ENABLING YOUR PASSION FOR HEALTHY LIVING

My First Roasted Turkey & Homemade Stuffing

I roasted my first turkey for Thanksgiving and successfully cooked an entire holiday feast! I feel like this should be some sort of life milestone. While it was only for 3 people, I didn’t burn, under-cook or over season anything. IMG 7397

I bought the 10-lb turkey on Tuesday at Whole Foods. Not really knowing what to do with it, I started googling “roast turkey” when I got home. I decided that I should try to brine it which is when you soak the bird in a salt water mixture overnight. Before you do this, you have to take out the neck and heart and other “stuff”. Unfortunately, Roomie helped me do this Wednesday night after an evening of cocktails in Southie. By accident, I left the gizzards in the bird and still didn’t realize they were in there the next morning when I stuffed it with apples, onion, garlic and rosemary. We thankfully bought gravy from Flour Bakery, so any crisis was averted.

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We also bought a pear and goat cheese salad and duck fat stuffing with currants, kale and wild mushrooms from Flour. I knew I wanted to try to make a healthier stuffing from scratch but knew we needed a back up. The stuffing from Flour was unbelievably good. I love stuffing and it was the best I have ever had.
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The salad was good too and helped alleviate another dish to prepare. I was thankful for ordering the salad because my Brussels sprouts went bad the day before and this was our only green veggie.

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Let’s be honest though, no one craves the veggie sides at Thanksgiving. For me, it’s all about the turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce combo. I bought a cranberry orange relish from Trader Joe’s that was made with just cranberries and orange juice. For my stuffing, I forgot to leave out the bread the night before so I toasted a few brioche buns and 1/2 a loaf of Ezekial bread in the Oven with the turkey. I sautéed the Trader Joe’s stuffing starter veggie kit with a tablespoon of butter. I added in the bread, once I had cubed it, and about 2 cups of low sodium vegetable broth. Threw in a handful of dried cranberries and a little more thyme.

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Baked it in the oven for 35 minutes and was ready to go. It was surprisingly really good. I was nervous since I didn’t have a real recipe. It also didn’t help that I added some delicious gravy on top and a little cranberry sauce.

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Also on the menu: mashed butternut squash, Laughing Cow mashed potatoes, and roasted sweet potatoes. The only thing I didn’t eat were the roasted sweet potatoes. My mother always makes a brown sugar and butter baked version but I opted to go “clean” and as a result, didn’t eat them. No one else did either, lol.

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For dessert, I made my pumpkin pie and bought Roomie a pecan pie which I of course had as well. After dinner, we went down to my cousins to spend time with family for dessert.
I’m excited for all the leftovers we have this week. I was contacted by BluePrint cleanse to try out a 3-day and I planned it accordingly to start next Tuesday. I’m very nervous and not sure I’ll be able to make it. They have offered Sarah Fit readers a 20% off coupon that is valid Nov 26-Dec 3. When checking out, just use promo code SFITBPC. Other details are below. I do not have a review of it at this time as I have not done it yet. While I do not think cleanses should be used as a way to lose weight, I do think they are great as a meal substitution for breakfast or a snack for a way to re-energize and recharge your body. It’s kind of like a reset button. I’ve only used juice in this fashion up until now. I’ve never even gone a full day of just juice. My body is going to be a guinea pig (again) and I want to be able to give people an honest review of what it’s like to do a juice cleanse. Want to try one too but support a local company if you live in Boston? Get 10% off The Ripe Stuff using SarahFit10%.

Discounts cannot be combined or applied to packages but are valid on any Blue Print Cleanse or specialty line of juice. Discount not valid retroactively. Place your order by Dec 3rd for any available future delivery date. 

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