Hey there.
Welcome back.
Lacey here with the Sweet Pea Chef.
And are you getting excited for Thanksgiving?
I know I am.
It's one of my absolute favorite holidays.
I just love all the food, and the family, and the football, it's just such a good day.
If you're anything like me, you're already planning out your whole Thanksgiving spread.
There's so many options to choose from for Thanksgiving.
So, I figured, how about today I share with you several different ways to lighten up your
Thanksgiving meals and I'm gonna show you four healthy Thanksgiving sides.
You wouldn't even know as healthy that it's super tasty.
Bonus.
All four of these Thanksgiving sides take less than 30 minutes to make and have six
ingredients or less.
That's it.
So, let's get started.
First, let's start off with homemade cranberry sauce.
This is arguably my favorite part of the entire Thanksgiving dinner.
It is so good.
I grew up on the canned stuff.
I didn't have any idea that cranberry sauce could be this tasty.
And it's so easy too.
So, let's get started making it by getting a saucepan and adding fresh cranberries to
it, and heating it over medium-high heat.
Then add some freshly squeezed orange juice, some fresh orange zest, and a little bit of
raw honey.
And then we're gonna stir all of this to combine.
So, as the cranberries start to cook and become a little bit more tender, you'll notice that
they start to kind of pop a little bit.
You might even hear every once in a while one of them pop.
You're gonna cook this for about 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
And eventually the cranberries are all gonna become very soft, and it's gonna start to
thicken, and so on.
It's gonna really start looking like some cranberry sauce.
Then remove it from the heat and then place in a storage container that you can then put
into the fridge, once it cools down to room temperature.
Cranberries are served cold, so there's absolutely no reason that you don't want to put that
in the fridge to get ready.
I even prep my cranberries the day before Thanksgiving because I find that it's not
something that you have to do the day of, it makes Thanksgiving so much easier, and
then they're also super cold and chilled and ready to eat the day of.
So awesome.
This is seriously the best cranberry sauce ever.
It's perfect as a healthy Thanksgiving side and it only takes four ingredients to make.
So, awesome.
Next, we're gonna be making some mashed sweet potatoes that are so easy to make and a really
great side dish for Thanksgiving.
To get started, we need to cook our sweet potatoes.
I like steaming them the best.
You could also boil them or roast them.
We're gonna go ahead and add our cut sweet potatoes to our steamer basket and we're gonna
cook it over a high heat.
We're gonna steam them until they're very tender.
Should take about 20 minutes.
Once they're tender, you can remove them from the heat and transfer to a food processor,
or a mixer, or just a bowl and use your hands to mix it all together.
We're also gonna add in a little bit of pure maple syrup and ground cinnamon, and then
we're gonna mash this all together.
If you're looking for your mashed sweet potatoes to be really smooth, almost whipped, then
a food processor is the way to go.
If you want a little bit of texture and you don't mind it being a little bit lumpy, then
I would recommend using your hands or you can use a kitchen blender or you could even
use a kitchen mixer.
All of those are different ways, whatever you have available, whatever you want to do,
have a different little bit of a texture change to it, but it's all gonna be super tasty mashed
sweet potatoes.
So, just three ingredients and you have delicious mashed sweet potatoes.
It can rival any sweet potato casserole.
These mashed sweet potatoes are so easy, they just take three ingredients and then you have
delicious mashed sweet potatoes that are vegan, refined sugar-free, and just so, so tasty.
If you happen to also want to make some easy healthy sweet potato casserole, I also have
a recipe that you can get the link for in the description below and that makes a really
good Thanksgiving side too and it's also healthy.
So, just FYI.
Next, I'm gonna show you how to make garlic parmesan green beans because you got to have
some greens on your plate for Thanksgiving.
And with these parmesan, garlicky, delicious green beans, I don't think you'll be complaining.
Plus they're so easy to make.
So, to get started we need to heat some olive oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet.
Once that's hot, we're gonna add in a little bit of minced garlic and then we're gonna
toss this around and get it nicely fragrant.
Should just take about a minute or so.
Then we're gonna add in our fresh green beans, a little sea salt, and ground white pepper,
and toss all of this to coat.
We're gonna cook this, tossing occasionally for about five to six minutes until the green
beans become tender but not fully soft.
We still want them a little bit crisp and have a little bit of body to them.
Then we're gonna go ahead and turn the heat off, add in some grated fresh parmesan, and
toss it one more time.
And while you do that, a little bit of that parmesan is gonna melt and it's gonna make
a little bit more of the savory flavor on there.
Oh my goodness.
These garlic parmesan green beans are so tasty and only take 15 minutes to make, from start
to finish.
And only require six ingredients.
So, you've got yourself an easy, healthy Thanksgiving side for sure.
All right.
So, now I'm gonna show you a sneaky cauliflower mashed potatoes recipe that is a replacement
for regular mashed potatoes.
But you won't even know the difference but you're gonna have extra fiber in there, extra
nutrients, less calories, and it's basically another tricky way to get more veggies on
your plate but still enjoy that delicious mashed potato taste.
So, to get started, we need to cook our cauliflower.
And just like with our mashed sweet potatoes, you can either use a steamer basket or you
can boil them.
So, I'm gonna use the steamer basket, I'm gonna add my raw cauliflower florets and a
couple cloves of garlic into my basket.
I'm gonna place that over boiling heat, I'm gonna cover it and cook for about ten minutes
or so until the cauliflower is fully tender.
Then I'm going to transfer my cooked cauliflower florets and the cooked garlic into the bowl
of a food processor.
You could also just put into a large bowl and puree using your hands, or you could put
it into a mixer, whatever you want to do, whatever is available on that busy Thanksgiving
Day.
All of them are great.
What we're looking for is basically mash the cauliflower.
In addition to our cauliflower and our garlic, we're also gonna add in some freshly grated
parmesan cheese, some sea salt, and ground black pepper.
And then we're gonna pulse the processor until the contents become pretty mixed and broken
down.
You don't want it to be fully blended and pureed.
You don't want it to look like soup.
Instead you want it to be more like mashed potatoes, right?
You want it to have a little bit of body to it and just be broken down enough to be tender
and look like mashed potatoes.
If you need to, you can also scrape down the sides of the food processor if stuff gets
all stuck up on the sides, you gotta take off the lid and push it back down and mix
it all together.
Also, if you find that it's just not quite thin enough, you can add a little bit of milk.
a tablespoon at a time until it gets to the right consistency.
Then you can just treat it like regular old mashed potatoes and top it with some fresh
chives and serve it up hot.
All right.
So, now you have four go-to easy and healthy Thanksgiving sides to choose from.
You can make all of them, you can make just one or two of them.
They're great for your Thanksgiving to stay in your healthy lifestyle and even to bring
to family if they don't even know that's healthy, they won't even tell the difference because
it's so tasty.
All of these recipes take six ingredients or less and less than 30 minutes from start
to finish, making your Thanksgiving dinner so much easier, healthier, and delicious.
So, I hope you enjoyed these recipes.
Let me know in the comments below, what is your absolute favorite Thanksgiving side,
and which one of these recipes are you gonna make first and is definitely going on your
list.
I hope you love them.
I also have a healthy Thanksgiving playlist for all sorts of other tasty delicious recipes
for Thanksgiving.
Can you tell I'm excited about Thanksgiving?
I love it so much and I hope you enjoy yours and have a wonderful holiday.
Thanks so much for watching.
I'll see you next time.
Bye-bye. [00:08:34]
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