Thanksgiving dinner – a meal like any other, just infinitely more vast – intimidates even experienced cooks.
No wonder. Who doesn't hold a not-so-cherished memory of awakening on Thanksgiving Day and finding our harried mothers in the kitchen, their hands stuffed into the gooey cavity of a hapless creature, looking more like a triage nurse in an army MASH unit than a happy homemaker?
The very best strategy for avoiding this fate would be to get yourself invited to one of those huge get-togethers where everyone is responsible for only one assigned dish. Then, all you have to provide is six gallons of green bean casserole and an iron-cast stomach. Or, if you're lucky, you get to be the folding-chairs-and-paper-napkins person.
But if you are going to host a Thanksgiving dinner and cook it yourself, let me be the first to offer false words of reassurance. It's not too bad.
So, plan ahead. Please digest this tip sheet, which will help you organize your efforts, keep anxiety at bay and perhaps become the vessel into which you'll pour all your hopes and dreams.
1. Make your menu: Think about every single item --- from celery sticks to tea --- that you want to serve and write them down on one page.
2. Turn your menu into a shopping list: Try to buy all the nonperishable items with your weekly groceries as soon as you can.
3. Turn your menu into three to-do lists: Some of the cooking you can do a week or more in advance, some a couple of days before Thanksgiving and some on the day itself.
- In advance: Make pie crust dough, make and freeze stock, peel and roast chestnuts, make chutneys and pickles.
- A day or two before: Peel and cut potatoes and hold them in a bin of water in the fridge, put out your bread or cornbread to get stale for stuffing, make bread dough, trim and tail beans, make cranberry sauce, make pie filling, dice celery and onions for stuffing.
- Thanksgiving Day: Boil and mash the potatoes, bake the pies, bake the bread, assemble the stuffing and cook that bird.
4. Do your turkey math: It goes like this ... 20 minutes per pound for a stuffed bird, 15 minutes per pound for an unstuffed one. So if you have dual ovens and guests coming at 6 p.m., no problem. You'll put your 16-pound bird in to roast just past noon. If you only have a single oven for baking pies and casseroles, then you'll need to adjust your timing. But figure this piece out early, and you won't panic.
5. Elect a logistics czar: The, ahem, less culinarily minded household member should figure out table arrangements, chairs and place settings.
6. Declutter: The decorative ceramic chicken on your countertop and the shelf of lost condiments in your fridge have to go.
7. Enjoy Chinese food night: On the Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving, finish your shopping for perishable items, plan to make it a food-prep night and order in some Chinese or a pizza.
You may find yourself so organized and so far ahead in your prep compared to years past that you'll come up with the idea to do something elaborate. "How difficult could it be to make pumpkin pie from a fresh pumpkin?" you'll ask yourself. You'll read a magazine and decide to make puff-pastry cutouts and turn your fireplace into a tandoor. Please don't go there. You'll end up with pumpkin seeds in your hair, a raw turkey and a story you'll never live down.
Remember, pilgrim, there's pleasure in tradition.
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