Well, it’s The Day.
I’ve got the dishwasher running. As soon as it’s done, I’ll start cooking. The 12-pound bird, which will be stuffed, should take about three hours to cook in the cooking bag. If the dishes are done by 11:00, then I might have it in the oven around noon. So feasting at… four o’clock?
We did a much smaller than usual dinner this year - just my wife and I, her dad, and her son. (Her daughters are doing their own thing with their kids.) So we just have a ham and a few side dishes, and are socially distanced - my wife and I are eating in the kitchen, and her dad and her son are in the living room with TV trays, six feet apart and watching basketball.
I told my wife earlier, it feels weird not getting up at 7am and spending all morning in the kitchen. But I could get used to it…
We just finished eating. Even with a pared-down menu, it was a lot for one person to cook. I’m exhausted and stuffed.
We did feed mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce to the little bean for his First Thanksgiving, so that was nice.
Kind of fun:
cookings almost done families coming over with their share hopefully so the dog and pony can begin …also hopefully I don’t kill anyone cause I’m over holidays and most of them … most of its the usual holiday crap anyhow
The bird is about to come out of the oven. Since its only me this year, I’m only making potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce as sides. Saturday will be a get together with the rest of my “bubble”. I’ll make the cheesecake for that.
ETA, the dog is looking askance at me since it smells great in here and all he has is dry food. He’ll get some goodies later.
Pictures, pretty please? Though I’d sure understand if you would rather not. He always sounds so adorable.
12:30 and the turkey is in the oven.
I have been dealing with a massive headache for a chunk of the day, so my plans of peeling potatoes and making a half recipe of GB casserole were delayed to sleeping.
My new target time was 130pm, but then my cat hopped up, nestled in, and fell asleep, purring.
It’s now 236pm, I can’t feel my feet (she’s on them), and my stomach has started grumbling.
Moussaka with home-grown eggplant and basil, plus a hearty bowl of Dr. Jackmannii’s Spicy Coleslaw are featured elements for the Thanksgiving meal (plus turkey, stuffing, gravy, boiled onions, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, turnips and cranberry sauce).
Pluto the spaniel is set to get a buffet of certain items (a limited quantity, so as to pose a minimal risk of canine gastric upheavals).
My neighbor just delivered my second Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, broiled mushrooms, green salad with sliced strawberries, some kind of whole grain seed bread (looks like WFM’s seedsation, but I know this restaurant bakes their own bread), and finally, a slice of PEE-kan paah.
I’m too stuffed from my first turkey dinner this morning to eat it. Maybe by 6 pm, I’ll have some room…
Lord, what a happy slug I am… 
We decided to do the traditional Thanksgiving feast, but instead of the usual ~25 lb turkey cooked and taken over to my in-laws for a feast for several dozen family, friends, strangers, sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads we’re just the 4 of us: two adults and 2 teenagers. We had invited one other couple but they canceled, which as much as it pains me not to see them is probably for the best.
I put the bird in the brine yesterday and put it in the oven about half an hour ago. My wife is baking the apple pie now and we made the chocolate mousse pie last night. I’ll make mashed potatoes and green bean casserole (which only I will eat) later, and after we eat I’ll take leftovers to my parent’s so they don’t have to cook.
I think this year, more than most, its important to focus on what I’m thankful for. This year has been a lot of suck, but there are good parts and I need to focus on them for a change.
How did the homemade sauce turn out?
This year I had the opposite problem as you: only canned sauce was available, no fresh berries to be found. I picked up a can of the “whole berry” kind, so it’ll have to do.
Protip: use tofor’s recipie above but instead of water use unfiltered orange juice and add several generous shavings of orange peel and a shake of cinnamon. Refrigerate overnight. Those modifications will turn perfectly serviceable cranberry sauce into manna from heaven.
I was too ashamed to mention it sooner but my husband found the canned stuff after all. With ridges and everything.
