Sweet Potatoes and some more...

Last night we canned 14 quarts of sweet potatoes. Plus, I have a crate full of fresh potatoes to go along. Was this my idea? Not really. I just suggested to my husband that since I used up all the potatoes we grew in the garden by Thanksgiving that we should buy some now that they're on sale. He bought 60 lbs! They were on sale at Wal-mart for $0.25/per pound and he thought this was a super deal! So last night we canned. The nice thing about this is that we spent a lot of time together in the kitchen, and now I have 14 qt. jars of cooked sweet potatoes to make some nice things like biscuits, a quick side dish, or my favorite -sweet potato casserole. This really is the best sweet potato casserole recipe. I've tried others and this is the one for us. I wrote it down in a notebook I still have from when I first got married. It's time to put it somewhere else, don't you think? Hope you find you like it too!

Best Sweet Potato Casserole

3 cups mashed sweet potatoes

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/3 cup milk

1/4 cup. butter or margarine

1 tsp. vanilla

(Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg into potatoes. I would say about 1/2 -1 tsp. of cinnamon and 1/4 - 1/2 tsp. of nutmeg. It depends on your tastebuds.)

Mix sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and vanilla into sweet potatoes. Mix well. Pour into buttered 9x9 baking dish. Prepare topping.

Topping:

1 Cup brown sugar

1/3 cup of butter

1/2 cup chopped pecan (I sometimes cut this in half and add coconut)

1/3 cup flour

Mix all ingredients for topping. Crumble on top of potato mixture. Bake at 350* in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes.

In other news, I had a pretty good time preparing food for Thanksgiving this year. I can't say that of every Thanksgiving Day. There have been some years when I really dreaded all the preparation, but this year was very good for me. I made a turkey, gravy, refrigerator yeast rolls, two sweet potato casseroles, some corn, and a Dump Cake (with the cherries we froze this year). I don't think I made anything else, if I did, I can't remember. My stepdad made the other half of the dinner so don't think we forgot the mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumkin pie, ham, and green beans. I saved the water I boiled my potatoes in to make my bread today.

It must be the pregnancy doing that to me, because I go through strange phases in the kitchen when I'm pregnant. Really, I do.

I really got into cheese with my first. I began to love cheese, specially Gouda.

Maybe the second and third pregnancies were normal, because I don't remember anything in specific.

I just about became a vegetarian with my fourth pregnancy. I was making things like Spinach/Tofu Pizza!

With my fifth pregnancy, I was all about bread. Sourdough bread, banana bread, whole wheat bread, 7 grain bread, lots and lots of bread. The thing is that I didn't have a bread mixer like I do now, so I was kneading it all by hand. I made bread till the week I went into labor.(And still do.)

I'm not sure what the kitchen specialty will be now, except that I've been reading different cookbooks lately and making Chinese food.

Maybe our baby GIRL likes egg rolls and crab ragoon! (That is if the ultrasound is right). I sure do.