$150 for a 20 pound turkey? I’m kinda suprised they’re that expensive in the UK; here they run $25 for a fully frozen bird.
I think, given the culture and expectation difference, that you can probably get away with the crown of turkey for feeding 2/3 of your guests. They’re not going to expect a very large serving of each dish, and you’re not looking for the leftovers and soup most Americans love.
I would give them another filling protein option, however. How about a big Macaroni and Cheese made with gluten free noodles? That would be a filling dish that *everyone *could enjoy. While it’s not exactly traditional on Thanksgiving, it’s not uncommon, either, and it’s a very “American” dish. Scharmakes really good gluten free noodles, and I believe they sell on your side of the pond.
I agree that mashed potatoes and gravy are an absolute must. Do you have a Crock-Pot or slow cooker? You can make the mashed potatoes (peel, cube and boil potatoes until soft, drain, return to pot and mash, adding butter and milk, or sour cream and cream cheese for real decadence, and salt and pepper) the night before and warm them on low in your Crock-Pot the day of so you’re not taking any time or cooking space.
ETA: Dang it, beaten to the macNcheese punch by Sarabellum. That’s what I get for pausing to pull the (gluten free) pumpkin pies out of the oven! 
You mean, that you and friends and family can live off through the weekend? Thanksgiving dinners function in large part to furnish leftovers for the long holiday weekend. You do four days of cooking in one or two, then take a break. All this stuff goes well on sandwiches or after being microwaved.
I second the green bean casserole.
For non-meat proteins: no, there aren’t that I can recall any cheese-based dishes specific to Thanksgiving. But just as the lasagna sounded good, if non-seasonal (and, could be made meat free), a good mac and cheese is appropriately American, very much homestyle, and usually non-controversial.
Oh, that’s a good suggestion! And gluten-free pasta isn’t much more expensive than the normal kind, so that can be something else our coeliac (who I am always paranoid about undercatering for) can eat. ETA: Thanks WhyNot for beating me to it! 
Since I’m expecting our rabbi and her husband I don’t think ham would be quite the thing. 
A thread from last year where everyone posted their Thanksgiving menus:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11818848#post11818848
SecondJudith writes:
> This may surprise you but not everyone in the world has the day off work for a
> holiday that only US Americans celebrate.
Of course I know that you don’t have Thanksgiving off for a holiday. I lived in England for three years, and, believe it or not, most Americans do know that Thanksgiving is strictly an American holiday (on that particular day, anyway, although there is also a Canadian Thanksgiving on a different day). The point I’m trying to make is that the traditions for Thanksgiving dinners in the U.S. just don’t work well when applied to a situation where the meal is an evening meal which people will be eating after getting home from work. I had assumed that you had arranged that everybody coming to the dinner would take the day off work as vacation leave. What you’re trying to do is so bizarrely different from an American Thanksgiving that I can’t understand how it could possibly work. The traditional food items for Thanksgiving take so long to prepare that it’s nearly impossible to fit them into an evening dinner party occasion.
I think it’s going to make a smashing good theme for a dinner party! And if it’s not exactly the typical American Turkey Day extravaganza, with the time constraints and everything, nobody is going to mind one bit.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Second Judith! You’re an honorary American now, in my book! (Does your husband have you celebrating Fourth of July now too?)
Only skimmed, but here’s my take on TGD.
[ul][li]A whole turkey. Not a breast, and not just drumsticks. The whole bird. Gotta have both dark and white meat.[/li][li]Stuffing. Stuffing goes inside the body cavity. That’s the only way it tastes good. Yes, yes, I know it’s considered ‘unsafe’. But I’ve been cooking Thanksgiving dinners since I was ten years old, and no one has become ill from my cooking yet. Stuff the neck cavity as well. What goes into stuffing may start a riot. At the minimum, you need chopped celery and chopped onions. Go from there. Mom always liked to add oysters and water chestnuts. Many people add sausage. I prefer sultanas or cranberries. [/li][li]Dressing. Stuffing that won’t fit in the bird gets put into a casserole dish and baked. [/li][li]Giblets. An essential ingredient. Boil the giblets to make stock. Put the chop up the heart and gizzard and neck meat and put it into the stuffing. Chop up the liver and reserve for the gravy.[/li][li]Gravy. This must be made from the drippings. Don’t use a packet or prepared gravy. Make a roux with some of the fat, but use the other liquid for flavour. This is a white gravy, so have plenty of milk ready. The chopped-up liver goes into the gravy. Some people put the heart and gizzards into it, but I prefer them in the stuffing.[/li][li]Sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Not my favourite, but traditional. I never make them, myself.[/li][li]Green bean casserole. Green beans, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, and French’s French-fried onions.[/li][li]Rolls. Pillsbury crescent rolls were traditional in my house. You can make dinner rolls or buy croissants. Just make sure there are plenty. I’ve seen people eat a half-dozen rolls at a Thanksgiving dinner. You’ll also want butter and jam.[/li][li]A green vegetable. We usually had (and I still make) boiled Brussels sprouts with butter.[/li][li]Cranberry sauce from a can. It’s got to have the ridges on it. You can use any cranberry sauce you want, or lingonberry jam, or whatever; but the stuff from the can is traditional.[/ul][/li]Before and after. Since I usually spend Thanksgiving alone, I usually don’t bother. But with guests you’ll want salads and dessert. At a minimum, you’ll want a green salad and pumpkin pie. Other salads are not unexpected. Potato salad, macaroni salad, peas-and-cheese salad, whatever. In addition to pumpkin pie for dessert, you may expect to find pecan pie, apple pie, chocolate cream pie, berry pie, or any other kind of pie. Whipped cream and ice cream should be available.
