Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast

I love turkey breasts! They're not difficult to make, it's delicious, you can do so much with it, and the leftovers make awesome turkey sandwiches. For Thanksgiving this year I was really excited to have a dinner with just me and Greg. Since it was just the two of us a turkey breast would be plenty for us and after making a few different ones, I decided it was time to try my own. I picked up a package of fresh poultry herbs at the grocery store that had rosemary, thyme and sage in it and wanted to do a really traditional Thanksgiving turkey this year so those herbs gave me my jumping off point. Plenty of salt and pepper, herb butter, and some veggies made my turkey.

Ingredients:
6-7 pound bone-in turkey breast
10 T soft butter
1 T chopped fresh sage
1 T chopped fresh rosemary
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1 tsp pepper
3 white onions, peeled and quartered
2 carrots, chopped into 2 inch pieces
2 celery stalks, chopped into 2 inch pices
1 head garlic sliced in half through the middle
2 c chicken broth
Plenty of salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 325. Combine butter, herbs and teaspoon of pepper. In the bottom of a large roasting rack, put 2 quartered onions, the carrots and celery. Add  the chicken broth and put the rack in place over the veggies and broth. Gently pull the skin from the turkey meat and carefully put your hand underneath to loosen the skin all over the breast. Start rubbing the butter all under the skin. Add some salt and pepper under the skin as well. Rub the remaining butter all over the skin and season very well with salt and pepper. Season the cavity of the breast with salt and pepper, add the last quartered onion (you may only be able to fit two pieces of the onion, you can add the other two pieces to the roasting rack) and the garlic halves. Put the breast on the rack and roast for about 2-2 1/2 hours or until the temperature reaches 160, you'll want to check the temp around the 90 minute mark to see where it's at. Let rest for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Cinnamon Sugar Toast Pumpkin Seeds

I never got cinnamon sugar toast for breakfast growing up! It was a dessert until I was a teenager and woke up before everyone else and could sneak a little cinnamon and sugar on my toast in the mornings. It's still one of my favourite treats. The melted butter, crunchy sugar and warm cinnamon is the perfect combo. This last weekend I got a lot of pumpkin seeds from a friend and I was going to roast them up. But since we decided to take it easy on the baked goods before the holidays and I was really wanting something sweet, I decided to try one of my favourite treats as the base for these pumpkin seeds and they were so good! Sweet and warm and crunchy... Yum!

Ingredients:
2-2 1/2 c cleaned and dried pumpkin seeds
3 1/2 T melted butter
1/4 tsp salt
3 1/2 T sugar
1-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Put the pumpkin seeds in a bowl. Combine all other ingredients and pour over pumpkin seeds. Toss to combine and coat the seeds evenly. Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Put in the oven for about 45 minutes. Stir on the tray about every 10 minutes or so to help them cook evenly. Let them cool slightly before diving in.