4 Thanksgiving Dishes You Can Make in Half the Time With Food Storage

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Thanksgiving dinner is a lot of work! However, by using shelf stable foods, you can save yourself some time, dirty dishes, and money PLUS rotate your food storage at the same time!

I hope you have a “home store” full of healthy, shelf stable foods for your family.  This is just as important as other types of insurance.  But the foods in this “home store” are great for other reasons as well.  Today, I’m going to show you how they can save you time and stress on Thanksgiving Day!

Shelf stable foods are typically prepped for you: they are washed, peeled, cut, chopped, browned, shredded, etc. That is all extra time with your family on Thanksgiving Day (as well as fewer dirty dishes). Using food storage also means less to buy at the grocery store and the opportunity to USE what you store and store what you use!

With these recipes, everything will taste amazing too, I promise! These are all recipes from my friend, Chef Todd Leonard. Chef Todd is amazing! I’ve had the privilege of enjoying many meals created by him, and every single time, I am AMAZED at the things he makes with Thrive Foods. If you are interested, you can learn a bit more about his credentials here, but believe me, his food is delicious!

 

1.  Mashed Potatoes

Traditional Method: 1 hour, Freeze Dried Method: 10 minutes

Unlike most instant potato products, Thrive’s mashed potatoes have just one ingredient:

100% Idaho-grown potatoes.

No one will know they took you 10 minutes to make instead of an hour! And anyone can enjoy them as they are gluten free, dairy free, non-GMO, and have no artificial colors, flavors, additives, or preservatives. They taste like, look like, and ARE simply 100% potatoes.

I’ve got two different recipes for you:

Traditional Mashed Potatoes	Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Here is a quick video created by my friend Francesca that shows the difference in time, stress, and dirty dishes to get these potatoes on the table.  And, this doesn’t even take into account the cooking time!  If you like Francesca’s video, you can purchase these potatoes through her here.  And a big thanks Francesca for letting me share her video!

 2.  Cranberry Sauce

Traditional Method: 15 minutes; Freeze Dried Method: 7 minutes

Love homemade cranberry sauce, but don’t love all the time that goes into it?  Not a fan of the other quicker (canned) options available?  Try freeze dried cranberries!  Just like the potatoes, they are:

100% cranberries

and taste like it!  They’ve simply had the water removed, and been pre-sliced, making them much easier to use.  Homemade cranberry sauce in half the time!

Here is the recipe:

Homemade Cranberry Sauce:

3.  Homemade Rolls

Traditional Method: 6-10 ingredients; Roll mix method: 3 ingredients

Everyone loves a warm, fresh from the oven homemade roll.  But unfortunately, many people are also overwhelmed by the process:  lots of ingredients to get add and get just right.  If you mess up just one step, your rolls don’t turn out.  If you don’t do homemade rolls often, you may feel overwhelmed.  If that is you, you need Thrive’s Dough mixes. 

These mixes have just three ingredients: the mix, water, and yeast.  Fool-proof!  Chef Todd took a full YEAR to perfect these mixes.  Add yeast and water, and get perfect rolls every time!

Two recipes:

Honey Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls	Country White Dinner Rolls

 

4.  Homemade Pie

Traditional Method: Lot of peeling and chopping fruit.  Freeze Dried Method: Fruit is peeled and cut for you!

What would Thanksgiving dinner be without a fresh fruit pie?  Using freeze dried fruit (just as healthy and tasty as fresh) has a few advantages: choose any fruit you want, even if it isn’t in season and is crazy expensive at the grocery store.  Plus, the fruit is all chopped and peeled for you which is a time saver!

The recipe below uses apples and blueberries, but you can substitute an equal amount of any fruit of your choice!  This is my favorite fool proof pie crust recipe.

 Homemade Apple Blueberry Pie

How about you?  What “food storage” dishes have you made (or plan to make) on Thanksgiving Day?

Want More Food Storage Recipes?

If you’d like more (family approved) 100% food storage recipes, I have a recipe book that you can find here or by clicking on the image below.