Make it a Thrive'n Thanksgiving

We can’t believe it’s NOVEMBER already! We wanted to share with you some of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes and how we can “sneak” delicious Thrive Foods into nearly every course of Thanksgiving dinner to save time and/or help with food storage rotation. Our philosophy is that you should store GOOD food that you love and know how to use and the best way to do that is by practicing cooking it in REGULAR meals. What better way to do that than in Thanksgiving dinner!

THANKSGIVING IDEAS USING THRIVE

Green Bean Casserole
Use freeze-dried beans to save time and rotate your beans. Many bean casseroles call for canned green beans and we find the freeze-dried ones to be SOOOO much better (and healthier!) You can also substitute any canned cream soups for a bean flour cream of chicken soup (made out of white bean flour) to make a healthier version with less fat and preservatives.
Click here for Julie’s green bean casserole recipe experiment.

Sweet Potato Casserole
Some people like whole baked sweet potatoes, others love the sugary sweet potato casserole. You can use dehydrated or freeze-dried sweet potatoes to save time in the kitchen (Thrive is currently out of stock on these, sad day). It’s also a great opportunity to rotate some of your basic baking ingredients like powdered milk, eggs, etc.

Rolls
Making homemade rolls is definitely not a time-saver, but it is a delicious tradition for many of us. You can use your favorite bread dough recipe and make your own homemade Rhodes Rolls a few days before the craziness of Thanksgiving begins. If you want to make it even easier, you can buy the Thrive bread dough mixes in either whole wheat or country white. They are soooo easy and still way better than store-bought rolls!
Click here for a tutorial on making frozen rolls using our favorite recipe

Cranberry Sauce
If you love cranberry sauce you will love homemade cranberry sauce even more! You can easily make your own using freeze dried cranberries. So delicious!
Click here for an awesome recipe for homemade cranberry sauce from Chef Todd.

Stuffing
If you are in a pinch on Thanksgiving Day and have forgotten to buy onions and celery, no fear. Food storage to the rescue! You can use dehydrated or freeze-dried vegetables to complete your stuffing recipe. It may not be quite the same texture (smaller chunks) but you can save time on chopping and the flavor will still be delicious.
Click here for a list of all of Thrive’s great veggies.

Turkey
Don’t mess with your turkey! Here is how my mom and I do turkeys and they turn out awesome. Stuff your bird with a really wet stuffing, lots of butter in it. Then cook your bird breast DOWN. All the juice will flow into the breast during cooking and it makes the best most moist turkey you will ever taste. Give it a try!

Mashed Potatoes
My LEAST favorite part of Thanksgiving is pealing hundreds of potatoes. (ok it just FEELS like hundreds, but still …) If you are willing to give it a try, you can actually make really yummy mashed potatoes using food storage. The new Mashed Potatoes from Thrive Life are made of REAL potatoes and have no additives so they are a great alternative if you just can’t face making real potatoes this year.
Click here to see the new Thrive Mashed Potatoes plus a delicious recipe.

Gravy
My mom always sneaks in some mashed up carrot chunks into our turkey gravy to add a little bit of texture and some pretty color. If you want to try that but don’t want to add another item to cook, just toss in some dehydrated carrots. You may want to let them hydrate for a while first as they can tend to take a while.
Click here to check out Thrive’s dehydrated carrot dices.

Desserts
Desserts are one of the ways we recommend “sneaking” food storage into your meals if you have family members that are picky or don’t like to try new things. You can use freeze dried fruits in a fruit pie, or sub whole wheat flour or powdered eggs and milk into a cake or other baked good. Here are a few of our favorite holiday yummies that you can try yourself.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin Cake
Blackberry Pie
Best Sugar Cookies Ever (don’t use substitutions on this one!)

Have a Happy Holiday!