Entertainment Tips and Recipes for Hosting an Affordable Thanksgiving
Every year on November 1st, my mom would emerge from her room with what I like to refer to as “The Thanksgiving Playbook.” It was a binder full of family recipes, magazine and cookbook recipes she tested over the years, and new recipes collected that she wanted to try.
Throughout the first weeks of November, she’d use the playbook to chart the course for our Thanksgiving meal. In our family, Thanksgiving is a day-long marathon of eating starting with appetizers and drinks when our extended family and friends arrived all the way through dessert and party favor cookies for folks to take home with them when they leave. The multi-course meal that my mom orchestrates year after year is impressive, but what’s even more impressive is how she did it all at a reasonable cost.
Now it’s my turn to build my own Thanksgiving Playbook and a big part of my strategy is going to ALDI. Creating large meals for big groups of people can get very costly very quickly, but ALDI offers every ingredient I need at an affordable price.
This year, ALDI is rewinding prices back to where they were in 2019 on over 50 products from appetizers and beverages to sides and desserts. I’ve partnered with ALDI to develop these easy recipes that show how versatile their products are and how much you can make for less.
APPETIZER: Chardonnay Sausage Bites with Creamy Italian Dipping Sauce
For my family, Thanksgiving is an all-day eating event. Family and friends usually start to trickle in around noon and they come hungry. I don’t want them to fill up before the big meal, so I set out hors d’oeuvres and other small bites that they can graze on while enjoying one another’s company.
These Chardonnay Sausage Bites with Creamy Italian Dipping Sauce look and taste fancy but are so easy to whip up and don’t require a lot of ingredients! The notes of oak in the William Wright Chardonnay brings out the smoky flavors of the sausage which is a tasty contrast to the creamy, zesty Italian dipping sauce.
Ingredients:
1 pack (1.1 lb) Mild Italian Sausage, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 cups William Wright Chardonnay
½ cup Burman’s Mayonnaise
3 tablespoons Tuscan Garden Italian Dressing (original or zesty)
1 tablespoon Burman’s Dijon Mustard
Directions:
For the sausage
Place sausage in a pan or skillet and add Chardonnay.
Bring to a slow boil, turning the sausage periodically. Cook for 15 minutes or until thoroughly cooked.
For the dipping sauce
Mix mayonnaise, Tuscan Garden Italian Dressing and dijon mustard together in a bowl.
Serve with toothpicks for easy snacking!
SIDE: Maple Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Apples and Pecans
The best part of Thanksgiving are the sides! As much as I love the starchy stuffing, cheesy mac and cheese and buttery mashed potatoes, having a vegetable is necessary to a balanced meal. These roasted Brussel sprouts are sweet and savory but also hearty. Plus, the additional pecans add a satisfying crunch that will make this side a favorite of the Thanksgiving Day table.
Ingredients:
1 lb Brussel Sprouts, cut in half
2 Gala Apples, cored and cubed
¼ cup Specially Selected Garlic Infused Extra Virgin Olive Oil
3 tablespoons Specially Selected 100% Pure Maple Syrup
Stonemill Sea Salt and Stonemill Pepper to taste
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°F. In a bowl, whisk together in a bowl the olive oil and maple syrup.
In a separate bowl, add Brussel sprouts and Gala apples. Coat them with the olive oil and maple syrup mixture.
Distribute Brussel sprouts and Gala apples on to a baking tray. Season with salt and pepper.
Roast in oven for 20-25 minutes or until Brussel sprouts become tender and begin to brown, turning them after 10 minutes.
Mix in pecans and serve.
DESSERT: Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars with Spekulatius Crust
Pumpkin is one of my favorite ingredients to work with. The creamy puree is the perfect base for sweet and spiced desserts from cakes to pies, and this year I’m putting pumpkin in my cheesecake bars.
To compliment the spices that punch up pumpkin’s flavor, I decided to use Winternacht Spekulatius Spiced Cookies from ALDI which was an excellent alternative to the traditional graham cracker crust.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons Specially Selected 100% Pure Maple Syrup
8 tablespoons Countryside Creamery Unsalted Butter, melted
3 8oz packages Happy Farms Cream Cheese
1 ½ cup Baker’s Corner Sugar
¼ teaspoon Stonemill Sea Salt
1 can (15 oz) Baker’s Corner 100% Pure Canned Pumpkin
2 tablespoons Baker’s Corner All Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Simply Nature Organic Ground Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Stonemill Ground Nutmeg
¼ teaspoon Stonemill Ground Allspice
¼ teaspoon Stonemill Ground Cloves
Optional Friendly Farms Whipped Dairy Topping which also comes in maple and pumpkin-spiced flavors
Directions:
For Crust
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Put Spekulatius cookies in a food processor and pulse the cookies until they’re crushed.
In a bowl, mix cookie crumbs with maple syrup and melted butter. Spread the crumb crust evenly on the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish.
Bake crust for 10 minutes or until it turns golden brown.
For Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
Using a hand mixer or standing mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Add vanilla, yogurt and salt. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula periodically to make sure it is evenly mixed.
Beat in one egg at a time until thoroughly blended together.
In a separate bowl, mix pumpkin with flour and spices. Add 1 ½ cups of the cream cheese mixture to the pumpkin. Mix together.
Alternate scoops of cream cheese and pumpkin mixtures onto cookie crumb crust. Use a knife to swirl the cream cheese and pumpkin mixtures together, creating a marbelizing effect.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until the center of the cheesecake is slightly firm and edges are set.
Set aside to cool and put in the refrigerator to chill for at least 3 hours before serving. (It’s best to let it chill overnight!)
Top with whipped dairy topping and serve!
Extra Entertaining Tips
Offer a variety of flavors with canapés
Because ALDI has a wide selection of meats, cheeses, crackers and spreads, they’re my go-to when I want to build robust cheeseboards. This year, however, I’m trying something new: canapés! Canapés are little prepared bites that, almost like an amuse-bouche, give you space to get really creative with pairing textures and flavors together.
Mix and match Specially Selected Cheese Pairing Spreads, Savoritz Pita Crackers, Appleton Farms Prosciutto, and the Emporium Selection Brie Cheese Round to create your own canapés!
Create a serve-yourself bar
In addition to award-winning wines, ALDI offers non-alcoholic beverages that everyone can enjoy. Set up a drink station with Nature’s Nectar Sparkling Juice Cocktail, Benner Premium Assorted Teas and Specially Selected Premium 100% Juices. To make the drink station extra cozy and festive, pour Nature’s Nectar Apple Cider into a crockpot, add cinnamon sticks, star of anise and slices of Gala Apple, and set it on low. Not only will you have warm spiced apple cider for your guests, but it also acts like a simmer pot that will make your whole house smell amazing.
Sweet Endings
As our fabulous feast comes to a close, I like to end the night on a sweet note with little party favors. This is usually where I test out my winter holiday cookie recipes, but after a long month of prepping and cooking an elaborate meal, I’m going to make things easy by giving out Specially Selected Macarons from ALDI. The recipe for macarons is a very involved and precise process which is why they’re an expensive dessert. But at ALDI, a box of 12 Specially Selected Macarons is less than $6!
*Price and availability may vary by location.
#AD — This post is sponsored by ALDI