Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Planning for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 1988

I talked with a friend yesterday who told me she had her turkey for Thanksgiving and had begun preparing some dishes that she was going to freeze until THE day, and had laid out the ingredients of other dishes. She had washed her best china and ironed her favorite table cloth. She kept going on and on and on about her preparations. Oh, crud, is Thanksgiving next week?!! I haven't done a thing yet! I guess I better figure out the menu and do some shopping.

My boys are coming for Thanksgiving. At least one is bringing his girl. In fact I received a happy iChat message from son wondering if son and girl could come a bit earlier. Originally he was flying in on Thanksgiving itself, but then found out he had the week off, so he's coming on Tuesday. What fun! Oh no! That means I have to everything done two days earlier!

As far as food for THE day goes, I know that my shopping list will include a turkey and the fixings to stuff it. I need to get some sweet potatoes to make a whipped casserole. That's a request from the boys. I've been told that a Thanksgiving meal isn't complete without mashed potatoes. I'm trying to decide whether to do the ubiquitous pumpkin pie or make a pumpkin cheesecake. I made one a few years ago that I baked on top of a 3/4" carrot cake. It was rather yummy. No green bean casserole here, but I will have some sort of green vege. And of course, we'll have cranberry sauce - plopped straight out of the can into a perfectly sized cranberry sauce dish - again, a family favorite!

Will you be cooking a Thanksgiving meal?
Do you have family favorites that must be on the table?
Do you prefer whole cranberries, either from the can or prepared from the bag, jellied cranberries or a cranberry relish?

9 comments:

  1. I love Thanksgiving! Although I do not cook (ever) my husband's family puts together a large and delicious meal every year, for which I am very thankful!

    My favorite Thanksgiving dish is mashed potatoes and gravy!

    That is a cute picture! I hope you have a great holiday with your sons!

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  2. As I get older, I wish I had family to have Thanksgiving with. Thanksgiving is also the holiday I gave up in the divorce so that my kids were always home by 11pm Christmas Eve so that they were with me Christmas morning/day.

    My husband doesn't have any family either.

    So no Thanksgiving for us, at least not in the tradtional sense. In past years my husband and I have gone out for dinner. This year I'm thinking a long weekend in the mountains.

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  3. Adorable picture; looks like one happy and hungry young man.

    I love Thanksgiving too. I like to cook dinner, but it is exhausting when I only have the one day off. It is just 3 of us at dinner this year and I'm too tired to prep and cook for hours and hours for a short sit-down meal. I want to rest and watch some good movies and read a book. My employer doesn't give us Friday off. Most co-workers will take a vacation day on Friday, but I'm working it this year. It's usually very quiet and peaceful in the office on Friday. So...to save time...we have placed an order with a local grocery store and will pick up a complete T-day dinner on Wednesday and warm it up on Thursday. I may make Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts that I saw on the "Down Home with the Neelys" show on Foodnetwork last week. I love Brussels Sprouts.

    I love cranberries too. I like to bake cranberry bread and have a favorite layered jello mold salad that I like make with fresh cranberries. It also has walnuts and sour cream and ginger ale and lime or orange sherbert in it. Yummy and pretty.

    We serve both kinds of canned cranberries as a relish with dinner. Kids like the smooth canned cranberry sauce that comes out of the can with the indentations from the can still on it. I also like the canned sauce with the chunky berries. So we use both. Yum!

    My favorite part of Thanksgiving is eating cold turkey sandwiches the next day with mayo and cranberry sauce.

    Have fun with your preparations. And have a very Happy Thanksgiving - Your first in your new home!

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  4. This will be the first time without a big family dinner here. Kind of bummed, kind of relieved. The kids are all doing their fathers, then have plans work/class reunions/OSU game over the rest of the weekend. Hubs and I are going to do a smaller version together. It'll all be good.
    Cornbread casserole is a must for our dinner no matter how many.

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  5. Adorable boy!
    The main dish for us is salmon! Other than that, it's traditional, but we must have bourbon pecan pie.

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  6. Thanks for sharing the adorable picture of a cute boy.
    I usually make a big dinner, this year I was thinking of escaping, no such luck. My husband wants the table just the way we always had when kids were home. I guess we will be eating left overs for sometime. Hi, this is Munir over here at Focus. This year though, no hydrogenated fats for us. We have to keep our arteries clean some how.

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  7. Cute photo!
    No I am not cooking, however I am in charge of bringing the pies.
    Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and green bean cassarole. I don't "do" cranberries..I like them dried:)

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  8. Bacot purchased a small turkey earlier this week, so it appears that I will have to plan a feast. Of course, we both really like turkey sandwiches, so there's no problem with our having left-over turkey!

    He is really fussy about cranberry sauce. I grew up eating a home-made cranberry relish with nuts, oranges, cranberries, etc.; however, Bacot insists that we have the canned jelly-like sauce. Since I don't have the recipe for the relish, I don't complain as "easy is good". Being "southern", there absolutely must be steamed white rice for the turkey gravey. Other dishes TBD. Guess I should look at some recipes soon so I can purchase needed ingredients.

    Enjoy the holiday with your boys. I gather that perhaps at least one will NOT be with you for Christmas.

    Anne

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  9. Love the picture! That's adorable. Even though I'm Canadian, I'm cooking a turkey for the American Thanksgiving as well (helps I'm Canadian and the other half is American, we celebrate twice!) but I'm doing it early while his son is still here so he can eat turkey too. I like fresh cranberries like my mother would have made, but the other half loves cranberry jelly... I'll eat cranberry anything with my turkey and stuffing :) I haven't had pumpkin pie in a long time, so I'm going with that... cheesecake is my favorite though... what about pumpkin flan? ;)

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