It’s no secret that I’m big on full-out meal planning, so of course I have been trying to map out a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration – especially since this year it involves a longish road trip and a long time, long distance friend. It’s also no secret that I adore pretty kitchen gear and ever since I started collecting treasures in our new place in California, I have been absolutely smitten, so I am hunting for the perfect dishes and bakeware to bring with us on our Thanksgiving visit. This amazing giveaway is so timely and right up my alley I am so excited to present it to you guys!

Just three simple steps will get you entered in this giveaway for A set of 4 Harvest Pumpkin Tiny Taper Holders from Williams Sonoma, 10″ x 6″ Scalloped Italian Bakers from Sur la Table and the matching Wire Baker Racks.

1. Check out The Country Crock Chronicle and leave a comment on an article there.

2. Like So Very Domestic on Facebook.

3. Leave a comment here to let me know you did!

A winner will be chosen by a random draw and posted on the blog on Monday, November 12 (the winner will also be contacted via email). The winner must reply with their mailing address within 24 hours or a new winner will be chosen by a second random drawing. Good luck!!

This year we are spending Thanksgiving with a dear friend of mine and her four children, and I have been trying out different side dish ideas to help make it a really special holiday. This was one of my favorites so far (you can find loads more inspiration over at Country Crock and here on the blog in the next couple of weeks).

In trying out and coming up with different recipes for Thanksgiving of course the emphasis leans towards bigger is better and this time of year especially the menus often tend to be a lot richer. We don’t need to give up the richness completely, but it is a smart to make adjustments to recipes to make them healthier for ourselves and our families. Years ago I would have made this recipe with butter, traditional bacon and full fat cheddar cheese. However, with a few small changes I was able to make this recipe much healthier! Country Crock has 0g trans fat, no-nitrate bacon is always a better choice than a bacon (either pork or turkey) made with nitrates and low fat cheese is a no brainer switcheroo.

4 potatoes, sliced about 1/2″ thick
1/4 cup melted Country Crock
black pepper, to taste
8 slices of no-nitrate, turkey bacon, cooked and chopped
8 ounces low-fat shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup chopped green onion or chives

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Using a pastry brush, cover both sides of each potato slice with Country Crock and put them on an ungreased baking sheet. Sprinkle with black pepper and cook for about 45 minutes, until potatoes are cooked through.
Once the potatoes are cooked, sprinkle with the cheddar cheese, the bacon and then top with the chives or green onions (or use a mix of the two). Cook for another 10 minutes or so until the cheese is melty and serve alongside your main! I had intended them to be cut up and eaten but more than one person picked them up and ate them as finger food!

Thank you to Country Crock for being a sponsor. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Today I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie and The How To Mommy.

Tater tots are really just rolled up mashed potatoes and everyone knows mashed potatoes go with pretty much anything! Whatever they don’t work with french fries or scalloped potatoes can totally stand in for them. It’s potato madness. So once I discovered how to make tater tots myself, a whole world of weird culinary (I use the word extremely loosely) adventure opens up. Tater tots IN a casserole? sure, why not? Wrapped in bacon? What isn’t there to love?! I have also recently stumbled onto, but haven’t tried, Tater Tot Pie, Cheeseburger Tater Tots and some kind of insanity called Tater Tot Hot Dog Casserole?! What?!

I’ll stick to wrapping or stuffing mine, thanks.

This Week’s Menu:

Saturday & Sunday – Cooking with Visitors! We’ll let them pick!

The tater tot recipe I used in this recipe is the same one I used when I made The Duggar’s Tater Tot Casserole last year.

From here, it’s painfully simple. Just roll each tater tot in a single strip of bacon and secure with a toothpick. Cook at 375 for about 30 minutes, give or take (check on it). Make these for a crowd, take some to your neighbors, whatever you do – share them!

Today I am linking up with Kate Says Stuff, Obviously Marvelous and Saved by Love Creations.

This is one of those lunches that you MUST serve with a salad or else you’re staring down the barrel of a seriously sad meal, nutrition-wise. Taste wise? I hear it’s amazing! I’m going to defend myself a little here and say that when I do make something like this these days, all the ingredients are as healthy as I can get my hands on. So the chicken is local and grain fed, the bacon is low sodium, the cheese is local and rBST-free, the flatbread is all multigrainy and the ranch is homemade. The entire family gobbled these down and that pretty much never happens.

Chicken-Bacon Wraps
4 pieces flatbread
2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup cheese, chopped or shredded
1 green onions, chopped
1 batch ranch dressing

So painfully simple. Lay out the chicken in the middle of the flatbread, top with cheese and bacon.
Then drizzle on some ranch dressing and sprinkle the green onion bits over top. Roll them up and baket at 350 for about 15 minutes (so the bread is crispy and the cheese has a chance to melt).
Each wee one asked for a second wrap when they were done! Miracles!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

Everything is better with bacon. Right?! The addition of bacon to pretty much anything I can add bacon to has been mounting. Perogies, check. Breakfast pie, check. Cookies, check. I will post about all these bad boys eventually. The bacon wrapped tater tots are a personal favorite, and have won me over in the hearts of both strangers, neighbors and randos everywhere. This? Is the ‘impress my family’ version, and it totally works.

