This year was my first time hosting Thanksgiving. I typically do a lot of cooking from scratch, but not anywhere near the level of Thanksgiving dinner.
We decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday night because my sister Jessica had to work Thursday night. My sister Angelica, my parents and my BIL, nieces, nephew and BIL’s mother were all invited, but the only ones I knew for sure were coming were my sisters.
I decided to make turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans, squash casserole, sweet potato soufflé, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Jessica said she would make Grandma’s dressing and a pie and Angelica was going to bring another pie.
I went to the grocery store Monday night with my 2 youngest to get all the ingredients. I realized I didn’t have a sweet potato soufflé recipe when I was at the store so I found one on the internet that I liked the ingredients of and found the ingredients I needed. Of course, as soon as I got home I realized I needed more butter. . . Because practically everything had butter in it.
Tuesday, I started thawing the turkey in the sink as soon as I woke up. I discovered the tub plug from the bathroom fit in the sink, so I cleaned out the sink and started the process of thawing with a sink full of cold water and a turkey. I put a 30 minute timer on my phone and changed out the water and flipped over the turkey whenever the timer went off. By the time it was time to go to bed, it was almost thawed enough to get the 2 gravy packets and the giblets out. I totally forgot about the neck and left it in.
In between flipping the turkey and changing out the water on Tuesday, I put the butter on the counter to soften because I knew we were going to need a lot of softened butter. I made the appetizers. Then I made cornbread for the dressing with Evie’s help. I made squash casserole with Izzy’s help. I baked the sweet potatoes then let Addy take over the sweet potato soufflé. I taught Rory how to snap the ends off green beans and got them cooking and fried the rest of the bacon. Jessica made her pie. We made the cranberry sauce. Finally, Jessica and I peeled and chopped potatoes and put them in water.
Overnight, the potatoes, squash casserole, sweet potato soufflé and giblets were refrigerated and the green beans warmed in the pressure cooker. I put the turkey in the oven on 200 before I went to bed and by the time I woke up in the morning, it was done.
When I got up in the morning, I took the turkey out of the oven and let it cool a bit while I drank my coffee. I set out some more butter to soften. Then I removed the turkey from the pan and strained the pan drippings into a glass measuring cup with a top. I put it in the fridge to separate so I could make the gravy with it later. I carved the turkey and put it on platters in the fridge. Then I crumbled the cornbread and my sister and I crumbled the stale bread into a gigantic bowl. She chopped the dressing veggies while I boiled the giblets to make giblet broth for the dressing then I melted the butter and sautéed the dressing veggies. We let the sautéed veggies and the giblet broth cool for a while then we combined that with the cornbread and stale bread crumbles to make the dressing and put it in the pan.
This was about the time when I found out my parents were still in Kentucky and my BIL, nieces and nephew and BIL’s mom would not be coming. I wasn’t really surprised as much as sad, but I’d already had one friend offer to come and had accepted and I started looking for other people to come and just kept cooking.
We were going to eat at 6:00 so around 4:00 Jessica took the potatoes and casseroles out of the fridge. I put the topping on the squash casserole and at 4:30, I turned the oven on 400. At 4:45, I put the dressing in and set the timer for 20 minutes. When that went off, I put the sweet potato soufflé in the oven and started another 20 minute timer. When that went off I put the squash casserole in and set another timer.
Somewhere around here, I found out one of my friends hit a deer en route and would be late.
I put a pot of water on the stove to boil for the potatoes. When it boiled, I added the potatoes, splashed some boiling water on my eyeball, and put a 10 minute timer on for the potatoes. Jessica mashed the potatoes while I made the gravy and everything was ready at about the same time. Everything except the dressing was ready about the same time, the dressing took about 20 minutes longer than I expected, but that’s ok. Everything was still warm and yummy when it was done.
Everyone loved the food. The company was awesome and refreshing and can I say how nice it was to be done cooking and sit and relax after 2 days of it?
So I am no longer a thanksgiving hosting virgin. I finally know exactly what goes into preparing a thanksgiving dinner and I have a newfound respect and appreciation for everyone who has ever prepared thanksgiving dinner for me.
I learned a few things that I’d like to make sure I remember for next year:
- I love how efficiently I worked and I’m surprised I didn’t get confused or distracted and mess something up. I’m crediting that to planning ahead of time and having a list of what I was going to make. I think looking at that every so often kept me on track. It’s the little things 😉
- I also love that I had the forethought to soften butter from the beginning because so many of the recipes needed softened butter and I did not have time to wait for butter to soften when I got to the next recipe.
- I made everything I could the night before and put the casserole recipes in sandwich bags on top of the casserole dish in the fridge so the recipe wouldn’t get wet or lost and I would know what to do when it came time to bake the next day. The baggies were Jessica’s idea. She’s so smart.
- I let each of the kids help with at least one dish from start to finish. The kids loved it, they were proud to help, and it cut down on them coming in and out of the kitchen to offer help, knowing that they were each going to help with one dish and I’d call them when it was their turn.
- I did dishes all day long both days . I have a tiny kitchen and with half of the sink full of turkey for day 1, I had to keep doing the dishes so I had room to put the dirty dishes and had bowls to use for the next dish.
Things I would do differently:
- I loved all my recipes, so I won’t be changing any, but next year I’ll be making some sweet potato soufflé with pecans and some without so my bestie can try it.
- Plan ahead for easy food for us to eat during the 2 days of cooking. It was too easy to forget to eat and I don’t think as well or have as much patience when I’m hangry. And my kids kept coming in the kitchen saying they were hungry so I kept having to stop cooking to figure out what to feed them.
- Either add less liquid to the dressing or start baking it earlier or both.
- More olives for appetizers. That is the only thing we ran out of that night, the olive appetizers.
- Maybe paper plates and definitely paper towels and plastic cups with sharpies to write names on the cups. We don’t use them on a regular basis but that would have made the night just a bit easier.
- Safety goggles when I pour the potatoes in the water. Kidding. Maybe. That boiling water hurt.
- Music. I think playing music while cooking would have been a good idea but I didn’t really think about it at the time.
- Pictures. I cooked all these great dishes and I’ve been sharing the recipes, but I took no pictures. I wish I had taken pictures of the food and pictures of each kid with the dish they helped make and pictures of them cooking and pictures of all of us together, eating it. Next year, I will take more pictures.
All things considered, I think the cooking and hosting was a fantastic experience that my kids and I all enjoyed and learned something from and I’m really looking forward to hosting again next year. And maybe again at Christmas. Somehow the activity and chaos made the holiday pass a little quicker and gave me less time to think of what was missing. It kept me in the present and I think I needed that.
Made from Scratch 