What's funny about this is that my Thanksgiving advice is almost directly the opposite from yours. Though I spend most of the year trying out exotic recipes from foreign lands, when it comes to Thanksgiving, I pull out my list from past years and re-use it. I have three brothers and all are married with children. My brother Ben and I are the ones who cook. So the list is a chart with who will bring the turkey, who will bring the pies, etc. We typically all drive 3 - 5 hours to get to our family cabin. The one year neither Ben nor I were going to be there, Ben and I got on the phone and had a little chuckle about who would be doing the cooking. Too bad for them! Our family is me, Ben, Mike, Jim, and my father Roger
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We-- I should say I-- started doing the entire meal about five years ago. Before that, we did Thanksgiving with a lot of cousins and everyone being in charge of one or two dishes. Now, Thanksgiving is my gift to my grandparents, and we really pull out all the stops and buy the best quality ingredients and try to do something different every year since my grandparents are 90 and 83, and we feel like they should be spoiled. In exchange for me doing all the cooking, my mother pays for all the food. I make everything ahead of time as best as possible, and then we drive it all down to Delaware on Thursday morning, really early in the morning. My dad is the only one who sometimes gets fussy about not having the old tried-and-true recipes from past years.
I hate how my Thanksgiving is a month before yours, causing me to forget how wonderful your Thanksgiving posts are and meaning I miss your tutorials! Next year, next year...
I don't usually do the whole thanksgiving, since we have an extended family potluck thing that goes on now, but when it comes to be my turn again to do main dishes and my usual desserts, your run down might make my Wednesday-before marathon cooking day a bit easier.
Yeah, we used to do the extended family potluck thing, but I actually LOVE doing all the work myself. And yeah, I think the organization can work even for doing a few dishes. It's just that there's no way I could do 16-20 dishes a year without it!
Granted, I can do dessert the day before and all, but I'll nevertheless need to make at least two emergency runs to the grocery store. Your organization skills make my sad little post it note with the six desserts I'm making on it look positively plebeian in comparison. :)
We usually need to make an emergency run or two, too! Nothing is ever perfect, and as soon as there are more cooks involved (that is, Thursday), something always gets messed up :-P
Y'know, I never thought of using a spreadsheet for Thanksgiving, and it makes so much sense!! We always forget to make something or end up scrambling to make something we've not thought of. We don't get too exotic with our cooking, but even the smallest of Thanksgiving celebrations takes a little coordination.
Thanks so much for the insight! I definitely took away some new ideas.
Yeah. Actually, a lot of the recipes I'm using this year are simpler than in previous years. But that was just luck of the draw. I do think the spreadsheet helps a lot for the stuff you were talking about-- trying to check things like oven and stovetop time to maximize efficiency. And making sure you remember all your ingredients and the right amounts of each, and how much gets chopped to what size, and things like that.
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I don't usually do the whole thanksgiving, since we have an extended family potluck thing that goes on now, but when it comes to be my turn again to do main dishes and my usual desserts, your run down might make my Wednesday-before marathon cooking day a bit easier.
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Thanks so much for the insight! I definitely took away some new ideas.
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