I relived Thanksgiving last night.  I bought a cooked turkey breast from work, made butternut squash soup and cranberry sauce.  It was all so good together.  You can't beat a classic meal!

The turkey breast from work was delicious.  Very juicy and you can't get easier than just buying something totally made and warm.

I had never made cranberry sauce before.  It was SOO easy.  I put 1 cup of water with about 1/4 cup of agave nectar in a pan.  Heated it up so that the agave dissolved into the water.  Then just put the cranberries into the pan.  Leave the heat on and stir every so often.  You actually do hear the berries pop.  I had read that, but it is true.  Mush it as you stir it.  Turn off the stove once all the cranberries have popped and are soft. Once the heat is off, it just gets thicker....just like that. Like magic!

 For the butternut squash soup, I bought already peeled and chunked squash (from Trader Joe's, but alot of grocery stores have it like this already.  While I am cooking the other vegis, I put the squash into the 400 degree oven to roast.  Turn them every so often so it gets throughly cooked.

 To the soup pan, while the squash is roasting, I put in 1 cup each of carrots, onions and celery.  I also added 1 cup of chopped apple - peeled.  I used honey crisp apples since that it what I had.  I browned all those together in the pan.  I added in the squash once it was all soft.  Add in one container of chicken stock, 1T agave nectar, and 1T apple cider vinegar, along with some salt and pepper.  Then shoosh it with a stick blender.  It can also be put into a blender.

The soup was great with the homemade cranberry sauce added in.  What a treat on a cold day!  And who doesn't love Thanksgiving supper??  Every November when I am eating the special dinner, I say to myself, why do I only eat this combo once a year?  No longer!!

Made a great soup.....perfect for these winter days.  I chop up onions (I like sweet onions) and carrots and saute them in the bottom of the soup pot with some olive oil.  It gets a bit brown, then I added 4 cubes of basil and 6 cubes of garlic, as well as 1t oregano. I added in 1T of red wine vinegar, a large can of tomato puree, 2 boxes of beef broth, 1 small can of fire roasted tomatoes, 1 can garbanzo beans, frozen cut green beans, and frozen lima beans (the amount is your choice).  I also cut up some green cabbage and put it in the soup.  I browned turkey sweet Italian sausage in another pan - for people to add in into the soup if they wanted more protein.  As you know, I always like to have flexibility to what I served since everyone likes things different.  I let the soup cook on a very low flame for about 1 hour.  It was SO rich and delicious!

Wow...does that look good!  It is great because you can really add in whatever you want....I would add corn, but my husband can't have that.  I would also like to add in some spinach....but no one likes that.  Zucchini as well....again no one likes that either!!  Oh well....some vegis are better than no vegis!

Let's talk briefly about winter.  Do you love it - do you hate it?  I love it - well, that is I love everything about winter except for the early darkness.  Not much gets me down as much as when it is pitch black out at 4:30pm....do you call that night or still afternoon?!?!  Everything else about winter is great....the clothes, the snow (yes, I said the snow), the cold temperature (yes to that too) and we can't forget about the foods. There are definitely winter foods....soup, chili, slow cooker recipes, squash.  What do people in always warm climates do....never eat chili??  Never eat homemade vegetable soup?? Never eat butternut squash?? I just can't imagine that!!!  How sad........

I love going out with friends.  It just breaks up the week and gives me something to look forward to.  Sushi of Tokyo is one of my favorites.  It is all you can eat....and I can eat a lot there!!  At these all you can eat places, you don't feel a rush to get out when you are done, because one never knows when they are done there. What I like is that you just eat 3 pieces of this kind of roll....3 pieces of that kind of roll......variety is the spice of life!

One catch is that you cannot leave rice behind....which sucks.  Sometimes there is too much rice and I don't like being forced to eat it.  Shhhh....I do sometimes leave some rice between the plates that I stack up.  It is just too much sometimes.  Don't tell anyone!!

One word...Monkey Bread....ok....two, but everyone eats it so fast that it might as well be one word!!

It is just SOOOO delicious and SOOOO easy!  Get bread rolls (the kind that are just dough - not cooked) from the freezer section of the grocery store.  Leave them in the refrigerator for the night to thaw.  In the morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a bundt pan.  Even if it is nonstick - I would still spray it down with Pam.  In a bowl, make a cinnamon sugar mixture.  Rip the rolls into pieces...halves, thirds, quarters, whatever. Roll each piece in the sugar mixture and then put it into the pan.  Just keep doing it until you use all the pieces.  Pour over the top 3/4 of a stick of melted butter. Put it in the oven for about 35 minutes.  Be careful....it will almost triple in height, so don't have it too close to the top of the oven. Let it sit for about 5 minutes, then invert.  I put it on a glass cake stand, but you can put it on any kind of plate.  If you want, you can add almost anything to this....apples, nuts, raisins....etc.

What a crowd pleaser! One of our daughter had some friends sleep over and I made this for them so that it would be warm when they woke up.  They devoured it.  I think this will be my regular thing when kids sleep over.  I need to keep some frozen rolls in the freezer for just this occasion.

I am really trying to get the kids to have people over to the house more....which I have learned includes having  junk food in the house.  That was one of the main complaints when I asked why don't you have friends over more.  "You don't have good food."  Ironic, and humorous, that to them "good food" equals "junk food'.  Whatever - as the kids would say! So, I have chips and now this monkey bread as a lure.