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Hey everybody, Leanne Ely from savingdinner.com
In my kitchen is my very own flylady, I've got my own [laughs].
Yeah, we're getting ready for Thanksgiving. We are!
I guess so. I guess that's why we have all this. We couldn't find the turkey hat.
I looked for the turkey hat everywhere and Marla's going to wear it. You're going to be a good sport.
If we find that, we will do a shot of that I promise you. It might just be a still
photo, but
we'll still have it, you'd better believe it.
Anyway, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, mine too.
I love Thanksgiving: I love the fall colors,
I like the little turkey, she loves pumpkins.
Why not? I like all of it, I just think it makes me happy.
It's Christmas without gifts. Amen.
Hello, I'm getting a little FlyLady-ism there.
I like it, that's good. I'm going to copy that.
Anyway, we have, of course, every year our very famous
Thanksgiving Menu Mailer that we give out Absolutely Free. All you have to do is
opt-in: there's a little opt-in, we'll
that we'll give you. We'll show you where that is. I've been using this Menu Mailer
for the last twelve years and could not get through Thanksgiving without it.
It's the best, especially the timeline. the timeline's fantastic because the
timeline gets you all the way through. It tells you what to do a week before.
It's using Fly Baby Steps that Marla taught me
years ago: doing things in advance so you don't have to be all
last-minute, stressed out. Yeah who wants to be ironing napkins on the day of Thanksgiving.
Really?
Yeah, I've set the table two days before and put the sheet over the top. I love that one.
That's one of my favorites. Of course we talked about the mashed potatoes in
the crock pot.
What are some other good time-saving tips? What we get to make
pumpkin pies and stuff ahead of time.
Absolutely. I make my mashed potatoes way ahead of time. I do the
the stuff that I can put into the crockpot, so it can be ready.
But there's so much stuff. You can cut up all your veggies ahead of time.
You can even make the dressing, all the stuff that goes into the dressing.
Yes you can.
There's so much stuff we could do ahead of time, if we just sit down and think about it
and
use the timeline. Use the Thanksgiving Menu Mailer, it helps you to do that. It does.
You know a lot of us too, we get a little bit
overly obsessed with everything homemade, everything perfect.
It doesn't have to be. One of the tricks
that I have,
my sister actually taught me this and that was to
add a package of,
what do you call that stuff, gravy mix into your gravy,
so the gravy hogs at your table don't take every last
ladle of gravy. Just so you know, her gravy recipe
in the Thanksgiving Menu Mailer is the best ever.
You can't fail with this recipe. It's no-fail gravy, no lumpy, no nothing.
There's a troubleshooting guide if you mess it up, right? Right it's all
there, ready for you step by step. She could have written a book just about by
gravy [laughs].
Yeah the gravy is the best. It is. The turkey
is the best you'll ever eat. The thing is
we take all the fuss out of it, because what is a turkey?
It's like a big chicken. I don't believe in stuffing turkeys.
Because let me just tell you what happens when you stop a turkey. First
of all that dressing is fabulous that comes out of it.
But all the flavor from your turkey is now in the dressing. All the
juice goes into that turkey and the gravy is crappy.
It's dried out. She said the C word, crappy.
But it's true, right? You've lost all your flavor for the gravy. You also
have an opportunity
by the way, for food sickness.
I learned a secret a couple years ago, I do my turkey
the day before. Yeah you do, then you put it in the refrigerator.
I bring it back out
and heat it up in the open, but it doesn't take over my
oven space: I have two ovens. But when you're getting ready for
fifteen or twenty people, there's never enough ovens.
I always forget the rolls. Don't we all?
You can assign somebody the rolls. That was my
latest thing, assign somebody the rolls, to put them and set the timer.
Please set the timer or you'll blacken the rolls. I don't like
to make homemade rolls, but I did the frozen roll dough, that makes my life
easier.
The Sister Schubert's, right? I don't know who they are, but they're just really good.
Yeah everybody loves those. They rise up.
I get all these aluminum foil pans and ziplock bags are the main thing
for my holiday, getting rid of leftovers. because I send people home
with trays of rolls,
turkey in zip lock bags. It's really a good idea. We don't have any leftovers at my house.
I like leftovers one time. I don't like to eat off of it forever.
But you know it's really nice. I've got a great recipe in
the Menu Mailer itself,
the Thanksgiving Menu Mailer, we have recipes for what to do with the
leftovers. Oh yes.
They're delicious, including making a Thanksgiving pie
that you have mashed potatoes as your crust, you put the stuffing in.
Wait, you put the stuffing as your crust
and then the gravy and the turkey. You layer it up, it's delicious.
Now many of you have felt guilty about
the turkey carcass that is ruining in the refrigerator?