Since turkey is a game bird, I find that a nice Beaujolais is a good wine. Some people insist on white wine with poultry. Me, the only time I drink white wine is when the red has run out. Coffee, brandy, and/or beer are for after dinner.
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This year I’m making a duck.
Working my way through the thread…
£90-100? :eek:
Here, turkeys are sold at a loss by most supermarkets. The idea is to get you to spend more money once you get into the store. Many places here will have turkeys for about 49¢/pound. One place will sell you a turkey for 29¢/pound if you spend over $100. Some places will give you a free turkey if you spend a certain amount.
For years I’ve used Reynolds roasting bags. The turkey cooks in much less time, and the white meat remains moist. It’s still a production, though. I mean, you still have to cook everything else in addition to three or four hours (depending on the size of the bird).
SecondJudith, you can’t conceivably prepare a dinner like the one mentioned in Johnny L.A.'s post (or most of the other posts in this thread) in the time that you have. You and your guests won’t even have time to eat that much food. I’m sorry. I know that other posters in this thread have been trying to make you feel good about this, but I think that they’re giving you false hopes. At the best, all you can do is offer your dinner guests a tiny sample of what an American Thanksgiving day dinner is like. Unless you hold down everybody’s hopes (including yours), everybody is going to be disappointed.
No, only the ones who were tragically born without taste buds. Where’s that puking smiley when I need it?
I’m confused about why mashed potatoes would be so much more work than roasting them. You have to prep them no matter how you cook them–scrub, cut, peel if you’re going to do that–and you’re going to stick them in a pan out of the way and let them do their own thing either way. Mashing with a little butter and milk doesn’t seem any harder than tossing with olive oil and seasonings, and it makes the same amount of dishes to wash. So what am I missing?
Wendell, I don’t see any reason for the guests to take time off work. That seems excessive, by quite a lot. Mind you, I don’t think I’d try to host the meal and do all the cooking without taking a half day off work, or having it on Saturday or something. (And yes, OP, having dinner on Saturday instead is a perfectly valid option. Thousands of American families do so every year due to scheduling conflicts, my own included. Which, incidentally, has been a Godsend as my generation has grown up and married people with families several hours away. It simplifies things massively.)
Overall, that seems like a reasonable amount of food for that many people, given that only half or so are meat eaters and that you seem to have some aversion to leftovers. I’m assuming you’re talking 2 pounds of dry beans, as opposed to 2 pounds of cooked beans–the bean salad will likely be the vegetarians’ main dish, so you’ll want a fair bit of that. Keep in mind that most guides to how much to cook for Thanksgiving assumes large servings (this is most folk’s main meal for the day) and some amount of leftovers.
Add some gravy (white meat tends to need gravy to give it some flavor and sometimes moisture, plus the taters and dressing), ideally some good cranberries, increase your rolls as I doubt the rest of the guests will want the gluten-free bread, and I think you’re good to go.
And just to show you, SecondJudith, how even Americans disagree on American traditions…
[quote=“Johnny_L.A, post:28, topic:561433”]
[li]Giblets. An essential ingredient. Boil the giblets to make stock. Put the chop up the heart and gizzard and neck meat and put it into the stuffing. Chop up the liver and reserve for the gravy.[/li][/quote]
Ew ew ew ew EW! Grandma, when dementia started kicking in, began to use the giblets in the gravy and, ground up, in the stuffing. We were all bewildered, because we knew that giblets don’t belong in the stuffing, as she taught us before she lost her marbles. They are tolerated, if used for flavor only and removed before thickening, in the gravy, but we’d all be happier if they were given to the dog as God intended. (Hey, Fido needs something to be Thankful for, too!)
