so you have some fun with it.

You could put some chopped walnuts on top, chopped pecans, candied pecans.

I mean, you really start thinking of personalizing it and run the gamut of what would make it more unique for you.

Oh man, I have to try that.

Okay, and then it comes— I see these nice little crocks, and then what you serve it in helps make event a little more festive too. So I'm serving these, I can bake in something like this, bring it right out, put it on a hot plate. So there's your sweet potatoes another way. And then probably my favorite, we all know I love roasted vegetables. Yes.

Okay, so that is also, that is also sweet, it's roasted sweet potatoes.

Roasted sweet potato. Huh. And what I want to do here is I have a dish and I have some apples and I also have some onions. So I have some caramelized onions, I have some sweet potatoes that have salt and pepper on them, and then I've got some apples that have been roasted with brown sugar. And cinnamon.

Nice, good combination. Oh yeah, and very—

you've got savory, you've got sweet, you've got the onion, which is just amazing. Wow. This is very simple. This is something that doesn't have to be real, real hot. You can roast them, you can keep them as long as you want. Where it's really cold.

Those are 3 very, very different versions, you know, of the— they're so different, and but there's equally— I mean, they each take the same amount of time except for, you know, the boiling the sweet potatoes instead of the canned ones. But other than that, I'm really surprised. They're so different.

You know, and the only reason I did use the canned ones is because Not everybody thinks they have the skill or thinks they have the time or thinks, you know, that they could do it. So, you know, make something a little out of your comfort zone. Do the sweet potatoes the canned way. Nobody's— you know, everybody's gonna love dinner anyway. You know, don't stretch yourself so thin that you make yourself crazy on Thanksgiving. It's about a holiday of giving thanks, and you should want to be happy about what you eat. But again, this is something like even with the sweet potatoes, cook them. If you want to cook them, cook them the day before. Chill them. Get them out. Don't cook them completely. Think about potato salad, right? We make that the day before, right? So, yeah, chill them. Get them nice and cold. Just keep them a little firm and not mushy, and put them in the refrigerator. And then when you're getting ready to— bring them out, let them come up to room temperature so they're not real cold. And then make your sauce real quick, toss them, and boom, put them on the table. There's so many things you can do to make your life easier and still put some really nice food in. Again, it does not have to be Iron Chef fancy. You know, it doesn't have to be.

No, it's like the table. Go out in the backyard and get some greens and get some— and you can make it— you can really make it beautiful. Now, what do you think, Chef? Do you think we should get some requests for the next few weeks? I mean, certainly we'll be doing, you know, maybe mashed potatoes, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, maybe, you know, of course desserts, and maybe— what do you think about requests? Take—

oh, let's find out what they want to see, and we can go with that. And, you know, I'd be more than happy to make them something they want. We can do stuffing like the week before and turkey the week of. Some other things with turkey, I think the only thing with turkey is I would like to show people how to debone it because that's really something nice to do with turkey to serve at a table. It makes it easier to eat. Especially, a lot of times when I do Thanksgiving, you think sit down, but I like to do— I mean, I love buffets now. I love making things where people can get up. Walk around. Not everybody necessarily has to sit down at the same time or in the same spot, and they can get what they want to eat. You can spread it out on a table. You know, there's a lot to be said for getting everybody together on the same table and sitting down and giving thanks, but it's also nice to be relaxed too. So whatever works for you. That's true.

That's true. Well, what a beautiful spread. Beautiful. You know, it's just so inspiring. I hope everyone's been inspired and You know, we are gearing up and we are packing it in these shows now and, and we're on our way to a great Thanksgiving, right?

Well, I did make a lot of stuff, didn't I?

You did. We are on a roll. We are on the roll now. All right.

And Coach Moore wanted to know about honey. Coach, you can use honey anywhere you use sugar if that's what you prefer. You can use maple syrup, you know, whatever you like the flavor of. I mean, a maple bourbon sweet potato would be wonderful. You know, a honey-glazed, maybe with a little dash of triple sec in it or something, even if you want to add— you want to add a liqueur just to change things up a little. There's all kinds of ways you can go with it. And rustic, simple, as long as it's tasty and you're happy, it's a good thing. All right, so thank you so much, Susan. Thanks for sharing all those great table ideas. I'm gonna have to let Lisa go over that so she can come up with something for— good, good.

And thanks for your wonderful food, wonderful ideas. I'm gonna try— I'm gonna freshen my repertoire up now. All right, next week. See you next week.

Take care. Bye-bye.