What's Yours?

What's your favorite Thanksgiving tradition, food, or recipe (or all)??
Please feel free to reply with a comment or new post.

My favorite Thanksgiving foods that I drool over a few days prior have got to be String Bean Casserole, The Pink Stuff, and pies, pies, pies. MMMMMM!!

I absolutely love string bean casserole and make it many times a year. I always double the recipe and that fits nicely into your normal casserole dish. You can find the recipe on the back of the Fried Onion Cans, or I just can tell you (cause I've got it memorized!)

The Pink Stuff is a family tradition. My Aunt makes it every year, even though none of her kids like it. Basically it's just me and my sister eating the bowl ourselves. No one knows exactly what it's called, so we just call it The Pink Stuff, but here's the recipe (it's super easy and may not sound the greatest, but, oh, it is:

One can of Fruit Cocktail
One tub of Cool Whip
One tub of Cottage Cheese
One box of Jello Powder (usually Strawberry)

**Drain the fruit and mix together!!

And as for Pies, you can pretty much never go wrong with them. I love all sorts....pumpkin, banana cream, chocolate.... the list goes on and on.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been trying to find a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I did my trusty search on allrecipes.com and found this wonderful recipe. I was a little worried about the vanilla pudding powder, it just seemed so weird, but they were so tasty! The best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made! You need to seriously try these. I only made 1/2 batch since I'm home all day and didn't want them staring at me begging me to eat them. The half batch made more than enough.

Click here for the original recipe.

Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

INGREDIENTS

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour and baking soda, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

My changes

Add: 2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2 tablespoons vanilla
Left out nuts, used Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips. Only because Casey doesn't like semi-sweet
Cooked until barely starting to brown on edges = perfect soft cookies