Hi, I'm Shannon Brogdon Grantham. I'm a photograph and paper conservator at the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute. So I'm gonna talk to you today a little bit about what got me into conservation. I have always been interested in photography even as a kid. I used to sit looking at photo albums all the time wondering how the things were made and so as I got older I became interested in science and then I discovered our conservation when I was in college and it was the perfect marriage of art and science for me and I felt like it was the right choice. And so that's kind of what got me in. And then what keeps me in is that I get to I get to experience a lot of different types of photographs, different collections. Being at the Smithsonian we have millions of photographs, so there's no way that I would be able to see every single photograph, but I get to see a lot in my job at MCI because I get to work with all of the Smithsonian units in some capacity. So I think the variety and the opportunity to like touch the future to some degree and the past is what keeps me in.


All right we have a special guest with us today this is Noxie and she just really wanted to make these recipes with us. It's just really in the Thanksgiving spirit. He's feeling very grateful today. All right today we are making grandma's Thanksgiving dressing recipe. We grew up with this recipe. I have an eight by eight inch pan here and I'm just gonna spray it with non-stick cooking spray. Let me get you one handed. I know. I'm doing great. Not only are these make ahead dinners or side dishes. These are made with the kid in your hand. Yes. There is stovetop stuffing but to make grandma's stuffing I like to use this. And then to this mixture we're gonna add one cup of chopped apples. Nice. And any apple will work for this recipe. We've used Granny Smith. I think these are Gala apples. Yeah. Really. How many apples did you use here? I used two. Two apples. Okay. So I just cut them up into little bite-sized pieces and then we're also gonna add some fresh mushrooms. Nice. And then three stalks of celery. We've just chopped those up pretty fine as well. Yeah we did do these little. My kids will pick them out if they're a little bigger but little ones in this one. Oh you want the butter. Butter's good. I'm with you. Thanksgiving dinner. Right. And then this is the fun part. You're gonna add your one fourth cup of butter. Okay. Into one and a half cups of boiling water. And then the butter is just going to melt in the water. Nice. You can kind of stir it around and then we will pour this once it's all melted over the rest of the ingredients and mix it all together fully incorporated. Pretty much melted. It's a little bit of butter but it will still. Yeah. It will melt as we go. Right. So carefully pour over everything. And then you'll want to make sure that your oven is preheated to 350 degrees. Yes. So we'll just mix this together and then we'll add it in. So you can put this in the fridge just like this. So cover it with foil, stick it in the fridge the night before, two nights before. It will totally be fine.  Then you're gonna cook it for about 35 to 40 minutes. The next recipe is our make-ahead mashed potatoes. Now you have to do it the right way. You do. Or they kind of get stiff and nasty. It's true. Okay so we're gonna teach you today the best way to do it. Of course I'm gonna use the Instant Pot. It's just what I do. There's no other way. I know. Let's be honest. If you guys don't have an Instant Pot yet I highly suggest getting one especially if you're in charge of Thanksgiving because cooking things in there is a breeze. But if you do have an Instant Pot or you're looking to get one and you don't know how to use it we actually created an entire Instant Pot guide. We walk you through the moment you take it out of the box to cooking the basics such as rice and pasta and potatoes. You can go to TheInstantCookingCourse.com and you'll find it there. But let's get to cooking these potatoes. This one is a little bit bigger. It's an eight quart. If you have a six quart this works just fine. It's about three pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes. I like using the Gold potatoes. You just feel like the skin tastes better than the rest of potatoes. And it's Thanksgiving.  Then to make sure the Instant Pot pressurizes you need about a half a cup to a cup of water. Then you just put the lid on. That's simple. Okay. Now if you have a little knob right here make sure that it's on sealing not venting. Some of them automatically do it now which is so nice. Once the timer is done and it's done cooking you're going to release the pressure. So I push your little venting knob it will let everything out. I already did that so we don't have to watch that. Then once all the pressure is out you can lift your lid. Okay there's a little bit extra water in there. So I'm going to get my little strainer thing. I don't know if you've guys seen this. I use it all the time. It's my favorite. It goes on like all pots and pans even your Instant Pot. I think it's like what 15 bucks on Amazon but probably one of my favorite kitchen gadgets. Right here in the Instant Pot I'm going to mash all the potatoes with a potato masher. Now you can use beaters but I like my potatoes with a little bit of chunks in them. So I like to use a potato masher. We're just going to mash all these babies. Or I mash them completely. You want to add some of your ingredients because we want it to melt in there. So I'm going to add about four ounces of cream cheese. I'm just eyeballing here. There we go. Then I'm just going to add one tablespoon of butter right now. While the cream cheese and butter are melting we're going to add about two thirds cup of sour cream. These are good like loaded potatoes because they are not creamy enough. We're going to add a fourth cup of whole milk and then about a half teaspoon of salt. You can add more salt if you want to. I love salt so I would probably add a little bit more but I'll follow the instructions today. Now we're going to take the potatoes. I mean look how creamy those are. We're going to put them in the bottom of a 9 by 13 pan. Now if you hate dishes like I do on Thanksgiving use the aluminum foil pans. Like those things are perfect because when you're done you can just throw them away. Unless you're really fancy my grandma was so fancy that I mean everything was like china for Thanksgiving. So we have two more tablespoons of butter that I'm going to melt real quick and we're going to put that right on top. The butter is all melted now we're just going to brush it on. Now we want them all ready to go so to make our lives a little bit easier so I have a little paprika that I like to just sprinkle right on top. I think that just makes it taste so good. This is what my mom used to do and it makes it a little more fancier and then if you like parsley we do a little bit of parsley on top too. So what you're going to do is stick these you're going to cover them stick them in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours.  