Preparing for Thanksgiving!

Preparing for Thanksgiving is always difficult for me. Ever since college, I have always had a non-traditional Thanksgiving. Therefore it has been years since I have partook in a "real" Thanksgiving meal. This year, I am looking for different dishes, trying to look outside of the box and mix different fall flavors with different textures.

One of my favorite dishes is roasted brussels sprouts. I wash them, cut them in two and soak them in olive oil for a little while with salt (high quality salt) and pepper.
Then I place the brussels spouts on a baking dish and roast them in the oven (400 degrees) for 15-20 minutes until they are crisp. Pretty easy and even people who don't like brussels sprouts (you know who you are), they even like them! Simple but delicious.
You can roast any type of vegetable, try: carrots, parsnips, potatoes, winter squash, sweet potatoes, etc.

In order to spice things up this year, I found the following recipe. I figured I could start small especially since I won't be doing most of the cooking.
Recipe taken from Whole Living (which no longer exists which is very sad, it was a great magazine)

1 tablespoon of honey
2 teaspoon of olive oil
2 cups of your choice of nuts
2 tablespoons of sugar (the only down side)
1 teaspoon of coarse salt
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon of ground coriander
1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

Directions:
1. In a large skillet, heat honey, oil and 1 tablespoon water over medium heat. Add nuts, toss to cook.

2. Sprinkle the sugar, salt, cumin, coriander and cayenne over the nuts. Cook, tossing and stirring until the nuts are well coated and lightly browned, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a baking sheet to cool completely.

I did a preliminary test with almonds... delicious!

What dishes will you be preparing for this Thanksgiving?