Stuffin’ Muffin Recipe!

Because I am a genius and tried to make my family ultra happy last Thanksgiving a new tradition has been born! The Stuffin’ Muffin is now a vital part of our Thanksgiving meal! It is also really easy to make and will trick people into thinking you are the greatest chef in the world. Just believe me on that one 🙂

Step one: Depending on how much you are making get a giant pan and your ingredients! These will consist of:

Stuffing mix bags

Jimmy Dean Sausage

Chicken broth

Celery

Onions

Apples

Olive oil

Step two: Warm Olive oil and saute onions and celery and apples in it. Add the apples a bit after the onion and celery as they are already softer.

That knife is my favorite to cook with and I am sad if it is dirty and I have chopping to do.

I did three onions, 6 celery stalks and 4 apples. With two bags of stuffing. You can adjust to your tastes and needs for this recipe!

Step three: Add the sausage once the veggies (and fruit) have had time to cook down a bit and soften. Cook until browned through. Extra steaminess makes it extra good!!

Finally add the bags of stuffing and remove from heat. Mix well with sausage mixture then add broth. I ended up using 2 boxes of chicken broth. The trick here is to full soak all the breading. You do not want anything crispy because it will either burn or dry out when you bake them!

The prebaked finished product. I bake these at 350* until brown and crisp on the top and moist on the inside!!

*This made 3 muffin tins full and a bit extra. Since I had to stuff the turkey as well it was really 2.5 muffin tins and the extra and .5 muffins went into the bird!

SO delicious and certainly a family favorite!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THANKSGIVING FOOD?
mine is stuffing or my grandma Frans Squash Casserole!!!

The Thanksgiving Day Recap!

Thursdays Workout: 4.00 miles in 42:29. Feeling good! 

So Turkey Day had arrived and it was around 7:45 am when my alarm went off so I could bake the Turkey and start my soup in the crock pot!

I pulled this beauty out of our refrigerator in the basement, carried it upstairs and pulled off the lid to see this beauty!

After doing that and dumping the ingredients for soup into my crockpot it was time to get dressed.

This is how I spent most of my morning prep….well clothing wise.

In the world of my shoe rotation it was time for my Saucony’s even though my mizunos would have been a better match fashion wise. BUT running is not a fashion show, especially in your own house.

For this run I wanted to keep an eye on the progression of the food and be able to continue my love affair with Dr. Who, so treadmill it was.

I did a 5k in 34:03 because my body was tired and my legs were not warming up the way I wanted so I took it slow. After that I cranked the treadmill up to a 6% incline until this.

Dr. Who was getting crazy! In other news though the incline bump helped my achieve a 100 calorie burn in a little over 5 minutes. When you know you are going to be eating delicious food thats what you have to do.

After that I set the inlcine back to 1 and ran as hard and as fast as my body would carry me. Until I hit 4 miles. (I planned on going longer, but at this point it was almost 10:15 and I still had some prep and showering before people arrived at noon!)

Not too shabby for a quick workout and almost a whole episode of Dr. Who.

Then it was time to get back to cooking.

This is parmesan pumpkin soup with frizzled prosciutto. Yes the first step of this recipe is to fry up some prosciutto and then cook the onions and garlic in the same oil…..best recipe ever! Plus my Mother and Brother are not pumpkin fans but enjoy this a lot.

I got the recipe out of one of my cookbooks from my bridal shower and there is a link to it here.

Finally everyone arrived and it was time to eat! I dont think we had enough food for the 12 of us…..We had two turkeys by the way.

This was my brother going for seconds so after a heavy soup and first time around these were all the leftovers..I think we had enough just incase anyone was famished!

Here was my plate of deliciousness! (Man was I glad I ran that morning!!)

Corn casserole, green bean casserole, squash casserole, mashed potatoes, a biscuit, turkey, gravy, corn, pineapple stuffing, a stuffing muffin and a dollop of cranberry sauce after the picture. I might have had to take numerous eating breaks but I did make it through that whole plate!

Finny also enjoyed Thanksgiving!! Even though he is not biologically my child I think he learned to make faces at food from me..

Please note the intense look in his eyes while licking stuffing!!!

All and all it was a fantastic Thanksgiving with Family and I was so happy to have it in the new house!!

Wacky Fact Wednesday Brought to you by Black Friday!

WEDNESDAY WORKOUT- 1 HOUR TRAINING SESSION WITH JEFF 6-7am. Running warmup followed by a circuit. 

So I am a bit late on posts, but as I may have mentioned I host Thanksgiving for our Family. It was my second one and I use Wednesday as a prep day, I think you all know why I didn’t do a full post yesterday, too much family fun!!!

