Collard Greens with Lima Beans & Turkey

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday. Some of you are out shopping today or trying to catch up on your NaNoWriMo. I’m not taking part in NaNoWriMo this year, since I'm hosting out of town company.

Here is one of my family’s favorite dishes. It’s another old-fashioned tummy-warming meal just in time to use up some of your leftover turkey (you can substitute smoked turkey or turkey polish sausage slices). The crushed red pepper is a southern necessity, but if you can’t stomach spicy dishes, you can leave it out. Serve with hot buttered corn bread. 

1 bag frozen baby lima beans

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cups vertically sliced red onion

3 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth

1 cup diced turkey or smoked turkey breast

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)

3 garlic gloves, minced

1 bay leaf

8 cups sliced collard greens

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Heat oil in a dutch oven or large pan over medium-low heat. Add onion; saute 10 minutes. Add beans, broth, and the next 5 ingredients (turkey through bay leaf). Bring to a boil and let simmer for about an hour*, Stir in collards, vinegar, and tomatoes. Cover and simmer an additional hour. Stir in salt and pepper. Discard bay leaf. 

*At this point, you can choose to bake it in the oven at 375º. After an hour, add the other ingredients and return to the oven for an additional hour. 

This recipe is easily adaptable to a Crockpot. Place sauteed onions in your Crockpot, top with beans, broth and the next five ingredients. Then add the chopped collards and pour the vinegar and tomatoes on top. Cover and cook all day. Stir before serving.

Based on a recipe from Cooking Light, March 2000 and reprinted on myrecipes.com.

Don't forget this month's contest. Submit a story using one of our prompts or submit a favorite holiday recipe. You can copy and paste as a comment or use our contact page to enter. 

Grandma Sexton's Peanut Butter Pie

Less than a week until Thanksgiving. Oh, I know, you're not even thinking about oven roasted turkey, homemade dinner rolls and grandma's dressing. Y'all are elbows deep in NaNo writing, or you should be. By my calculations you should be over the half-way mark. Me, not so much. I'm still sitting under 8k. Is there hope for me? I don't know, we'll see.

Anyway, this is my all time favorite Thanksgiving dessert. It's been handed down through several generations.  Grandma Sexton was born Pearl Sabre Kelly in Plattsburg, Winston, Mississippi, November 1890. I don't know where she got the recipe from, but it is the absolute best pie (if you like peanut butter) ever made, but I LOVE peanut butter. I'm addicted to peanut butter.

Ingredients:

1 cup light corn syrup (Karo)

1 cup sugar

3 eggs (Mom recently discovered medium eggs work best)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (Gluten free)

1/3 cup peanut butter (make sure it's not contaminated)

1 9" pie shell (I've used Gluten Free Pantry, but I think I'll try something else this year. Also, Mom makes me an individual pie in a small custard dish without the crust, so I'm sure you can make this crustless.)

Combine all ingredients. Pour into pie shell. Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for 10 minutes. While leaving the pie in the oven, reduce the temperature to 325 degrees and bake for 30 to 40 minutes more.

If you make it, let me know what you and your family thought of it. 

Blessings and happy NaNoing,

Christina

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies

We're doing foods this month! Yum, yum, yum. And we couldn't pick a better month than November, my favorite time of the year. Why, you ask. Well, because of all the yummy, delicious foods prepared during this month of Thanksgiving all the way through to New Year.

Today, I'm going to share with you one of the absolutely best cookie recipes, hands down, that I've ever come across. They are rich and gooey just like chocolate chip cookies were meant to be. And since it's gluten free, it makes this recipe even better.

*1 cup extra crunchy peanut butter
*1 cup brown sugar
*1 egg
*1 tsp. baking soda
*1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
*1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together in a large mixing bowl the peanut butter, brown sugar, egg, baking soda and vanilla. Fold in chocolate chips. Spoon by the tablespoon full onto parchment paper-line cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. For crispier cookies bake longer.

For gluten free, make sure all ingredients are gluten free and have not been contaminated by other members of the household. You never know who's eating out of the peanut butter jar. ;)

Not sure where the original recipe derived from, it came through a nutritional loop through the college I was attending last spring.

Nutritional Info:
Yields 26 cookies
Servings: 13
Calories: 250
Calories from fat: 140
Total fat: 16g
Cholesterol: 15mg
Sodium: 210 mg
Carbohydrate: 26g
Dietary fiber: 2g

Writing Prompt:

Smoke rolled from the oven doors ...