I now live in the South, but I haven’t been here long enough to be a Southerner…
Turkey (brined ala Alton Brown)
Sausage and apple cornbread stuffing/dressing
Sweet potato casserole
Cranberry sauce
Yeast rolls
Pearl onions in Hollandaise sauce
Abita Restoration Ale
Ice tea
A semi-expensive bottle of Barolo we splurged on
Peanut butter pie
Mince meat tarts
Re: oysters in stuffing = ICK! It’s a New England thing, methinks. The only people I ever knew who did that were from Upstate NY. Grosses me out. Stuffing should have nothing in it that resembles meat (that means eggs or oysters!) in my world. I barely tolerate fruit, lol.
Ok, the cooking has begun. Pumpkin pie is in the oven now. When it comes out, the cranberry bread will go in. We’ve changed the gingerbread cookies to gingerbread cake so it will be more like a hot fudge brownie style dessert. Tom (the turkey, of course) is in the sink finishing his thawing overnight.
Turkey, brined, and cooked on the Weber grill (and it’s supposed to snow!)
Gravy, of course
Cornbread dressing (My family is marginally southern – WV. But it’s not an old family recipe. Mom had it at one of Dad’s company dinners and asked the chef for the recipe. This happened years before I was born. Mom made it using her non-Southern cornbread – no sugar – and I do the same.)
Some kind of whole berry cranberry sauce that I’ll make up tomorrow
Scalloped oysters
Smashed redskin potatoes
Roasted autumn vegetables
Pumpkin pie
This is the first time in eons that I’m cooking – and it’s just for my husband, 12-y-o son, and me.
Yum Yum! These menus do indeed sound delicious.
I’ve been chopping and cooking and baking and cleaning all day, and still going strong. Now I’m hungry.
Our menu this year:
Appetizers:
Cranberry Salsa and chips
Crudite (celery sticks, baby carrots, pepper strips)
Onion dip
Assorted olives
A nice assortment of cheeses including an applewood smoked cheddar, an herbed chevre, a peppered brie, and epoisse.
Crackers
Dinner:
Turducken
Pasteles (kinda like PR tamales)
Arroz con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas)
Beans (Kidney, Puerto Rican style)
Green Beans with Garlic, Lemon and Parsley
Mashed potatoes
Gravy
Sausage cornbread stuffing (I’m a Jersey Girl, but dad is from Louisiana.)
Chipotle cornbread (with a little sprinkle of Bacon Salt on top!)
Gingered yams
Homemade cranberry sauce
Cranberry Jezebel sauce
Dessert:
Pumpkin pie with whipped cream
Apple pie
Cheesecake
Drinks:
My husband bought 2 kegs from one of the local brewpubs and I bought 2 cases of wine with the intention of opening at least half a case, including a couple Pinot Noirs, a Gigondas, a Chenin Blanc, a Moulin a Vent, a Champagne, and a Late Harvest Muscat Canelli.
Espresso, coffee, soft drinks, yadda, yadda.
Roast turkey-I baste with butter. Yum. the wine thing sounds good, though…
sausage stuffing
cornbread and cranberry stuffing for my vegetarian daughter
pumpkin spice muffins
pumpkin bread (the pumpkin breads are new this year)
sweet potato biscuits
dinner rolls
cranberry sauce
green beans with almonds
giblet gravy
pumpkin pie
pecan pie
mince meat pie
white wine
coffee
Ditto on the Alton-Brown-Brined Turkey
In addition to the Turkey, there will be:
Cornbread Dressing (my grandmother’s secret recipe)
Mashed Potatoes
Gravy (made with the drippings from the Chicken and 40 Cloves we made tonight- another Alton Brown recipe)
Green Beans baked in butter and worchestershire
Whole-berry Cranberry-Tangerine sauce
Yams roasted with apricots, blueberries, and almonds
Oh…and pillsbury Crescent rolls. sigh The kids prefer them over regular yeast rolls. I’ll have to wait for Christmas to get my bread baking groove on.
Dinner will be around 6pm, so daytime munchies will include:
Shrimp cocktails
Our standard olive/relish tray: black olives, green olives, sweet gerkins, hot pickled cauliflower, dill gerkins, deviled eggs
Goat cheese and pumpernickel rounds
Chex Mix (for the kids)
My over-the-top chocolate chip cookies
Dessert after dinner:
Pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream
Chocolate-Karo Pecan Pie
Add in assorted wines, beers, and ciders, a couple of cut-throat games of scrabble, and sex* after the kids go to bed…
A perfect day.
*I’ll be saving some of the whipped cream for that. 
