I wasn’t sure if I could put together an entire Thanksgiving menu with recipes from the sides of food packages, but I did it! Here’s a summary of the eight traditional Thanksgiving recipes I’ve shared over the past few weeks.

Enjoy – and wishing a happy and healthy holiday to you and yours!

Rosemary Roasted Turkey

Cranberry Sauce

Bacon, Sour Cream & Chive Mashed Potatoes

Herb Stuffing Muffins

Green Bean Casserole

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Cinnamon Pecan Crunch

Classic Pumpkin Pie with Maple Cream

Classic Pecan Pie

Despite being almost two years old, my daughter still prefers her sweet potatoes in the form of baby food purées with nothing else added. I suspect this has as much to do with the appeal of the natural sweet potato flavor as it does with the entertainment value of practicing the transfer of bright-orange mush from jar to mouth with her new spoon-wielding skills. If you’ve ever tried sweet potatoes just on their own you know they’re naturally pretty sweet. But if you’ve ever tasted streusel topping you also know that it pretty much makes anything even better.

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When I mentioned to my mother that I was planning to make a traditional herb stuffing this weekend, she replied, “You should bake it in muffin tins!” She had just read an article in The New York Times in which the author was extremely pleased with the results of her efforts to concoct stuffing muffins that were crisp on the outside and steamy soft on the inside: “Imagine how good they must have been, then times it to the 10th power.” That was all the encouragement I needed to give it a try.

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I have to admit, whenever I hear the words “pecan pie” I immediately think of the line “But I would be proud to partake of your pecan piiiiiiiiie…” from that sweet museum scene in When Harry Met Sally, when Harry is gearing up to ask Sally out:

It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since that movie first came out! It’s still one of my all-time favorites. Anyhow, I digress…back to the pie.

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When I was 12 years old there was a contest at school where you had to guess how much a turkey they had on display weighed. My guess turned out to be correct – 22 pounds.

I won! I won!

I lugged my hefty prize out to the pick-up circle after school, proudly presenting our Thanksgiving turkey to my mom. For some reason, she didn’t seem nearly as excited about a win of these proportions.

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Cranberries, sugar and water – that’s all you need to make traditional cranberry sauce. Yet while it may be the simplest dish on your Thanksgiving table, it’s definitely no wallflower. Just look at that gorgeous color! And if that wasn’t enough to capture our attention, the tart berries seize our tastebuds and make our mouths water for the rest of the holiday feast.

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I’ve struggled in the past to make mashed potatoes with the texture I really like – the really fluffy, smooth, creamy kind. Maybe I’d been using the wrong kind of potatoes or I wasn’t cooking the potatoes for long enough or I could have benefited from a tool like a potato ricer…but I think the real reason I wasn’t getting the result I wanted is that I was reluctant to use enough of a few key ingredients. Namely butter and cream.

Well, I’ve gotten past that now.

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I previously said that it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving at my house without classic pumpkin pie. Well, I guess I’d also add Green Bean Casserole to that list. To be fair, is it the best vegetable side dish I’ve ever had? No, not really. But it’s loaded with tradition and nostalgia – and on Thanksgiving, that counts for a whole lot.

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November is here! And that means holiday cooking and baking season has officially begun on Cooking On the Side. From Libby’s Pumpkin Pie (today’s recipe) to French’s Green Bean Casserole, many favorite holiday recipes originated from food packaging – which makes them perfect topics for this blog! So for the next few weeks I’ll be preparing familiar, traditional Thanksgiving recipes “from the side”.

For me, it’s just not Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie…

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