A Thanksgiving Dinner You Can Grow Yourself

Hello World!  Welcome Friends!  Today I am pleased to welcome Christine Hill to the blog where she will share her Thanksgiving tips.  Take it away, Christine!

If you’ve ever hosted a Thanksgiving dinner before, then you know that there is a lot of pressure to make something that is befitting of the holiday. It’s for this reason that we always try new things and to incorporate traditional foods in unique and contemporary ways. However, one thing that you can do to inject a little bit more of yourself into your Thanksgiving dinner is to grow some of the food, yourself! There are tons of staples of a Thanksgiving dinner that you can grow in your own garden. Here are just some of the options…

Pumpkins for the pie

Thanksgiving dinner just wouldn’t be the same without a delicious pie to top everything off. Traditionally, pumpkin pie just seems to work in the fall season, as it is the best time of year to get pumpkin pie. Rather than aim for a store bought one, though, or even making your own from canned pumpkin, you can create your own pumpkin pie from scratch by growing your own pumpkins. Here is a handy guide on how to start your own pumpkin patch, so that next year you can make the best pumpkin pie you’ve ever had.

Squash for soups and entrees

Pumpkins technically belong to the same family as squash, but we use them for very different things. Squash still has an important part to play on the table at Thanksgiving dinner, though. You can use seasonal squashes, like butternut squash, to make delicious soups that go excellent with turkey, or you can even season and bake the squash to be another entree on its own! You should start growing squash in early summer, if you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor by Thanksgiving.

Fresh greens for salad

While there are plenty of delicious filling options that you can stuff yourself with during Thanksgiving dinner, it is also important to fit some greens on your plate to get the vitamins and nutrients you need on a daily basis. As a rule of thumb, whenever you fill up your plate, you should always make sure that a good portion of it has salad.

The cool thing about growing stuff for a salad is that you can start growing a lot of salad making ingredients, such as cabbage, spinach, kale, and beets, pretty late in the summer, and they aren’t likely to be wiped out by frost, which means you can pick them pretty much the day before Thanksgiving. The biggest threat to most of these plants is bugs, which can be stopped by using some simple organic pest control method.

Corn on the cob

Corn is such an easy crop to grow, that it is surprising that we don’t grow our own corn more often, as it is simple to cook and makes a delicious addition to pretty much any autumn meal. It’s easiest to simply boil the corn and then eat it off the cob, but if you really want to go all out, you can shred the corn off of the cob and make your own homemade and homegrown creamed corn.

Zucchini for casserole

I don’t know about you, but one staple of Thanksgiving dinner at my family’s meal every year was zucchini casserole. Zucchinis are relatively easy to grow, and can be started indoors, if you want to get a headstart and eat them throughout the summer, as well. You can also use zucchini to make zucchini bread, which is going to be an excellent dessert option for those in your family who aren’t going to gorge themselves on pumpkin pie.

Sweet potatoes for anything and everything

Aside from your salad (if it is full of kale and spinach, rather than iceberg lettuce), sweet potatoes might just be the healthiest thing at your dinner table on Thanksgiving. Sweet potatoes have an enormous amount of potassium and vitamin c, and are low in fat and calories. This probably isn’t as true once you drown them in butter and marshmallows (which you should absolutely do on Thanksgiving), but we can all pretend, anyways! Sweet potatoes are a little trickier to grow, as they need around 150 days of warm temperatures, which is difficult in some parts of the country. However, if you can, growing your own sweet potatoes is incredibly delicious and fulfilling.

Thank you, Christine for such great information!!

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