Menu #9

Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and like everyone else, we are busy. These meals are what we are having the two weeks prior to Thanksgiving week. Plan accordingly for your family. Hopefully these will give you some ideas that you can use to help keep your sanity as you head into the holiday season!

Grilled sausage, smashed potatoes, Easy Roasted Bok Choy

This has been on the menu before. Use whatever kind of sausage you like. I like a good smoked sausage or andouille sausage because I lived in Louisiana for many years, but that is not to everyone’s taste nor can you get that in all parts of the country. You might prefer beef sausage, chicken sausage, or whatever. 

Smashed potatoes are basically my own creation based on something that I had at a restaurant in Louisiana. Once again, these are Cajun flavored, so you do you. I wash and cut up some red potatoes, skins on,  and boil them in water that has been seasoned with crab boil. Not too much – it will be spicy!! Once the potatoes are tender, I drain them and add a little butter and milk and just mash them down until they form chunky mashed potatoes. I don’t really have measurements for this. I choose my amount of potatoes based on how many I am feeding. Usually four or five smaller ones are plenty for my husband and myself. I usually use a couple of tablespoons of butter and I start adding small amounts of milk until I get the consistency I want. Start small. You can always add more but you can’t remove what you have added.

We had some bok choy on a trip recently and my husband decided he liked it. This is a quick little recipe I found for roasted bok choy from walderwellness.com. You will use baby bok choy for this. It has some sweet as well as some savory flavors and will caramelize in the oven.

Shredded Chicken BBQ Sliders, coleslaw, chips

I really enjoy Hawaiian sweet rolls – which make really good sliders. This is a quick little recipe from thefeatherednester.com that you can do anytime but would be really great during the summer months as well. Half of the recipe is plenty for my husband and myself. I already have the shredded chicken in the freezer from a rotisserie chicken, so this makes good use of what I have. I am just going to complete this with some coleslaw and chips. I just buy a bag of coleslaw mix and coleslaw dressing and mix it up to the consistency we like. You can also make it from scratch if you prefer. 

Instant Pot Chinese Sesame Chicken, fried rice with Cabbage Stir Fry

We really enjoy Asian flavored dishes, and I also like to cook it. Normally I cook everything on the stove, but I found this Instant Pot recipe from aspicyperspective.com that I want to try. Most of the ingredients I already have on hand and it cooks up really quickly. While it is cooking, I can cook the fried rice and the stir fry cabbage. My plan is to make smaller portions of each and mix them together to make a vegetable fried rice. The cabbage recipe from smalltownwoman.com is linked. My plan is to use the rest of the bag of coleslaw mix that I have to do this. I have used that before and it works great. The fried rice is a modified recipe that I use. I have linked one from therecipecritic.com that is similar to mine. Since I am doing the cabbage, I will not be adding the veggies that the recipe calls for. I do add some white pepper and sesame seeds in mine. As far as the soy sauce goes, I don’t measure it out. I pour it in until it gets the color and consistency I want. Start small and work up. The biggest key to good fried rice, in my opinion, is cold rice. I cook mine the morning of and put it in the refrigerator until I am ready to cook it that evening. Trust me – it will make all the difference. 

Garlic Roasted Chicken, rice and gravy, green beans

This recipe from thespruceeats.com should use mostly pantry ingredients that you have on hand. It’s also easy to put together and throw in the oven so that you can work on the other parts of the meal while it cooks. The recipe calls for leg quarters, but my plan is to use just chicken thighs because that is what I have on hand in my freezer. My husband really likes rice, so I am going to just cook up some rice and a little package of chicken gravy to have with this. A side of canned green beans will complete this meal for us. I’ll just doctor them up a little bit with some salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. 

Easy Slow Cooker Pork Roast, purple hull peas, broccoli

My plan for this is actually to thaw out some frozen pork roast and purple hull peas that I have in the freezer. However, I know you probably don’t have that available! Because of that, I have linked the recipes for both. This roast actually cooks 8 to 10 hours in a slow cooker and then sits on warm for another four, so plan accordingly. I have actually cooked it overnight before. Very few ingredients are needed for it though, and it comes out very flavorful. It is from addapinch.com. You can serve it over mashed potatoes or rice or turn it into sandwiches. 

Purple hull peas are a favorite of ours but are not always easy to find. Most of the time I have to find them frozen now, but I look for some that are flash frozen. Usually Pictweet has pretty good ones. I do my purple hull peas in the Instantpot. That helps as well with meal prep since I can get those going ahead of time. They come out perfect every time! The attached recipe from bayoumama.com never fails me. We are having steamed broccoli with this but any veggie would be a good side. 

Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice with Sausage, cornbread, Crawfish Monica, Natchitoches Meat Pies, boudin, salad, peach cobbler

This is going to be a rather lengthy meal plan. We are having our Dinner for Eight small group from church over for dinner, and we always like to serve them some of our Louisiana favorites when it is a new group of people. I have shared many of these descriptions and recipes before, but I am sharing them again. Hopefully there will be one or two things here that you would like to try.