So here are some Wacky Facts, The Thanksgiving edition!!!

1.) Step one of prep day was to get to cleaning and also to pull out everything that would need to be cooked in the two day period, as the pile on my counter got smaller so did my stress level!

I dont know if you can see but there are 3 bags of mashed potaotes on the counter, WE REALLY like them! Dan actually told me on Thanksgiving he doesnt like mashed potatoes and I thought we were headed for a rough time in our marriage until he told me they are great with gravy….I immediately loved him again!

2.) I don’t know if you do this with your turkey, but I brine mine (clearly since I have had thanksgiving twice I am a pro), it makes the turkey so moist, and uses up oranges I bought and could not possibly eat all of.

The brine features oranges squeezed into water with kosher salt and rosemary and my secret ingredient…

2 cups of white wine. It was perfect again, like last year!

3.) I forgot how much salt to put in the brine, luckily my Grandma was over with my Aunt Kim, so we worked it out…

It is completely acceptable to still be wearing you sports bra and shirt from your morning workout at 8:30pm just throwing that out there for you.

Also how cute is my Grandma!

My Aunt Kim decided to take more pictures of us and my Grandma was a bit annoyed that I told her this would be on the internet. So we decided this picture was so neccesary.

Yea like I said she is cool, and those shoes she is wearing she has worn that style for years, TOMS before TOMS were cool!

Please also notice my left foot, Dan hates when I do that as it looks really gross if my pant leg wasnt covering it, but is a good stretch.

4.) Here is Finny being pretty much the cutest dog of all time, he was so happy to have guests as my Grandma and Aunt Kim are his favorites….sometimes we think he likes my Grandma more than anyone, so we call her Finny’s Lady.

Here is my Aunt Kim trying to fix our broken clock….yes it is still broken sadly but is too pretty to throw out, who cares if it is stuck on 9:00?!!

That pumpkin is not for pies if thats what your thinking but rather for a so delicious soup, recipe to be posted tomorrow!

5.) Speaking of recipes later today I will post my grandmas famous stuffing recipe that I modified of course, to make these bad boys!!!

Pre-baked Stuffing Muffins! A Levesque-Krechko-Karnolt Favorite! My family (well my mom and aunts) fight over the crispy part of stuffing sticking out of the turkey. So last year I made these everyone gets their own super crispy outside stuffing with a moist center and everyone is happy!!!

Like I said recipe will be up this afternoon/early evening!

What did you do to prep for thanksgiving, even if you didnt cook….Dan cleaned his garage and had some pumpkin beers.

That cinnamon sugar brown sugar rim was amazing! But this was mine, I also decided to drop some into the beer and it exploded all over the place, luckily we all laughed and Dan did not yell at me for spilling on the floor!

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

You should probably know this about me already but if you are a new reader I say anything that is a carb!

Turkey Day week Tuesday!

As you see training Tuesday has been replaced for this week, as today is my rest day this week! You see I have training with Jeff tomorrow and had it yesterday so I wanted a rest. Plus I plan on working out all weekend so I needed a day.

Today seemed like the perfect day as Mom and I went shopping for Thanksgiving after work and there was A LOT of lifting involved!

So because of that here is a montage of last weeks pictures that did not make the blog.

Last Tuesday we decorated the store for Christmas, we stay after work and Mom buys everyone Chinese. We eat and decorate and look forward to it every year! This was food for 6 of us….Mom goes a bit overboard!

Some of our handy work outside!

Dan always says he doesnt like Finny and messes with him constantly but here they are showing they do love each other!

This was my super sneaky picture of Dan switching out his Iphone for a new one because his 5 was dropping calls.

And finally…

The happiest and blurriest you will ever see me at 5:30 when getting ready to workout with Jeff. Yes my shirt says team Karnolt it was a gift from my Sister In Law on my wedding day!

Something to think about…Workout Wednesday!

As we head into the holiday season and might be letting our diet and exercise programs get a bit lax, due to stress, time issues, what have you, here is something to ponder!

Thanks to my facebook friend Bonnie and Active.com for the graphic!

But it is something we all must realzie if we are trying to stay fit and eat all the delicious holiday foods! My plan is to log some serious treadmill time in the morning. I have Thanksgiving at my house every year and wake up around 4:30-5:00am to put the Turkey in. We get a big Turkey and eat around 1 or 2pm. Thus the turkey has to be done early, especially since we work retail and go into work at midnight for Black Friday!!!

I will be walking/maybe running on the tredmill when I get home as it is snowing here and I am still stuffy and could do with the exercise, but without the coughing fit!

My miles will be logged into my Wacky Fact Wednesday post, so check back later!!!!