Happy Thanksgiving from the Johnson's! (Countdown to Thanksgiving Finale)

Yes, Donald's eyes are closed..they were in every picture.

We wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, had friends or family to celebrate with, and had many things to be thankful for. We wanted to thank you all for sharing in our blog! It makes us feel a little closer to home and all those that we love.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, celebrating with close friends in Nevada! The days of prep work to make a fully homemade Thanksgiving feast were totally worth it! The food was amazingly delicious and it was so great knowing that it was all healthy.

Check out all the veggies on that plate!

We had a lot of fun blogging our Countdown to Thanksgiving and hope you had fun reading it. We are wrapping up our awesome celebration by introducing a few of our young adults to a family Thanksgiving tradition: watching Miracle on 34th Street =)

And on that note...who's excited for Christmas?!? I'm so excited to start decorating in the morning!! Have you decorated yet or are you planning to this weekend? We will be traipsing into the woods to cut down our Christmas tree on Saturday!

Countdown to Thanksgiving - Easy Centerpiece Ideas

If you're looking for easy ways to jazz up your Thanksgiving table, I came up with a few easy and possibly free (depending on what you have on hand) ideas.

1. Leftover pumpkins from Halloween. If you have any small pumpkins left from Halloween or have found them on clearance recently, they make great centerpieces! I had several leftover, plus I was given a few recently, so I used them as my focal point. There are lots of options with pumpkins. You paint them, write on them, or leave them plain. You could even have your guests write what they're thankful for on the pumpkins!
2. Use cake stands or cupcake towers to display on. I put my pumpkins and some leaves on my glass cupcake stand that comes apart. The variation of size makes it visually interesting. You could use just one or multiples. They are great for displaying candles, pumpkins, leaves, gourds, or whatever else you think up.
   
   
   
3. Fill jars with acorns, painted or all natural. We went acorn picking a while back at one of our local parks filled with Oak trees and came home with a grocery bag full of acorns. Once we baked them to get all the critters out, we just ended up putting them in jars around the house. They were pretty, but I wanted get a little more creative with some of them. I ran across this blog about painting acorns on Pinterest. This would be a great project to do with kiddos! We just used some acrylic craft paint we had on hand. They turned out beautiful if I do say so myself!
4.  Scatter some leaves and candles in the center of the table. If you are looking for a very basic centerpiece, this would be the easiest! I just grabbed a couple things of fake leaves at the dollar store and then cut them off the stems. You could then scatter any size combination of candles on top of the leaves. Or, if you want to get really creative, you could cut holes in gourds or apples and pop in tea lights, like they do here.

I ended up doing a combination of most of the above. The important thing is to get your creative on and have fun with it!

We will posting our final Countdown to Thanksgiving post tomorrow!

Countdown to Thanksgiving - Clean Eating Cranberry Sauce with Grass-fed Gelatin

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, I love the Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce! It's on my table every Thanksgiving and I can't imagine eating the feast without it. The problem is...it's not exactly healthy. And it certainly does not fall into the clean eating category. Therefore, I set out to concoct my own recipe, hoping to come up with a very similar, but healthy alternative.

I knew I wanted to use grass-fed gelatin because of all its healthful goodness! And I definitely wanted to use real cranberries, not just cranberry juice. I also thought I could sub out some of the sugar for organic, unfiltered apple juice. Here's what I came up with:

What you need:

2 - 12 oz bags Fresh Cranberries
2 1/2 C Organic Apple Juice
2 C Water
Honey to taste
1-2 Tbsp Grass-fed Gelatin
Soup Pot
Strainer
Whisk
Measuring Cups and Spoons
Large Bowl

Start by pouring both bags of cranberries into the soup pot. Add water and apple juice to the pot.

Bring to a low boil and simmer for 30-45 minutes. You want the cranberries to burst and become very soft.

Put strainer over large bowl and pour cranberry mixture into strainer. Press the cranberry pulp until you've gotten all the juice out. It should yield about 3 1/2 cups of juice.

Taste juice to see if it is at your desired sweetness. Mine was extremely tart still at this stage despite the apple juice. I ended up adding 6 tablespoons of raw honey to the warm mixture, tasting in between each tablespoon until it reached the right ratio of tart and sweet.

