Martha Stewart Giveaway Winner!!

I “like” Creative Kitchen on Facebook – Cindy A.

~  Congratulations Cindy!! This was the comment that won, but the original answer to her question, “What makes Thanksgiving special to you?” was:

“Thank you so much for offering such a lovely and generous giveaway. My Thanksgiving is special because of family, friends, good food and great wine. ”

Email me your choice of prize & your address so I can pass it on to Macy’s! I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

In other news…..my mother-in-law is here visiting from Little Rock. She made it safely into town Friday night. We are having such a good time, and we’re so glad she made the 2 day journey to be with us. Since she almost wasn’t able to come, we feel especially blessed to have her here!! She’s a foodie like me, so we’ll be doing all kinds of great things in the kitchen this holiday season. Yesterday we made it to Costco, and I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally pick up that big 3 lb bag of cranberries!! I’ll be using them to make this pie, and might try my hand at homemade cranberry sauce this year. I made some cranberry orange scones this morning that are out of this world, and will be making cranberry bread (or muffins) soon.

Sunday night my family was privileged to serve with our church and the Big Heart Brigade in helping to put together Thanksgiving meals for local people in need. Every year….they meet their goal and this year they set their goal at 100,000 meals. Isn’t that amazing? It was the first time the 4 of us had served together, and my mother-in-law make it possible by watching our 3 year old at home. They had some nice grandmother/granddaughter bonding time. Thanks NeeNee!!

Make sure you stop by later today or tomorrow for another Thanksgiving Favorite….I’ll be sharing scalloped corn casserole. You know the one with the jiffy corn bread mix? I’ve figured out a way to substitute that with organic freshly ground cornmeal. It doesn’t have to be organic freshly ground, but I’ll share a recipe with you so that you can eliminate the 15 or so extra ingredients that you might not want in your dish. OR if you don’t happen to have jiffy corn bread mix on hand.

Have you started cooking yet? I like to make the sides and desserts on Tuesday and Wednesday so that Thursday can be all about the turkey, stuffing, mashed taters and gravy. And fortunately for me….hubby does all but the taters. I figure by the time he rinses and cleans the bird, he might as well pop it in the oven and babysit it for me….LOL…especially since he’s in the kitchen anyway making his family’s traditional sausge stuffing. 😉 And you know we’ll have on the Macy’s day parade….such a great tradition from my childhood.