That's right. There lot of people do that. They think maybe we're gonna do this,
then they never do it. I get the emails, Marla, saying,
"The turkey carcass has been in my refrigerator for two weeks.
Is it okay to use?" Not if you value your life and those of
your loved ones. She has the greatest idea:
take the turkey off the carcass,
bag up the turkey carcass and put it in your freezer. Because
guess what
nobody wants to have turkey soup just after they've
had a big turkey, right? All the leftovers and everything.
Everyone's like, "Can you stop with the turkey?"
So that's how we deal with the turkey carcass, because it makes incredible soup,
incredible soup. So just freeze it.
Right. Drop it in the freezer bag and put it in the freezer. That's something that I
like to do right around
Christmas time. Speaking of the freezer,
we have an idea on how to help these ladies
get everything done, so they can go Christmas shopping
without guilt. We've already talked about utilizing your
crockpot.
Right, but she had some great freezer recipes
that you can put together during the month of November,
so come December you're not having to do anything except pull things out and do it.
It's fantastic and keeps the fun element, so
if you're using the Holiday Control Journal, which by the way, highly highly
highly recommended.
It's Free it's on www.flylady.net: download it,
put it in a three-ring binder and use it, because it will keep you
from having to do all that stuff that you don't want to do.
Well I keep the Thanksgiving Menu Mailer,
along with my Holiday Control Journal. It's what I use
from Halloween to New Years. It helps. It has
everything in there that I need.It has my grocery lists, all of it
right there.
Well one of the things you can do, by the way, you can get all
your pantry stuff right now. You can get your pure pumpkin
We make a pumpkin cheesecake with ginger
snaps, it's fantastic. Oh, oh, oh. I use the gluten free because I do gluten free
I use the gluten-free Ginger Snaps that
are fantastic, I make the crust out of that. Another thing I tried recently
which is really good, is little chocolate chips
in the pumpkin cheesecake.
Pumpkin and chocolate is a really good mix by the way. I really like that
pumpkin cheesecake recipe and I made it for several years and it is always the
only dessert that is
ever finished at my house. I understand that and we always like the traditional
pies: the traditional pumpkin pie, the traditional apple.
But as soon as they see that, they'll say, "What's that?" It's pumpkin cheesecake,
it's gone. Yeah it is fantastic. So that is
one of the things that we do recommend. All you have to do
on the week of Thanksgiving is get your fresh veggies. That's right.
We love that idea.
We were just talking here, we did a typical duck
thing. We did, yeah. I know we ducked all over that one. But we were talking
about the freezer,
the freezer meals. Oh yeah, let go back and rewind.
You just did it okay. The freezer meals: we put together a bundle of goodies. Marla,
this is FlyLady
approved. We call it the
All Access Freezer Pass. This is amazing everybody.
Here's what you do, okay, this is my big thing. Have you ever seen
those places in
strip malls, where you go in, you
assemble your meals and put them in bags? They cost hundreds of dollars? They do,
they're expensive.
We have a Do-It-Yourself version of that. We have tons of them,
we've put them together in a great big bundle and we have it just for FlyBabies.
I showed it to Marla and she said,
"They need to have this." It's menu planning month, so why not? Exactly.
If you utilize this and your crockpot, guess what's going to happen?
You're going to save money, you're gonna sail through these holiday, cruise
sail, sleep, whatever. It's stress-free.
Absolutely. All you gotta do is put it in a crockpot,
boom ready to go. Yeah.
So anyway, freezer meals we've got them.
Some of them are crockpot, some you just put it together
like a fajita type of a thing.
It's just so easy, because all the work is done. You've got
extra food in your freezer for those
guests that just happen to show up. Or you see somebody in need
and it's your turn to help out. Or a lady in your church has a baby and you can
just pull one of those meals out,
quick thaw it, heat it up, cook it up fresh
and bring it to her house. She's going to think you just broke your neck all
over the place,
in the middle of the holidays and here you are delivering this fresh meal.
That's what the holidays are about. Superhero, that's what I'm talking about.
Anyway All Access Freezer Pass, we have that and there's
more information below. We also have, should I say that more
information below? Well yeah I should. More
information below. Also if you want to get the
Free Menu Mailer and I emphasize it is Free.
Just opt-in, there's little thingy there for you to do that.
It's a thingy [laughs]. I thought it was a
thingamabob, it's a whooggie.
We call it whoogies. We have two things for you, so just take a look at
everything there. That's all I have. Do you have anything else? When you opt-in,
you get all your daily emails. We got some cool stuff.
Great stuff that you send, lots of educational stuff too.
Because I think its really important to understand
what it is that we're eating.
More than ever, yep, there you go.
I think we're done. [laughs]