Ok, the most beautiful pumpkin pie in ages is resting on the counter. Lithubby’s broccoli casserole is in the oven – I loathe casseroles, but he asked, so I deliver – hopefully, it will turn out ok. The wild rice & cherry stuffing has to go through a last-minute wardrobe change – turns out the wild rice I picked up was not quite enough for the recipe (that’s what I get for not paying attention), so I will be using brown rice instead. I think it will go a little better with the cherries and the turkey anyway. We shall see. I will make it up tonight so all I have to do is shove it up Tom’s ass in the AM.
psycat90 – I *so * must have your gingered yams recipe. Have I mentioned I lurve ginger? Yeh, I do. Now, your menu puts mine to shame. I wanna come to your place just for the cheeses! Gosh, that reminds me, I should get the eggs done and the crab cakes done, since those are for appetizers.
Last month we had:
Roast turkey
Cranberry sauce
Gravy
Stuffing
Buttery mashed potatoes
Steamed carrots
Salad with Italian dressing
A 2005 Pinot Noir (I think, or a Merlot)
Vanilla ice cream
Warm apple crumble
Ok, my family must be odd. Possibly we’re all pre-diabetic as well, but our dessert menu seems scads longer than everyone else’s. The theory being that there should be enough for everyone to have for the entire weekend and plenty of variety being a good thing, we also have a minimum of two birthday cakes and 4 ice cream flavors for parties.
Dinner’s at Mom’s and I won’t be able to arrive until it’s almost ready, so I’m hazy on some details but being tasked with dessert I’m sure of those ones.
Turkey
Dressing
Mashed Potatoes
Gravy (Giblets aren’t my department, and I’m rather glad I don’t know what’s happening with them.)
Corn cake
Green Beans of some sort
Yams, likely with the marshmallows
Cranberry Sauce
Brown and serve rolls
Pickles, Olives, Deviled Eggs and some cheeses, crackers, chips and dips.
Pumpkin, apple crumb, pecan and chocolate cream pies, strawberry cheesecake and one of those store bought variety cheesecake things in various chocolate toppings, and Mom’s Ambrosia (fruity) salad. Of course at Mom’s house there’ll be cookies galore, probably banana/zucchini/pumpkin types of bread, and ice creams available.
6 adults, 5 older teens and one 6 year old, and I was worried I might not have enough dessert!
I will be driving for 4 and a half hours on bad roads, in the rain, in a rented van with twelve passengers. My sister in law assures me that at the end of the road there will be an enormous meal, none of which will be good for me. Somewhere in the van will be five or six pies.
Then I get to drive home with a van full of sleeping people who won’t be able to keep me awake across those now frozen bad roads. It should be a fairly good time.
I am worried that we won’t have enough pie.
TrisAhhh, time for another update. The stuffing is in the fridge – it’s actually very pretty what with the bright green of the celery and the bright red of the cherries against the light brown of the rice. It’s also quite yummy (of course I sneaked a bite, with all the changes to the recipe I made, I had to – for science).
The eggs are now cooking – another 7 minutes of simmering before they get their ice bath. Sigh…I thought I had white vinegar, but I don’t. I did find some red wine vinegar, so we shall have some very interesting deviled eggs. Actually, I have used the red wine vinegar before and it works just fine in them.
The boy’s cranberry bread (I think I left that off my original list, because it’s my son’s idea to make it – he did most of the actual work*) is in the oven, and should be coming out around midnight & ten. We changed that recipe around a bit, too – it called for an awful lot of cranberries (12 oz for a regular sized loaf!!!) we cut that to about half and added some of the cherries for a boost of flavour. It was really hard for me to not add some ginger – I really think it needed some kind of spice, it called for nothing but standard quickbread dough and fruit. We shall see.
Lithubby’s broccoli casserole is pretty, at least. I don’t know if I will brave a taste tomorrow, but it does look good. LOL.
Queen Tonya – lol, you’re not odd. Most of the people I know end up with dessert menus like yours. We just don’t eat a lot of sweets here (outside of fruits), so I think we are the odd ones. I did find my cinnamon ice cream tonight, so thankfully, I am not hand-cranking ice cream! This year will be the first one in uhm…8 years that I have more than one dessert option for Thanksgiving, lol. I still miss my Dad too much to really be able to eat the pumpkin pie. Well, so much for keeping it light-hearted. I think it’s time to give the eggs their ice bath.
Turkey with oregano, lemon, and red onion
Italian sausage and bread stuffing
Giblet gravy
Garlicky green beans with pine nuts
Roasted sweet potatoes with bacon, cheese, and parsley
Cranberry grappa sauce
Apricot-cranberry sauce
Fresh fruit
Ricotta tart with poached figs, apricots, and cherries
Pumpkin cheesecake
My inlaws are bringing appetizers, rolls, salad, and some more desserts.
