Your favorite "unknown" turkey-day dishFollow

Okay, we all know about the Thanksgiving standards--turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes/candied yams, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce of some kind or another.

But every family has their own unique add-ons to the usual fare. Mine is Ribbon Jello. Some of you have probably had it before. Basically it works like this.

You get about 6 different flavors of jello, the small packages that are made with 1 cup hot water and 1 cup cold.

You mix one flavor of jello with the hot water until dissolved

Then you add ONE HALF cup cold water and one cup of either Cool Whip or vanilla ice cream, until the creamy stuff is dissolved.

Pour the mixture into a 9x13 dish (preferably glass so you get the full visual effect) and as the jello congeals, the creamy stuff will rise to the top, so once it's set, you have a layer of traditional jello and a layer of creamy jello of the same color, only pastel.

Then mix up another flavor of jello the same way and pour it on top of the first layer and let it set for an hour. Rinse and repeat until all flavors of jello are used, and you have a really nifty rainbow-striped dish that tastes really nummy. Also makes a great sweet side-dish for those of us who despise both cranberries and yams.

Soo...what's your family's "secret weapon" to take the standard cliched Thanksgiving spread and mix it up a bit?

The only "unusual" thing my family does is spruce up the taters.

Cook yer taters.
When you mash them instead of using butter and milk use:

Cottage cheese
Sour cream
Eggs
Butter
Dried Onion
Parmesan

(don't ask the measurements - it's all "til it looks right" dammit)

Dump it into an oven safe bowl, you probably don't want to fill this to the top as the eggs make it puff a bit.

Smooth out the top and add more parmesan.

Bake for ... a while at like 350/375. Until it puffs and the top is golden.

Nothing snazzy but it sure tastes good.

Yum!

Both I can think of are Peruvian Christmas standards, ensalada rusa and ponche.

My grandmother makes these awesome peanut-butter marshmallow cookie type things. Don't ask because I don't know what they're called.

My grandma used to make this dish that was green jello with thin curls of carrot mixed in it. I think she liked the colorfulness. It wasn't as bad as it sounds since you couldn't really taste the carrots and I always smile when I think about it now.

My mother has no secret weapon. Her cooking is bland as all hell.

Take a cream-cheese brick, put it in the center of a large plate, dump a pound of baby shrimps and then a whole jar of sweet cocktail sauce. have a seperate plate of wheat thins and use them as the "chips" for this really weird and amazingly delicious "dip".

That's always one of those dishes that are perfect for "bringing" if you're going to someone else's family get-together.

The one that I loved the absolute most about our family "secret" favorites was to take little smokeys and candy half of the package, and just fry the other. Serve them together and alternate. Sometimes adding cheese cubes with them lightens up the richness of taste.

Yay for little smokies!

Not so much a Thanksgiving dish, but great for summer get-togethers. My sister takes equal measures of cream cheese(at room temp.)and marshmallow fluff hand mixes them together and use as a dip for fruit. Tastes fantastic.

My mother makes that. Pistacio pudding, cool whip, mandarin oranges, marshmallows and sometimes pecans. She has it at Christmas, too.

Yum.

Something simple my aunt made for the first time this year. Take some bigger sized mushrooms and cut the stem out so you have a small hole in the center. Then fill it with 3-4 cubes of stuffing and bake. Note sure if she added any butter or anything for flavoring, but was a fantastic appetizer.

If you don't mind the fat, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon. Probably baked also.