Preparing for Holiday Recipes

Cooking is stress reliever, and if your holidays are anything like mine, it involves a lot of traveling and creative time planning with different families. I wouldn’t give up any part of the kitchen gossip with my aunts or the mini games of football with my siblings, but it’s the getting there that can be tricky.

The older I get, the more I have a true appreciation for cooking and baking. My first honest dish was the green bean casserole, which kept myself and my college roommates from starving many nights, and sadly, many mornings as well.

I couldn’t escape green beans being incorporated into my first successful cooking experience. Every laundry visit home, my mother would weigh down any open space she could find in my computer bag or sneak one in my purse from her stocked high pantry of green cans for she thought I was still living on Spaghetti O’s and ramen noodles.

But it started before I was venturing into the kitchen. Every dish growing up was complimented with her favorite vegetable. My stepdad would call home asking me what we were having for dinner, and even if I didn’t know, we would giggle guessing there would be green beans in some fashion.

Even with the plethora of green beans I’ve consumed, it’s a scrumptious dish to eat and an even easier one to make. It’s simple with only four ingredients, and you can get it off any fried onion label. Just in case you aren’t a label reader like me, here’s a simple, but tasty recipe you can have whipped up in 40 minutes:

• Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees
• Mix together two cans of green beans, one can of cream of mushroom, ¾ cup of milk and just a few french fried onions (add salt and pepper as you please)
• Cook for 35 minutes
• Take out of the oven and place the remaining french fried onions on the top and cook for another five minutes. Boom! You have green bean casserole!

Now that my skills have increased beyond the one-vegetable recipe, I have more entrees that I’ve conquered that you won’t just find on a can in the soup aisle.

One I’m trying for one of my Thanksgiving dinners this week is a Pumpkin Roll from My Baking Addiction. It has 15 ingredients and takes 15 minutes. Take a look at it, and let me know if it works for you. I’ll keep you updated if mine turns out to be a disaster or a hit with the family.

Share some of your recipes here. I could use some suggestions with easy-to-make, but fulfilling dishes when visiting relatives over the next few weeks. If you think it’s too long to post in the comments, shoot me an email at lindsey.davidson@patch.com, and I’ll post it from there.