(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
One way to spend more time with family on Thanksgiving is to cleverly make use of the many high-quality takeout feasts that are available - often even more economically than buying individual ingredients to prepare the meal totally from scratch.
Though such a strategy may mean the bulk of the meal, including the well-loved staples, are ordered all together as a menu, that doesn't mean there isn't room for a few distinctive "add-ons," so memorable that they'll be talked about for weeks. You'll undoubtedly get asked for the recipes, too.
If you give this idea a try with homemade items that can be pre-meal and post-meal, the impact is likely to be greatest.
Pick-Me-Up Punch
A meal starter might be with a cider-ginger punch, an interesting change from hot apple cider. Just shave fresh ginger (a little goes a long way flavor-wise) into cold apple cider, add honey and tiny pinches of ground cinnamon, ground cloves and even cayenne for a real punch. Serve over small amounts of crushed ice.
Your Dessert Cup Runneth Over with Caramel Cashews
After a Thanksgiving take-out feast, sneakily and easily make your mark again with caramel-filled cashew cups. Use them as an accompaniment to pumpkin or apple pie. They are drizzled with chocolate and are a delicious departure from cookies.
The innovative dessert cups can be made following these easy directions from PamperedChef.com, the largest direct seller of high-quality kitchen tools:
"Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly spray 24 cups of a mini-muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray. Finely chop 1 & 3 / 4 cups cashews using a food chopper. Combine cashews, 2 tablespoons of melted butter and 1 / 4 cup corn syrup in a bowl; mix well using a scraper. Using a large measuring spoon (about 1 tablespoon), divide the cashew mixture evenly among the cups in the pan. Gently press tops of cashew mixture with lightly floured rolling pin to flatten tops; bake 6 to 8 minutes, or until edges are golden brown."
Then, once the cashew cups have cooled, fill them with melted caramel that's been cooled to almost room temperature, and drizzle with melted chocolate.
Takeout Ideas with "Terrific" Written All Over Them
To save time and energy to spend on your family, here are a few choice spots to consider ordering a homemade-style, often economical takeout Thanksgiving meal:
- Your favorite supermarket chain. Usually, the deli counter is in charge. Meals can be ordered a few weeks ahead and picked up just hours before for heating.
- Award-winning, quick-serve (considered in the restaurant industry as somewhere between fast food and family dinner chains) spots that specialize in holiday-style food and offer inexpensive holiday menus. Boston Market is a chain that serves single-serving turkey dinners with all the trimmings, all year round. They amp it up this time of year by offering a number of mix-and-match whole turkey and whole-ham meals. Same with the Honeybaked Ham shops and cafes. The Marie Callender's restaurant chain also does a bang-up business with reasonably priced multicourse meals.
- Stop by a buffet chain, such as Hometown Buffet, with your kidlet helpers in tow, even if it might be the night before. (Refrigerate the food, all of it tightly covered, until you reheat it the next day.) Fill plates high with entrees and all the fixings.
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: There are a lot of potential culinary holiday gifts out there that include a memorable surprise without your ever having to do a minute of cooking. Look for items that are classics of the season, but instead substitute an unusual ingredient. Some examples: brands of milk chocolate bars that are flavored with the spices of gingerbread; Cheddar cheese that includes ripples of cranberries; dessert brittle that's flavored with pumpkin puree, pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and pumpkin pie seasonings; caramel apple filling in candy bars; frozen yogurt reflective of the season, such as those featuring the flavors of apple cider or peppermint.
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet (Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
