Its Thanksgiving week! That means good food is just TWO DAYS AWAY. Are y’all as excited as I am?
I know that this holiday looks a lot different than it has in years’ past, thanks to the pandemic. However, I still think that Thanksgiving is an amazing opportunity for us to focus on the silver linings – despite COVID-19 and the many hardships that it has brought along with it, we each have things we can be grateful for – so my challenge to you (and to myself) is to spend Thanksgiving day focusing on those blessings and bright spots!
This year, I’m hosting Thanksgiving for my family. Don’t worry – we’re sticking to the rules and keeping it small. Just my little guy, my parents, and my sister and brother-in-law.
We have to do our dinner a little late, since my son spends Wednesday night and the first part of Thanksgiving Thursday with his dad, so he gets to me at 4 PM. So dinner is going to be closer to 5:30 or 6 PM at my place.
I’ve already been thinking about my table set up and my dishes. My sister and mom are each bringing some sides, so I’m preparing a few sides and the main dish – the crockpot turkey breast.
Today, I want to share my favorite easy dish: sweet potatoes! If you’re hosting this year, just having your immediate family eat together, or are going to another home and need to take a dish, this is a must have – and it’s SO easy.
This is sort of a mixture of sweet potato casserole and straight up sweet potatoes. It’s not mashed or whipped like most casseroles and it doesn’t have marshmallows, but it’s also not whole or individual baked sweet potatoes.
Here’s what you need:
- 1 40-ounce can of yams/sweet potatoes
- 1/3 cup of brown sugar
- 1/2 cup of raw walnuts
- 2 tbsp of butter, cut into slices or cubes
Don’t forget – on a holiday when you’re feeding more than 2-4 folks, you’ll need to double or even triple this recipe. I’m sharing what I did for dinner last week, which was about 1/3 of my usual for holiday get togethers.
First and foremost, preheat your oven to 375F.
Then, open your can of yams, drain the liquid, and rinse lightly, re-draining. Then, spray a glass baking dish with non-stick spray, and pour your sweet potatoes into the dish, covering the bottom completely. Drop your walnuts on top of the yams, spreading them about evenly. Add in butter in the various sections of the dish – I usually add two in the middle and one on each end. Finally, sprinkle on your brown sugar fairly evenly over the entire top of the dish.
Bake at 375F for about 25-30 minutes. If you’re doing a LOT more – like 2 or 3 times this – you’ll want to up it to like 35-40 minutes, but keep an eye on it. You want your sweet potatoes to be soft, the butter and brown sugar to be melted, and the dish to be visibly steamy when you pull it from the oven.
Enjoy!
As you’ll see below, we enjoyed this dish last week at dinner – along with some of the Avengers assembled at the table. (#BoyMom, amiright?)
Kate with a Twang 