[quote]
[li]Gravy. This must be made from the drippings. Don’t use a packet or prepared gravy. Make a roux with some of the fat, but use the other liquid for flavour. This is a white gravy, so have plenty of milk ready. The chopped-up liver goes into the gravy. Some people put the heart and gizzards into it, but I prefer them in the stuffing.[/li][/quote]
White? Really? I’ve never heard of this for Thanksgiving. Gravy is turkey gravy, simply the pan drippings (and some extra turkey stock made from a couple of cheap legs earlier in the week) thickened with a roux (or now, cornstarch to accommodate the gluten intolerant.) I mean, I love gravy in all it’s forms, so I’d be happy to eat yours, but I’d be momentarily puzzled.
[QUOTE]
[li]Sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top. Not my favourite, but traditional. I never make them, myself.[/li][/QUOTE]
My family has never been into these, although I won’t argue that they aren’t traditional. They most certainly are. But they’re kinda yucky. I much prefer our mashed sweet potato casserole with a topping of brown sugar, chopped pecans and spices. It’s sweet potato pie without the crust, basically, only creamier.
We’ve given up trying to please everyone with one cranberry sauce, so we just provide both the can and a homemade relish. Last year, I think my mom found our new “traditional” recipe, for cranberry relish with candied ginger and orange zest.
When I actually get down to eating, I generally have two slices of turkey (one white, one dark), some cranberry sauce, a potato’s worth of mashed potatoes, the same amount of stuffing, gravy for the potatoes and stuffing, a roll, half a dozen Brussels sprouts, and a large spoonful of green bean casserole. That’s more than enough for one person! :eek: That’s when it’s just me. When there are other people, there are usually more things to eat. In that case, I’ll have one slice of turkey or two smaller slices and ‘sample’ the rest.
The reason I’m roasting a duck this year is because the smallest turkey I can find is ten pounds. Since I’m not having any guests, that’s too much turkey. I get tired of it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner after about a week. And I like duck.
The turkey carcass is boiled for stock, which is made into soup at some later date.
It’s just that I’m already planning to roast squash and onions, so instead of having a Big Dish Of Roast Stuff, I’d have a Medium Dish Of Roast Stuff And Also Some Mashed Potatoes, effectively going from one dish to two dishes. It’s possible that’s only a psychological distinction, but since I think I’ll be pretty busy that evening, I’m trying to keep away from as many extra stressors as possible.
I did mean wet beans, and I think you’re right that that’s too little, but I hope with the addition of a pasta bake/macaroni and cheese it should be all right for the vegetarians!
(As a side note, I’m not averse to leftovers, it’s just that our fridge is fairly small and is already full of leftovers from other meals we’ve had this week, so I’m just worried we’ll run out of storage space.)
I’m a bit confused as to why Wendell Wagner has made it his quest to remind me that My Thanksgiving Is Doomed And Everything Will Be Horrible but I’m looking forward to having a nice dinner party to prove him wrong…
See, I like offal. But gizzards have tough bits that I don’t like in the gravy. Hence, they go into the stuffing.
Yes. Really. 
I prefer roasted white sweet potatoes with butter. The overly-sweet traditional orange sweet potatoes with brown sugar and marshmallows are too sweet for my taste. If I want sweetened sweet potatoes, make mine sweet potato pie!
I’d like to try Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish sometime, but I won’t make it just for me. For me, the canned stuff is fine.
I think** SecondJudith** simply doesn’t have experience making them. I think it is one of the easiest potato dishes to make, but certainly making something the first time takes longer.
SecondJudith, I think you need to understand that Thanksgiving, in America, holds all of the tradition of Christmass. In fact, unlike Christmass, it crosses all cultural boundaries. It is essentially, Christmass dinner, with more food and no presents or tree. You would be hard pressed to find a Thanksgiving dinner without a full turkey. Even vegetarians will eat Tofurky. I personally think that stuff is foul. Frankly, when I had to make Thanksgiving dinner for vegetarians, I made a lasagna.
By God, do NOT take this to heart. Jellied cranberry sauce is fantastic. People love to make their own, but it never measures up. The jellied stuff is a little can of perfection. It has no seeds, no bitterness, no peel, no extra citron, no cinnamon, or any of that other crap that people add to zing up cranberries.
Leftover Parfait!
That’s from Malcolm In The Middle. I don’t know the exact dialogue, but basically Malcolm’s mom cleans out the fridge once a week. She takes all of the leftovers (whatever they may be) and assembles them into layers in a casserole. Inevitably, one of the leftovers at the end of the week will be leftover Leftover Parfait! 
Oh, don’t mind him (her?). There’s always a grumpy uncle in the corner complaining that we’re going to overcook the turkey and there’s too much food and how have we managed to grow into adults without knowing the difference between pretzels and butter pretzels and goddamn it would you move your ass, the game is on?!
Wendell’s just as traditional as pumpkin pie. 
What the hell, man? This is absolutely ridiculous.