Well, it’s not really my recipe. I play with the yams every year, just because I like to introduce something new every year, and I just haven’t found a yam recipe that’s a total keeper. Maybe this one is it. I’ll let you know on Friday. 
Anyway, I found it here.
[QUOTE=Litoris]
…The eggs are now cooking – another 7 minutes of simmering before they get their ice bath. Sigh…I thought I had white vinegar, but I don’t. I did find some red wine vinegar, so we shall have some very interesting deviled eggs. Actually, I have used the red wine vinegar before and it works just fine in them.
…QUOTE]
Having gained 10 pounds just reading this thread, and drooling copiously, I must say that as a deviled egg lover, I am most intrigued by your reference to them above.
Could you provide your recipe for your deviled eggs when you are done with the chores and have time? It sounds sooooo intriguing. Thanks.
Aww Triskadecamus. I’d send you pie, looks like I’ll have a major surplus. If there is one quest in my life, it’s to relieve pie shortages. (Drive safe!)
We’re doing a smallish Tday on Friday or Saturday (I keep shaking my MiL, but she says “reply hazy; try again”). I’m tasked with the turkey which will be my first. So I’m brining of course, using a combination between Alton Brown and Wolfgang Puck’s recipes. Plus stuffing, mashed taters, many pies, REAL GRAVY!, and whatever culinary abomination my SiL decides to bring. The other SiL is good enough to only bring her appetite and a generous bottle of wine.
You never know; some people might bring double pies and there might even be leftovers.
In the event of which, when come back, bring pie.
We’re eating our meal about seven in the evening. Our collaberative efforts will include
Cheese and olive tray for nosh
Paper bag roast turkey with cornbread pecan stuffing
Ham with a brown sugar - mustard glaze
Mashed potatoes
Giblet gravy
Yams with pineapple and marshmallow
Green beans almondine
Spinach salad
Steamed broccoli with parmesan cheese
Corn pudding
Sweet potato pie - regular and sugar free
Pumpkin bread
Camelot mead
Beech Haven pinot noir
Coffee
Iced tea - both sweet and unsweet
Our family and friends include a couple of us who are diabetic and a couple more who are likely pre-diabetic, yankees and southerners, so we tend to try to have something for everyone.
Oh c’mon. You can’t find a better way to celebrate Good Riddrance Day?
Guacamole
Hot crab meat dip
sweet potato casserole with brown sugar and walnut topping
cranberry jelly and whole berry relish
mashed potatoes
Green bean casserole (yawn…but it’s a crowd-pleaser around here)
Squaw corn
Spanish rice
Stuffing
Turkey ‘n’ gravy
Pumpkin pie, French Silk pie, and…
…a b’day cake for Kid Kalhoun and is girlfriend’s son
My friend is brining her turkey for the first time. I’m awaiting the report…if it’s good, maybe I’ll try that for Christmas!
Well, it is morning now (OK, it was morning before I went to bed, but you know what I mean!). The cranberry bread looks very nice, if a bit more brown than my son would like (he does like his homemade bread to have a golden crust, while I tend to like darker crust, but this was because it was a very wet dough). I believe this is the first year I have ever stayed up past midnight cooking the night before. Yegods, I truely am turning into my Martha!
LiveOnAPlane – honey, my recipe is that old staple from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. It’s nothing exciting, but it works. 6 hard-boiled eggs, 1/4 c mayo (or yogurt if doing curry), 1 tsp vinegar (obviously, it calls for white but I used red wine, which turned out way better, I must admit!), 1 tsp mustard (of course, the recipe is from the 50’s, so it calls for plain old yellow mustard, but be creative!) & paprika (or curry powder if preferred). Peel the eggs, cut them in half & put the yolks in a bowl with all of the ingredients (except the paprika/curry) & mush them together. Spoon (or if you’re chanelling Martha Stewart – pipe using a pastry bag) egg yolks back into the halved whites, top with paprika (or curry).
psycat90 – I checked out that recipe. It sounds awesome. I may even do it this year instead of the candied yams…I am debating. Thanks!
Wow, some of these menus sound so wonderful. Wonder why we got moved to Cafe Society – this post is pretty much my definition of MPSIMS.
Well, it is 7:34, so time to get the crab cakes done. I need to get the yams going, whatever I decide to do with them and get my potatoes peeled and brining. That’s right, I don’t brine my turkey, but I do brine my potatoes.
Speaking of brining – there are a lot of you guys that are brining. Seriously, having done both, may I suggest that one year you try the Martha Stewart turkey recipe? IM(never very)HO, it works much better. Just curious if you all have tried other options and decided you like the brining better? Ok, off to work, I go.