Whisk gelatin into warm cranberry juice. For a soft set, use 1 tablespoon of gelatin. For a firm set (like use in a mold), use 2 tablespoons. If the whisking creates a lot of foam, skim it off the top and discard.

You can either pour it into a bowl or a mold. If using a mold, grease them before hand. I wanted more of the softer set, but still put the sauce in 4 wide mouth jelly jars. They take up less room in the fridge and that way I can open one at a time.

Once in desired container, cover and refrigerate until set and ready to enjoy on Thanksgiving!

For more Thanksgiving inspiration, check out the rest of our Countdown to Thanksgiving posts!

Countdown to Thanksgiving - 9 Ways to Eat Clean this Thanksgiving

This is our first Thanksgiving as clean eaters and we're pretty excited about it! In years past, I have used things like boxed stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and pre-made pie crusts. This year, I am cooking EVERYTHING from scratch! It is quite the undertaking, but I've spread it out over several days to make it a smooth process. I wanted to share some of the ways we are incorporating clean eating into our feast!

1. Add more vegetable dishes to your menu. As I looked at menus on the internet and at our's from previous years, I realized that there weren't very many vegetables involved in the typical Thanksgiving menu. I decided to add in Roasted Carrots and Wilted Spinach with Raw Romano Cheese.
   
2. Homemade Stuffing from Homemade Bread. Stuffing is my favorite Thanksgiving item and I am so excited to try this fully homemade version! Depending on your grain preferences, you could use Sourdough, Soaked Wheat, or Ezekiel bread. If you're not up for making your own bread, you could also pick up your preferred healthy bread.
   
3. Homemade Cranberry Sauce with Grass-fed Gelatin. I looooove the Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce and can't imagine Thanksgiving without it. This year, I am making my own from actual cranberries, organic apple juice, and grass-fed gelatin (which is very healthy for you!). You can find the recipe here on our blog tomorrow!
   
4. Swap out regular refined sugar and corn syrup for healthy alternatives. Coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey, brown rice syrup, organic corn syrup, and real cane sugar are all great alternatives! Even though we're clean eaters, we still choose to enjoy the Holidays and goodies. When possible, I clean our traditional recipes up so that we're consuming healthier versions of the classics. They still taste just as good, sometimes better!
   
5. Use real butter instead of margarine. Margarine is chocked full of hydrogenated oils and chemicals. Butter is actually really good for your body, especially if you can find grass-fed (like the Kerrygold brand). Here's a great article about the benefits of butter.
   
6. Soak nuts to reduce phytates and enzyme inhibitors. If your baking pecan pie, putting nuts in your salad, or using nuts in your stuffing, I would highly recommend soaking them a few days prior and then letting them dry on the counter till your ready to cook. (10 reasons why your should soak nuts).
   
7. Make your own pie crust with butter/lard. This is a great clean eating recipe for pie crust. It is very clear that you do not want to use lard/shortening from the grocery store. You only want to use grass-fed lard/tallow. She even walks you through rendering your own lard! If you don't have access to lard, you can use all butter. I recently made this recipe with butter and it turned out amazing! Hands down, best pie crust I've ever had! The key to an extra flaky crust is leaving big globs of butter in the dough.
   
8. Use homemade chicken or turkey stock instead of canned broth. I make bone broth all the time and have lots of it saved up for Thanksgiving! If you don't, it's pretty simple. You can either use a whole chicken or just the bones of the chicken. Put it in a large soup pot with some carrots, celery, and onion. Cover with cold water and put in a few splashes of apple cider vinegar. Let sit for 30 minutes. Bring to a low boil and simmer for 4-24 hours. The longer, the better, but if your short on time, the 4 hours will work.
   
9. Make your own gravy instead of using the kind from a jar. One of the best reasons is that it tastes better! Even after several years, I still get nervous making gravy, but somehow it always works out. I just follow one of the easy gravy recipes using turkey drippings and chicken stock.

I hope you feel inspired to make some clean eating changes to your Thanksgiving. Even if you aren't able to make all of the changes this year, starting with a few is a great step in the right direction! 

We will be continuing our Thanksgiving Countdown tomorrow with my new recipe for Jellied Cranberry Sauce!