Thanksgiving in Kentucky

A lot has happened since I last blogged, but I'll try to keep it as brief as possible.  One thing that is simply beautiful about Kentucky is the way that the leaves change color.  It makes it feel like it's really time for Thanksgiving.

I took this picture at the Seminary.  Aren't the colors just breathtaking?  We really do live on a very beautiful campus.  

Thanksgiving day went really well for us.  We were able to go over to one of the church member's homes in Campbellsburg.  It was so nice to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with a family.  It would have been kind of depressing if just Matt and I had celebrated it on our own.  It was also special to see how this Southern family got along and some of their Thanksgiving traditions.  I will have to say that the food was wonderful, and honestly there wasn't anything different from any of the food that we have in California.  The turkey was great, but I sure did miss my dad's turkey, he cooks the best turkey in the whole world.  :)  We also played cornhole, which is a really fun Kentucky game that you play with bean bags filled with corn that you try to toss into a hole in a plywood platform.  They're pretty serious about the game here, and if you want to know more about it, just click on this link.  We also made a Christmas craft with the family and enjoyed talking with all of them.  It was really nice to make a Christmas craft because one of our Thanksgiving traditions when we lived in California was to make gingerbread houses with the family.  Making Christmas crafts really made us feel at home.  We had a great first Thanksgiving here in Kentucky, and we feel richly blessed to have such caring members in our church.  

Matt asked me a few weeks before Thanksgiving if I thought that I could make "Thanksgiving Burritos?"  Let me give you some background on where this question came from.  I've been making Matt homemade burritos to take with him to reheat at work.  He loves them; honestly, I would get kind of tired of eating the same thing every night for dinner, but he informed me that he could eat burritos for the rest of his time here at Seminary.  (I'm gonna have to hold him to that :)  Well, I've been trying to come up with unique burrito fillers to make his dinners a little more interesting, and that's why he suggested Thanksgiving burritos.  Well, that, and he got a free turkey from work that we needed to do something with.  So, I thought I would share with you all how I put these Thanksgiving burritos together.  I hope you enjoy.  Wait,  I have to share this blog with you where I got some inspiration for what to put into a Thanksgiving burrito.  Apparently Matt is not the only one to come up with the idea of a Thanksgiving burrito.  So, before you look at how I made these burritos, please visit the blog that inspired me first by clicking here.  

First I have to let you know that I used many different recipes, but they were mainly from the food network.  Now,  let me tell you everything that is in these burritos, then I will give you the links to the recipes if you are interested in making these burritos yourself.  

• Shredded Turkey
• Stuffing
• Black Bean and Corn Salsa
• Cranberry Sauce
• Cheese 

Now for the links to the recipes, and some pictures of the actual burrito fillers that I made.  

For the turkey I decided to use Alton Brown's recipe from the food network.  His turkey recipe is called Good Eats Roast Turkey.  The turkey turned out amazing, it was well worth the effort that went into making it.  I also didn't change a thing about the recipe, it was perfect as is.  I love this particular recipe because it also has a step be step video that you can watch before you attempt to cook your bird.  Click here to view this yummy turkey recipe.  

My turkey after Matt and I shredded it all up.  

For the stuffing, I used Paula Dean's recipe for Southern Cornbread Stuffing.  Once again this recipe produced some really good stuffing, and the only thing that I changed about the recipe is that I baked my own cornbread which is much sweeter than the one that her recipe baked.  Click here to view this yummy stuffing recipe.  

This stuffing was so easy to pack into the burritos. 

For the black bean and corn salsa I used Michael Chiarello's recipe for Grilled Corn Salsa (Also from food network.)  The only thing that I changed in this recipe is that I added two large cans of drained and rinsed black beans.  Click here to view this fresh salsa recipe.

You can also use this as a dip for tortilla chips, it's great! 

For the cranberry sauce recipe, I once again turned to The Food Network.  I used Alex Guarnaschelli's recipe for cranberry sauce.  This is a simple and sweet cranberry sauce; which is just the way that I like it.  I changed two things with this recipe though, first I doubled it, and second, I added two chopped apples while the sauce was simmering.  Click here to view this simple cranberry sauce recipe.  

This cranberry sauce really makes these burritos taste like Thanksgiving. :) 

Now for the assembly of the burritos. 

First, get all of your burrito fillers ready to fill the tortilla with.  Here's a little tip on warming the flour tortillas.  Get a clean kitchen towel wet and wrap it around five of the tortillas and microwave them for a minute and a half.  this will make the tortillas a lot more flexible.  Any of my Mexican family reading this right now is probably gasping.  It's kind of a cardinal sin to warm up tortillas in the microwave, but it really works well for making burritos that you just plan on freezing.  

Here's a picture of my burrito ready to roll.

After rolling them, you can either eat them right away (if you have enough people to eat 35 burritos) or you can wrap them in foil and freeze them.

Whenever our freezer is full of burritos like this, Matt says "We're rich."

To reheat your burrito, simply dampen a strong paper towel, wrap it around your frozen burrito and microwave on high for 3 minutes.  The time may vary according to your microwave, but it should be somewhere around 3 minutes.  The burritos still taste so fresh and amazing even after they have been frozen and microwaved.  Well, that was a lot that I just wrote.  I hope that if you try this recipe you will enjoy it as much as Matt and I have.  

In closing, Can you believe that Christmas is right around the corner?  Time sure is flying.  In order to get in the festive Christmas spirit, Matt and I cut and hung about 50 paper snowflakes from our ceiling in our apartment on campus.  This is a tradition for me that I started way back when I went to college for the first time.  In order to liven up our dorm room, I decided to hang a few hand cut snowflakes from the ceiling, well, that few soon turned into quite a few.  Ever since my Sophomore year in college I have hung up hand cut snowflakes every year.  Most of the time I have hung them up in my classroom, but this year, once again, they are hanging from our "dorm room" ceiling.  Wow, the tradition has come full circle.  I have also always used the same website to get my patterns for cutting out my snowflakes.  Dave's snowflakes are amazing, easy to cut out and free.  If you are interested in cutting out your own snowflakes, click here to visit Dave's site.  

For those of you who actually read this far in this blog,  Wow, you are amazing!  Well, I hope you enjoyed reading about our first Thanksgiving over here in Kentucky.  'Till next week, enjoy the beginning of this Christmas season.