I wish I had seen this yesterday when I was making the cranberry sauce! My wife had to look up the recipe on the Ocean Spray website because I bought a 2 lb bag of non-Ocean Spray cranberries and she always goes by the recipe on the bag. I said “Here’s a crazy idea - how about I add some orange zest.” But then I didn’t. The cranberries still came out OK.
(Ocean Spray recipe is 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar for a 12 oz package of cranberries. So I did the math and came up with 2 and 2/3 cups each water and sugar for 2 lb cranberries.)
Well since I only posted it about 20 minutes ago if you had seen it yesterday that would’ve been a really neat trick!
The orange zest idea I got from a Betty Crocker cranberry sauce recipie years ago. One year I decided that if some orange zest is good, then orange juice would be awesome! And since cinnamon goes well with both orange and cranberry flavors, why not?
Turned out wonderful, and I’ve been doing it that way ever since.
This year it’s just the two of us, but we both love to cook anyway. It’s the one time of year when I usually splurge on happy local free-range meat. So we will have:
Roast turkey with herb butter under the breast skin
Improvised wild rice stuffing with caramelized onions, shallots, celery, roast chestnuts, currants, dried apricots, and sage and thyme from the garden
Homemade cranberry sauce with cinnamon stick, cloves, fresh ginger, orange zest, and a glug of Grand Marnier
Brussels sprouts cut in half and slow-cooked in a skillet in butter. Maybe we will add shallots this time.
Multigrain bread with more caramelized onions and rosemary
I might do like a half-recipe of these sweet potatoes (I love sweet potatoes and we have a bunch of them from our CSA, but Tom Scud can’t eat them, and this seems like an easy recipe to scale down)
Apple pie (pie crust is my baking Waterloo, but I am giving it another try this year, dammit! I think I just tend not to use enough water, and then it gets crumbly. We’ll see how it goes this year.)
With leftover turkey, we like to make mole (there’s a Mexican grocery a few blocks from us that has basically an entire deli counter with giant ceramic tubs of different kinds of made-from-scratch mole paste). That way it doesn’t seem so much like you’re eating endless leftover turkey. And we also like this Mexican turkey soup.
FWIW and I never make pies so I’ve never done this-- years ago Christopher Kimball said the secret to good pie dough is to use vodka instead of water.
When we talked to Cook’s Illustrated publisher Chris Kimball about a 2007 issue of the magazine, we asked what recipes really stood out in that issue. This pie crust is one of them. It’s a brilliant recipe," Kimball said. “The secret ingredient in it? Vodka.”
The alcohol adds moistness to the dough without aiding in gluten formation, since gluten doesn’t form in alcohol.
Instructions at the link.
Currently Al Bundy’ing on the couch.
The stuffing was meh, everything thing else was delicious. I originally planned on skipping the turkey, but ended up ordering some pre-cooked herbed turkey breast from a local fancy market. I’m so glad I did.
My sister said she’d drop a piece of pumpkin pie off, which will finish the day perfectly.
My brined and spatchcocked turkey should be ready shortly, along with homemade dressing, gravy, mashed spuds, orange/lemon/dill/garlic carrot coins and chilled pea salad. While waiting, I’m sat happily day-drinking a nice pinot noir and watching one of my favorite (and now entirely politically incorrect) films, Major League. (“Juuust… a little outside!” Cracks me up every time.)
There is pumpkin pie I baked yesterday using the pulp from a Black Futzu squash I got in my last CSA box for dessert. I know it’s perfect because one of the best things about Thanksgiving Alone is no one barks at you for digging into the pumpkin pie a day early. 
I wish everyone a splendid Thanksgiving day celebration!
@Eva_Luna, for me the secret to perfect pie crust is lard. My pie crusts were always passable but not transcendent until I started using it.
For a single 9-inch crust, use 1/3 cup lard to 1 cup all-purpose flour with a little salt, pulse in a food processor just till it looks like cornmeal. Add 2-3 TB water (start with 2 and then add add a teaspoon at a time), pulse till it just comes together. Form a disk, wrap and allow to hydrate in the fridge for a couple hours. Roll out as normal.
You can substitute butter for about half the lard for flavor if you wish. Hope this helps?