{"id":683,"date":"2011-11-24T04:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-24T04:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/the-sweet-potato-casserole.html"},"modified":"2011-11-24T04:35:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-24T04:35:00","slug":"the-sweet-potato-casserole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/the-sweet-potato-casserole.html","title":{"rendered":"The Sweet Potato Casserole…."},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me start with a Dave Update<\/u>: Dave’s days are doing pretty well.  He’s in a bit of a conundrum because as his leg muscles tighten up overnight, he awakens every morning with VERY uncomfortable leg and glute pains.  Within a few minutes of awakening, he’s much improved.  But he says that the morning pains are pretty bad.  He keeps meeting more and more people who have had variations on the spinal fusion he’s had and they all assure him that by 6 months he’ll “feel like a new man” or he’ll “feel like a million bucks” or he “won’t believe how much better things will be”.  My fingers are crossed!<\/p>\n

As I’d mentioned in yesterday’s post<\/a>, I made the sweet potato casserole<\/a> I’d referenced.  This ended up being a very yummy, but plain, sweet potato casserole.  I made the recipe with six pounds of sweet potatoes and it filled up a disposable paper baking dish amply for Dave’s squadron Thanksgiving pot luck today.<\/p>\n

I diced and steamed the tubers last night and mashed them ahead of time.  The steaming technique is faster than baking<\/a>; I learned about this from Alton Brown’s sweet potato episode of Good Eats<\/a>.  This morning, I just stuck everything in the stand mixer and let ‘er rip with the other ingredients.<\/p>\n

It was then that I noticed that this recipe didn’t have any cinnamon or cloves.  This was a first for the few times I’ve made sweet potato casserole, but it turned out really good just the same.  I guess it’s more child-friendly that way?<\/p>\n

Tomorrow we’ll be spending Thanksgiving with a family who lives near Eglin Air Force Base, right up the road from us.  We all lived in Irvin Hall at Penn State back in the day.  And now we’re practically neighbors!  Hubby’s in Afghanistan for the holidays, and wifey has a house full of relatives visiting and she’s doing a classic Thanksgiving get-together tomorrow.  The kids are looking forward to seeing each other, and Jacob has asked to bring his new Apples to Apples game<\/a> to play.  I offered to bring several vegetable dishes and a pecan pie.  I’ll write about the pie tomorrow — it’s special and I don’t want to write about it until I can offer the thumbs-up or thumbs-down verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
The paper baking pans are great!  These are by Hefty<\/a>.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I know not everyone likes it this way, but I like the mini-marshmallows on top.  Because there simply isn’t enough sugar in this recipe, right?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

There were two casseroles at the pot luck and this was all that was left of either of them after about 50 people went through the line.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let me start with a Dave Update: Dave’s days are doing pretty well.  He’s in a bit of a conundrum because as his leg muscles tighten up overnight, he awakens every morning with VERY uncomfortable leg and glute pains.  Within a few minutes of awakening, he’s much improved.  But he says that the morning pains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[8,20,54],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-b1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":403,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/11\/sweet-potatoes-where-have-you-been-all-my-life.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":0},"title":"Sweet Potatoes, Where Have You Been All My Life???","date":"21 November 09","format":false,"excerpt":"With Thanksgiving on our horizons -- despite the retail industry jumping straight into Christmas shopping -- I thought I'd share a Thanksgiving anecdote with you.Like many other things in my culinary world, it's Alton Brown's fault. For those who don't know, or hadn't noticed from many of the other recipes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":684,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/happy-thanksgiving-a-pecan-pie-to-peruse.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":1},"title":"Happy Thanksgiving: A Pecan Pie to Peruse","date":"25 November 11","format":false,"excerpt":"Pecan pie anyone? \u00a0This one is extra special!Happy Thanksgiving everyone!Today the family headed over to the Yurack Family's house. \u00a0Jim and Amy are friends from my dorm at Penn State way back when. \u00a0Amy lived across the hall my freshman year! \u00a020 years ago! \u00a0The Yuracks have three kids, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"baking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-eWixFVbWz-k\/Ts2lzlix4fI\/AAAAAAABbxc\/3fgLFkHHWoc\/s640\/IMG_6226.JPG?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1115,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/06\/my-back-to-basics-conundrum.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":2},"title":"My Back to Basics Conundrum…","date":"12 June 12","format":false,"excerpt":"I find myself in a little conundrum: I want to bake bake bake. When I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I wanted to go \"back\" to the cooking I used to do for the family, much of that involved baking cookies, cakes, cobblers, breads, cornbread, etc. I love baking.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"back to basics\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-aW-kBnQ9uGY\/TyLsLxvwNvI\/AAAAAAAAAOw\/Nb8GogCAjc4\/s1600\/Baked+goods.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/01\/potato-dumplings-or-are-they.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":3},"title":"Potato Dumplings — or ARE they?","date":"01 January 08","format":false,"excerpt":"POTATO DUMPLINGS: (courtesy of Food Network, click link for full recipe)Mix instant potatoes for 6 servings2 eggs2 to 3 cups flour, plus more for kneading1 teaspoon baking powderCombine dumpling ingredients well. Put out on floured bread board and knead more flour in until stiff-like bread dough and it isn't sticky\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/05\/drilling-with-a-kid-dave-and-jake-are-on-their-dream-train-vacation.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":4},"title":"Drilling With a Kid! Dave and Jake are on their Dream Train Vacation!","date":"04 May 08","format":false,"excerpt":"Greetings from South Carolina again!For the first time, I brought Timmy with me on a drill weekend to South Carolina.Dave and Jacob are with a group of Pennsy N-Scale Model Railroaders in Central PA, folks he's had many conversations with via his Railwire discussion group. In fact, here's a post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":615,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/07\/howie-our-photographic-challenge.html","url_meta":{"origin":683,"position":5},"title":"Howie – Our Photographic Challenge!","date":"16 July 11","format":false,"excerpt":"Photo by Fotomom.While Maryann AKA Fotomom was here visiting last week she took a really sweet picture of Howie in our kitchen. \u00a0After she got home this week, she took some time to dress up the picture and wrote a lovely blog post about him and how she made the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fotomom.smugmug.com\/Daily-Photos\/My-Best-Daily-Shots\/i-QzGZBj7\/0\/S\/IMG0734AutoContrastTexture3Cro-S.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}