What’s on America’s Thanksgiving Table with Delicious Recipes from Pillsbury

The Thanksgiving holiday is only a few days away and many of us have begun our holiday preparations and/or festivities. Here at my home…we had a small gathering over the weekend and had a great time. We call it our annual Pre-Thanksgiving Family Fun Day and mostly the families with children attend.

For our little pre-holiday party we allowed the kids to make and bake homemade pizzas…after all, what kid doesn’t love being in the kitchen, making pizza and then eating it? They kids had a blast!

For our pizzas we received a complimentary free product coupon from Pillsbury and used their refrigerated rolled pizza dough. We love using that dough because its super easy to use…simply unroll and place it onto a cookie sheet. Bake for a few minutes, remove from the oven and add your sauce & toppings and bake a few more minutes. Gotta love that!

Earlier in the day the kids had fun baking up their own Cinnabon Rolls thanks to Pillsbury! These refrigerated rolls are premade and you simply pop open the can and bake them in the oven. Once done you remove them and drizzle the vanilla frosting over the top which is included in the can! It can’t get any easier than that!

What’s on America’s Thanksgiving Table this year?

Tradition holds true across the country when it comes to preparing a Thanksgiving meal; however, today’s holiday table may have a new look as families seek to modernize classic recipes and incorporate time saving techniques. Nearly three-in-five Americans indicate that they like to try new and different foods each Thanksgiving, showing that there is room to update traditional recipes.

Thanksgiving by the numbers:
Most, but not all, will indulge in turkey on Thanksgiving. While the vast majority of tables will include turkey as the mainstay, one-in-six (16 %) say they’ve started offering alternatives or are likely to try different preparations for the bird. Additionally, while Thanksgiving may be uniquely American, there is still room to infuse family traditions from other countries as one-in-10 respondents like to serve foods specific to their culture.

Vegetable variety reigns on the Thanksgiving table. Vegetables like corn, carrots, broccoli, peas and green beans– especially in casserole form for more than half of Americans – make popular side dishes. Other side staples include stuffing/dressing, potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, as well as cranberries.

Bread, in a variety of forms, is a prominent participant in the holiday meal. More than three-quarters of families will pass a bread basket at the Thanksgiving dinner table, including rolls (62%), and another third (35%) opt for biscuits or crescents as their bread of choice.

What’s for Dessert? Pie, of course! For nearly nine-in-10, dinner is not complete without pie. Pumpkin is the traditional favorite across the U.S. (67%), with apple (56%) on tables in the northeastern U.S. and pecan (43%)on tables in the South. Of those surveyed, 37 percent exclusively serve homemade, while the others don’t have time, don’t know how, or believe it is too difficult.

Homemade = Love. Additionally, 89 percent feel that preparing homemade foods shows loved ones how much they care. But nearly half of Americans admit that the Thanksgiving meal is the most stressful holiday meal to prepare with 72 percent of respondents looking for tips and tricks to prep the holiday meal more quickly.

Pillsbury can help modernize classic recipes without adding stress to the feast preparations, including twists to traditional side dish and dessert recipes, such as Fresh Herb Crescent Rolls, Sweet Potato Casserole Crescents and Salted Caramel Pecan Pie.

Head on over to the Pillsbury web site to take a look at all of the different products they have to offer and to print out the featured recipes from this post!

Disclosure: I received complimentary free product coupons from Pillsbury for this blog post. Some information in this post was provided to me by Pillsbury and some information is my own thoughts & ideas.