We really like good red beans and rice and sausage. I have not always been able to prepare them very well, but this recipe from thriftyjinxy.com is really a great one. The beans are flavorful and cook down nice and soft. Of course, the better the sausage you use, the better these will be. We try to always use a good andouille or smoked sausage, which I know is not available to everyone. Serve these over some rice and add some cornbread. You know I like to use a yellow cornbread mix from Martha White

My original Crawfish Monica recipe is a recipe that we received at a cooking class with Chef Maudie Schmitt, owner of Cafe Rue Orleans. The dish is a creamy pasta recipe. Shrimp works well in this recipe as well, and it is much cheaper and easier to find, which is what I am doing, as well as adding a little cooked chicken to it as well. The recipe I have linked is not the exact one that we received, but it is almost the same. It is a new one that I found from catholicfoodie.com.

The meat pies and boudin may be a hard one to replicate. Boudin is not easily found (or universally liked). It is something that we have to get when we travel back to Louisiana, or we have friends bring us some if they are headed our way to visit. Boudin (pronounced “BOO-dan,” at least in Cajun country) is a cooked sausage made from pork meat and rice, plus various vegetables and seasonings, all stuffed in a natural pork casing. You can substitute your favorite grilled sausage here. The meat pies are a Louisiana favorite as well. The best ones are found in one of two places. The very best are at the original restaurant – Lasyone’s in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The second best place to find them are at many of the gas stations in Louisiana! We can also get them frozen, but not around where we live now. The original ones can be ordered directly from the restaurant, but mini ones are also sold in grocery stores. We have to stock up on these as well when we can. There are recipes available to make them yourself, but I have never tried. The one I linked for you is from southernliving.com. Give it a go if you are interested. 

We will be having a bagged Caesar salad, and I use a mix from Louisiana Fry Fish Products as well for the peach cobbler. You just need a little butter and milk and a can of peaches. It is so delicious, especially with some vanilla ice cream!

Hamburger sliders, chips, fruit

As you can see, sliders are on this menu twice. That’s because it’s just me and my husband, so I need to use the 12 Hawaiian rolls that come in the package! This is why I meal plan. That way I use the items that I have wisely and food doesn’t go to waste. It’s way too expensive to waste anything these days! Anyway, awhile back we bought a package of slider patties at Sam’s. I think there are 18 patties in the package. Of course I separated those out and froze them in individual servings for us. For this meal I just have to thaw out a package of patties. We usually season them with some steak seasoning and my husband cooks them on the grill. He usually puts a cast iron griddle on the grill to cook these (just like you would cook them on a Blackstone). He will also toast the buns just a little on the grill as well. Then you just top them however you like. Chips and fresh fruit will round this out for us.

Ribs, potato salad, Ranch beans

You have seen this meal on my menu several times by now. As you know, this is not a meal that I have to do a lot of prep or cooking. These are ribs that I have in the freezer from when my husband did a full day of meat smoking. So I will just thaw out some ribs. I know that is not the case for most of you. I don’t know – maybe it is now if you have been following some of my tips! Anyway, you can always purchase some ribs and smoke them or cook them in the oven. Many times you can find some that are already seasoned or even some that are already cooked and all you have to do is heat them up.

I have shared before that I don’t have a true recipe for my potato salad. I can only share with you the ingredients I use and how I mix it up, but that’s about it. I peel and cut up russet potatoes (you decide how big a batch you want to make) and boil them. I also put an egg in there to boil at the same time (my MIL taught me that – genius!). Once they are cooked and drained, peel the egg and chop it and add to the pot. Then I add mayo, mustard, sweet pickle relish, salt and pepper and stir it all up. I start with small amounts and add additional if needed until it is the color and taste that I want. You can always buy potato salad too, but homemade is SO good. We actually like to eat our potato salad warm, but I know many do not. If that is the case, if you are making homemade, just make it ahead of time and chill. No homemade baked beans for this meal. Just some canned Ranch beans.

Burrito bowls

I have some frozen Mexican rice and taco meat in my freezer, so we are going to make burrito bowls. You can make this meal very easily. Cook up some taco meat and get together the toppings you like such as lettuce, tomato, sour cream, avocados, jalapenos, grilled onions and corn, and salsa, etc. Black beans or refried beans are good with this as well. I just use a mix for the rice. I like the Spanish rice from Knorr or the Mexican rice from Rice-a-Roni.

French Bread Pizzas, salad

I don’t think I have ever made french bread pizza, but we love pizza and I want to fix something that we will all like, including my granddaughter. So I did a little searching and found this recipe from favfamilyrecipes.com that had a super-easy recipe as well as some great tips about how to make sure the pizza comes out crispy and buttery. I’m looking forward to trying this. Plus, it’s very cheap to make and everyone can have exactly what they want on it since you can slice the bread into several servings.