My parents are coming in from St. Louis instead of the other way around, so we’re doing our first ever Thanksgiving at our house this year. I hope I didn’t screw up too bad by forgetting to take the turkey out of the freezer until yesterday at around 6PM. We left it out on the counter until about 10:30-11:00 when we went to bed instead of putting it directly into the fridge, so I hope that made up some of the missed thawing time. It’s a small-ish bird, though, at 13.5 lbs, so my fingers are crossed.
We spent last night prepping every single thing we could do in advance. Lots of chopping, grating, slicing and dicing went on in our kitchen. The fridge is now filled with tons of ziplock bags of ingredients, all labeled with a marker as to which dish they go in. We also cleared out an entire shelf in the pantry and filled it with all the dry ingredients and non-refrigerated liquids (boxes of stock, olive oil, etc.), as well as all the cooking, measuring, mixing and serving dishes we’ll need for everything, so it’s all in one place.
Tonight I’m going to pre-make the sweet potato casserole, and just re-heat it on Thursday. I’m trying a new recipe (Emeril’s, from here), so if it tastes like crap when I make it tonight, there’s still plenty of time to buy more potatoes and fix them a different, more standard way. I’m also pre-making an egg casserole we’ll be having for brunch that morning, as well as a side dish I’m serving for dinner on Wednesday night when my parents arrive.
My Thanksgiving holiday weekend menu consists of the following:
Wednesday night dinner
[ul][li]Cheese & Mushroom fondue served with hard French bread and pumpernickel bread, some pieces plain and some wrapped with prosciutto, and artichoke hearts and cauliflower for dipping[/li][li]Broth fondue served with cubed sirloin steak, jumbo shrimp, baby carrots and broccoli for cooking, with 4 different dipping sauces and kasha & mushroom pilaf on the side.[/li][li]Rachael Ray’s Roasted Pears and French Vanilla Ice Cream (which is always met with raves and requests for the recipe) for dessert[/ul] [/li]Thursday Brunch for 8
[ul][li]Baked egg casserole with cut up broccoli and carrots[/li][li]Bagels & cream cheese[/li][li]A tray with lox, kippers, capers, sliced onions and sliced tomatoes for the bagels[/li][li]Mixed fruit (bought already cut up, I’m not that masochistic)[/li][li]Champagne mimosas and Bloody Marys[/ul][/li]Thanksgiving Dinner
[ul][li]Organic, free-range turkey, cooked upside down (though I’ll make a paste rub with more seasonings than just salt to rub both inside and outside of the bird, and turn it over for the last 1/4 of the cooking time to brown the breast skin.)[/li][li]Fresh green beans almondine[/li][li]The sweet potato casserole mentioned above[/li][li]Red cabbage with cranberries (my mother-in-law’s wonderful recipe)[/li][li]Cornbread stuffing[/li][li]Rachael Ray’s Mushroom-Rosemary gravy[/li][li]Pumpkin Pie (bakery-bought, not homemade)[/ul] My parents leave Friday morning to head out to Palm Desert, and we’ll follow on Saturday morning, where we’ll spend the weekend and celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary, so Friday is leftovers and I don’t even have to think about cooking or cleaning the whole rest of the weekend – YAY![/li]
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!