But 24 hours is like your golden time. When it's time to cook them you're going to pull them out of the refrigerator you're going to let it sit for about 30 minutes that's the secret let it sit. Then you're going to cook them 350 degrees for about 25 to 30 minutes just until everything is heated through. Time to taste them. I love how you came back just for the tasting. I know what I can I can smell them I knew they were done. I love it I love it so much. I don't even eat gravy on those. Me neither me neither but gravy is good. Five out of five. Nine two easily easily go for a second bite. For this recipe we are making our mom's sweet potato recipe. It is so good and we are using sweet potatoes not yams but you can use yams if that's what you prefer. Right but this really is for sweet potatoes and it's so good. Oh my gosh. So we have four pounds of sweet potatoes. So we actually boiled these earlier just to make life a little bit easier but then you just want to peel all the skin off. You don't want the skin on the sweet potatoes. We're actually going to slice them into like one inch pieces. There we go. This like reminds me of my childhood sitting there on like Thanksgiving morning or the night before watching my mom cut these into like little fingers. Right now our favorite place was the kitchen counter. We actually have a new podcast called the kitchen counter and we don't really talk about food on there but we talk about a lot of fun things. So if you want to listen we'll put a link down below for you so you can find that but it's just a fun thing we like to do. Now we have like a nine by 13 pan. We have our non-stick cooking spray and then add in our potatoes. Yes so we're going to just add I think it's half of them right so layer a full layer down. Sweet potatoes are on the bottom now we're going to take there's three tablespoons of butter here we're just going to take half of it and then cut up the other half. Spread them out the best that you can on top of the sweet potatoes. Now every sweet potato is not going to have a piece of butter but that's okay. Yeah you can eat one of those. You want this? It's not an apple but it's just it's good. Yeah. Then we have a half cup of carob syrup that so we're just going to do half of it on top of these and just like a nice drizzle. And we have a half cup of brown sugar. Oh that feels like more than half a cup. That's okay. We're going to do like. May have snuck in a little water. So the real half half cup on one layer and then we'll do a half cup on another. That sounds delicious. You can't go wrong with this. You really can't. The more butter the more sugar the better. I agree. All right Kendra had to step away. Knox needed some food. More food. So sweet potatoes are done. Now this is how you do the make ahead. You're going to just cover this with foil right now stick it in your fridge. Don't cook it yet because if you cook it it's going to be too soggy. So we're going to pretend we put it in the fridge we pull it back out. I'm actually going to cook this because I want to show you the finish because it's so good and I might want to taste it too. We're going to cook this at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. For the best part of the whole recipe we have oh yeah what do we have Knox? Some mini mallows huh? So we're just going to sprinkle these on top. I think mom always used pretty much the whole bag because they kind of like almost disintegrate. Yeah cook them like they puff up and then they shrink down a little. So you need a lot of that. You need a lot. So we will put this back in the oven for about four to five minutes. Let the marshmallows become golden beauties and then we're going to taste test. Before we sample I'm going to take this recipe next level. Are you ready for it? I am ready for it. Never been done before. Sweet cinnamon churro on top. All right now we sample. Five out of five. The last recipe is our classic green bean casserole. First we're going to have two cans of cut green beans and I know it's cut but I actually love the cut green beans in the casserole. You want to pour that one in? Yes. Then we're going to add in a fourth cup of milk. Okay blend. Cream of mushroom. So good. So creamy. For this casserole I swear like you just need the cream of mushroom. You really do. And then this recipe calls for one and one-third cups of these crunchy fried onions. They are so good. Honestly this makes the casserole for me. I could just eat these. So I'm just going to add half the container. I feel good about that. That's the nice thing about this recipe like eyeballing is okay. Yeah add some pepper. All right we're gonna dump this in here. I believe did it call for like a nine by nine pan but yes we're gonna use a nine by 13.  So if you are making this recipe ahead of time cover this with foil put it in your fridge until you're ready to bake. So you're first going to cook this at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes and then you're gonna take it out of the oven. I sprinkle on more of this goodness the fried onions.  Green beans done. So good. Get those onions in there. You don't even eat the turkey at this point. Exactly. I'm just there for the side. Yeah. Out of all these which one is your favorite? What would you pick? Based on the amount missing and how much I V in sweet potatoes. What about you? I am the same. Mine is by far sweet potatoes is the winner. If you loved these Thanksgiving side dishes and you need more ideas we have 10 more for you can find them right here.