Thanksgiving Traditions: Betty Crocker Potatoes

I mentioned the other in a post I decided to accept a sponsored post with Betty Crocker Potatoes. Well today is the day for the post.  Although this post is sponsored, the ideas, stories and photos are mine…just keeping it real y’all.

 Thanksgiving Traditions: Betty Crocker Mashed Potatoes

Around this time last year I wrote a post about Making Thanksgiving Traditions at Home. In it I mentioned we now spend Thanksgiving at home with each other; there are 9 of us so technically we are our own party! I really like that this is our family tradition; we don’t have to travel far and wide, our schedules aren’t at the mercy of others, we can stay in our pajamas all day…what’s not to love? But there was that one year…

“Chris, what are our plans for Thanksgiving?” I asked one year, more rhetorical than anything else. “I thought we’d all go camping this year during Thanksgiving,” I’m pretty sure I laughed…hard. But he didn’t laugh so I’m pretty sure I stopped rather abruptly.

Camping during Thanksgiving is not that uncommon in our home. Our family owns some land about an hour away that we use for hunting. But camping ON Thanksgiving, now that is a different story and up until that year, had never been done. My mind instantly began to race thinking of how and when and why…

It was hard to think of everything I needed to think of amid all the happy chaos and questions of the children. But think I did. Where and how would I cook the turkey? What about pies and potatoes, stuffing and rolls, cranberry relish and green bean casserole. One by one I began to consider how I would prep, cook and clean up our Thanksgiving meal.

Here’s how it all went down. We prepped the turkey at home and transported it the crockpot bowl in the ice chest.  We pre-made the pies and transported them in an ice chest with stackable cooling racks to separate them.  We pre-made the cranberry relish and transported it in yet another ice chest which already had the pre-made Green Bean casserole .  And we took a bag of potatoes and peelers.  We loaded up the crock pot, big pot for potatoes and bread machine with us…UGH is right!

 

Click the image for a delicious Creamy Crockpot Mashed Potatoes Recipes

 

That Wednesday night we plugged in the crock pot with the turkey set on low for many, many hours. About four hours into its cooking time…and in the middle of the night, we had to get up and move the crock pot outside…the smell of the turkey cooking in such close quarters was nauseating! And the bread machine sounded like the entire camper was being kneaded!

The next day we peeled potato after blessed potato out on a folding chair in the cold wind.  There was no room in the camper with the extra cooking necessities and all of us shuffling around.  Say what you will about instant verse “real” potatoes…which by the way Betty Crocker potatoes are 100% real potatoes, farmed here in the United States…but when your Thanksgiving is spent in a camper with eight other people…instant it is!  Less time and less mess will win my heart every.single.time.

That Thanksgiving was memorable indeed, and looking back, dare I say kind of fun?  But, I would definitely do some things differently.  The reason why; we intentionally have chosen to spend more time making memories than going everywhere, making everything and doing everything.  And although we were definitely all together in a very small amount of space, our energy and time could have been simplified and streamlined, i.e. not sitting in the cold wind peeling potatoes.

Thanks to Betty Crocker Potatoes for making me think back on these awesome memories (and for sponsoring today’s post!)  How about a .50 cent off coupon for Betty Crocker Potatoes y’all!

Spend more time making memories and less time peeling potatoes.