Welcome to Full Plate Thursday and the first party of December 2016! We had a fantastic Thanksgiving here at the cottage and sure hope you had a great holiday with family and friends.  We are busy decorating for the Christmas Season and planning menus with fun party food.  I can't wait to see what you are sharing today, I get so much inspriation from all of your amazing recipes! Thanks so much for coming today and lets get this party started!

One of my favorite breakfast is a plain yogurt with a topping of granola or fresh fruit.If I can combine the granola and fruit all the better. My Spicy Cranberry Granola is one of my favorite recipes, and can be used on yogurt, ice cream or just a bowl of fruit, I have even sprinkled some on a salad and it was fantastic! In addition to being a great granola mix, it makes a great gift for a friend or family member. My friends and family just love getting a lovely jar of this granola for a hostess, birthday or christmas gift.

One of the things that my husband and I have enjoyed since we were very young is Apple Butter. We love Apple Butter as a condiment on meat and the very best is Apple Butter and Biscuits. Since we love Apple Butter so much, why not put it in a cake and we did. It is frosted with a maple flavored butter cream frosting that is a perfect topping for this awesome cake. This cake is so moist is almost cuts like a pie and is just delicious and a recipe that we will make over and over. We love this cake and I am so happy to share it with all of you today!

Thanksgiving was great here at the cottage and I sure hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Of course we have some left overs that we will be using on the meal plan this week.  We are busy already starting to decorate for Christmas, my favorite time of the year. We always wait until Thanksgiving is over before we start on Christmas.  This week we will be planning some easy recipes that don't take a lot of attention.

We are having Full Plate Thursday early this week, so we can all enjoy our friends and families on Thanksgiving Day. I want to say Thank You to each of you who bring your amazing recipes here every week to share with us, you are really the greatest cooks on the planet. I can't wait to see what you are sharing today so lets get the party started.

I just love the new baked tacos shells that we find at the super market, they have come a long way from the taco shell that we had to fry then hang upside down on a rack. Another plus to these tacos, you can make a few or enough for a crowd. Just load them on a baking sheet pour in the filling and they are ready to bake. I am using left over Turkey today to make this awesome recipe. No matter how well we plan there is always a little left over turkey or chicken and what better way to make a left over come to life than a great Tex Mex Taco.

Here we are at Thanksgiving Week, what a wonderful time to stop and be thankful for all the bounty that we have been given. We like many of you will be sitting down for our Traditional Turkey Dinner on Thanksgiving Day. I count all of you among my many blessings  I am grateful for each of you and thank you for  being a part of our world here at  Miz Helen's Country Cottage!

We are having the most beautiful fall weather here that I remember having in many years, a perfect time for wonderful fall recipes. A drive out to our cottage along the country roads is so beautiful in the fall. We have been enjoying a visit with our Son and Daughter In Law that have both recently retired from the USAF, it is so good to have them home. I am so excited to see all of you today and can't wait to see what wonderful recipes you are going to be sharing today!

I remember standing on a chair in my Grandmothers kitchen stirring the flour and sugar together for the cobbler she would be making for a meal. Looking back I really think that cobbler must have been her favorite and I know it is mine. Cobbler is a favorite here at the cottage and this Pumpkin Cobbler is a really big hit. It is a very rich cobbler that is full of wonderful pumpkin and spice. I gave this cobbler a little topping of pecans which really makes it special!

We have a very large family and we usually have more family at the cottage on Thanksgiving than any other holiday. The Thanksgiving dinner here is a very large buffet with several different dishes to choose from, we usually try to have at least 2 of everything to offer. These are some of the dishes that we will be having this year at our Thanksgiving dinner here at the cottage.

We are so excited to have our son and daughter in law here for a visit. They have just retired from 36 years in the military and are moving home to Texas. I am planning some of their favorite foods and some that will allow me to spend more time visiting with them. This is one of the times when meal plans really pay off, I will have all the marketing done and even some of the dishes prepared in advance, saving me time and money. This is a great time of the year to get into meal planning with the holidays coming up.

I am so happy to see you here today at Full Plate Thursday. Fall is diffently in the air and we have been looking forward to all the wonderful warm and cozy foods that show up on our tables this time of the year.We have had some rainy weather this week and it has been very chilly, just a perfect fall evening for a get together with all of our friends. I can hardly wait to see what you are bringing to share with us this week. It is always so good to see you here and thanks so much for coming today!

We grow green beans in our garden every year and from that harvest we have fresh green beans for recipes, then we preserve some the beans for use during the winter months. Fresh Green Beans With Apple Dressing is a recipe that we developed this year and we have really enjoyed it. The fresh green beans are covered with a fresh apple dressing that has a fabulous flavor. I have shared this dish at pot lucks and with dinner guest, it has been a big hit and sure hope you enjoy it!

My Grandparents, then my parents grew Sweet Potatoes on the farm and in the garden. There were times during the year when the sweet potato was a regular on the dinner table when I was growing up. I still love sweet potatoes today and we grow them in the garden here at the cottage. One of the recipes that we really enjoy is Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallow Topping, these potatoes are so delicious, you just have to try them. This is a great side dish anytime of the year and is a family favorite Garden to Table!

This week will be filled with excitement for some and disappointment for others, our general election for the USA is on Tuesday of this week. We always have a little election gathering of a few friends but we keep it simple. It is a little rainy here with fall really beginning to come to our area, at last! When the weather gets rainy I always look for wonderful soups and cozy food for our meal plan.

Welcome to Full Plate Thursday # 300! What a milestone for this party that would not have made it this long without your support. This party every Thursday has been one of the highlights of my blog life and you'al have become so dear to me.  Some of you have been so faithful to come and share with us now for years and we have developed real friendships. Thank you so much for coming each week and sharing your life with us, you are what makes Full Plate Thursday so special! The very first post for Full Plate Thursday went out in January and we are planning a big celebration for that day, sure hope you will be here for that party. I can't wait to see what you are sharing today so lets get the party started. Don't forget to check out the Thank You Gift I have for some lucky viewer!

One of our family favorites is Chicken and Dressing. When we are talking about dressing here in the south it is cornbread dressing and that is the base of this recipe. Every now and then we like to kick it up just a little and this dressing is filled with apples, giving it a fantastic flavor.We love to make this when the apples are fresh, you really can smell this dressing cooking when you come in the door. My son always says, "oh boy Mom is cooking dressing."