Bacon Mashed Potatoes

4 baking potatoes
1/4 cup butter
6 strips bacon
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Bake your potatoes however you like, (I took a shortcut and stuck them in the microwave), then mash them with butter.
I used my hand blender to make sure there were no chunks and then I added in the bacon.
Spread the mashed potatoes in a casserole dish and sprinkle the cheese over top. Bake at 375F for about 20 minutes.

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

When we bought our house last summer, imagine my overwhelming glee, yes, glee when I discovered we moved next door to a professional chef. I mean, what are the odds that a food blogger is going to move in next door to a pro chef? It’s a major bummer for me to report that he ended up moving a couple of months ago BUT we’re still friends so it’s all good in the hood. In the months that we lived next door to each other, though? So fun! He’d eat (and generally approve of) everything kitchen creation I brought over! His kids loved to tear it up in the kitchen with us (we have 3 kid each) and they were all really good sports about eating whatever I made. So sweet!

Anyhooooo, that little story brings us to these decadently fried chicken strips how, exactly? Well, as a professional chef, he has a heap ton of cook books from culinary school. Picture me standing there hearing about this for the first time. Cook books, yes, but cook books that are essentially text books for the kitchen?!?! OMG This book, The Cook’s Book, is huge. It has chapters on everything from sauces to Latin American cooking, from pasta & dumplings to Middle Eastern cooking and each chapter is written by a different well versed pro chef. This recipe is from the poultry & game birds chapter, written by Shaun Hill.

Fried Chicken with Bacon via Cooks Book

2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
2/3 cup buttermilk
4 thick-cut slices lean bacon
3 cups fresh white bread crumbs
sunflower oil for frying

First, slice your chicken into strips and then pound out between pieces of plastic wrap. Then mix the mustard with the salt, pepper and cayenne.
Brush the spicy mustard on each strip and place them in a bowl. Pour the buttermilk over them. Take care that all the pieces are coated.
Pour about 1/2″ of oil into a heavy frying pan and fry the bacon in it till crispy. Dry off the bacon with paper towels.
Crumble the bacon and toss it with the bread crumbs.
Coat each piece of buttermilk-soaked chicken in the bacon and bread crumb mixture and fry in more sunflower oil. If you need to, keep adding oil to have about 1/2″ in the pan all the time. They should take about 10 minutes per batch and depending on the size of your pan you’ll need a few batches.
It looks so amazing with the bits of bacon poking out from the breading! Serve as a main to a meal or with a dip and a salad as lunch!

Today, I’m participating in Tasty Tuesday at 33 Shades of Green.

I know technically these little bundles of deliciousness are called Beggar’s Purses but I made them for my mother’s Pixie-themed 60th birthday party (my mother loves fairies and anything to do with fairies), so Pixie Purses they are! Bacon + goat cheese? OMG. I’ve recently given up the bacon but I’d probably still snarffle down a few of these little babies. They were a hit with everyone that tried them and the only treat I made for my mother’s party that didn’t have any leftovers!

You could make these suit your needs however you like! You could fill them with fake cheese and tempah or with mozza and chicken or or or…endless combinations really. They also look really snazzy but don’t require too much effort.

Pixie Purses (aka Beggar’s Purses, aka Goat Cheese Phyllo Purses) via Confessions of a Foodie Bride
5 oz goat cheese, softened
2 tablespoons chives, chopped
I also added a few tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley
4 slices of bacon, cooked to a crisp
black pepper
6 sheets of phyllo dough
6-8 tablespoons of melted butter
Chives or strips of the tops of green onions for tying

Preheat your oven to 400 F and mash together your goat cheese, chives, parsley (if you’re using it) crumbled bacon, and black pepper.
The thing about phyllo is it pretty much always starts out the same. Lay a single piece on your counter, use a pastry brush to paint melted butter all over it, then add a second sheet and attack that with melted butter and again with a third piece. Then cut it into four equal pieces and put about 1 1/2 to maybe 2 tablespoons of the mixture into the middle of each square. Then gather the phyllo around it like a little package and tie with your chive or strip of green onion.
So cute!!! It’s looking pretty pale on the left! I brushed the tops of each one with a little butter and made a bunch more. I put all of them in a shallow dish and baked them for about 8 minutes. Check on them though!! If your oven runs hot they’ll be incinerated in a heartbeat! Let them cool for a bit so you don’t burn yourself with 400 degree goat cheese!