Thanksgiving - plan of attack

We are one week out from Thanksgiving, which is my holiday. This is only the second year we've hosted it but I gradually started taking over the cooking years earlier. I picked up the Bon Apetit Thanksgiving issue and settled down to do my research last weekend. In all honesty, I make the same core foods every year. I just like reading the magazines and sometimes I'll make different veg side dishes or pick up some gravy tips.

Once you've planned Thanksgiving a couple times it stops feeling overwhelming, but I still have a system. It involves lots of paper notes. I'm not sure if this will be helpful to anyone else, but here it goes.

{2012 thanksgiving planning}

MENU: Figure out what dishes you are making and which ones you are delegating. Write them all down. Pull out your recipes.

GROCERIES: Figure out your grocery list and decide which stores you'll be hitting up. I do a Whole Foods trip (free-range turkey), a Trader Joe's trip (butter, whipping cream, eggs) and a regular grocery store trip (vegetables, sugar, flour, sundries, gladware*). Decide what days you're shopping and for the love of god don't make one of them the day before Thanksgiving or you might give up altogether.

BREAKDOWN: For the dishes you are making, write down the name of the dish and then break down the steps below it. This doesn't have to be insanely detailed, but the breakdown will help, I promise. For stuffing I have: dry bread cubes, chop veggies, saute and combine, bake (30 minutes at 375). For pumpkin pie I just have: make crusts (freeze), make filling and bake (1 hour at 350). This is also useful if you have kitchen assistants because it makes it really easy to delegate concrete tasks.

I usually end up re-writing this a couple times to make sure it all fits relatively neatly on a single page. Here is my 2011 list. I'll be modifying slightly this year but it helps to look back.

{2011 thanksgiving schedule}

PREP SCHEDULE: Then I start scheduling. The breakdown helps here because I can schedule smaller tasks on the days leading up to Thanksgiving. For instance, I like to dry my bread cubes and have my pie crusts made by Tuesday. Potatoes get peeled and chopped and placed in water on Wednesday night. Sweet potatoes get roasted on Wednesday** morning, while I'm making the pie fillings. I make the cranberry relish and sauce on Tuesday. I make little notations next to the steps and then I cross out the steps once I've completed them.

OVEN SCHEDULE: When I make the meal at my mom's house, I have a huge advantage. Two huge advantages, actually. They have giant double ovens. I, on the other hand, have one smallish apartment oven and it dictates how much hot food I can put out. I make an oven schedule and I work it around the turkey roasting time***. Since the turkey needs to rest for 30 minutes, I aim to have him out just after the guests arrive. As soon as I pull him out, I can pop two dishes in the oven for 30 minutes. The rolls always get a space and then it's a throw down between the stuffing and the sweet potatoes. I bake both the morning of but they need to be re-heated. I think this year I'm going to put one in the broiler and hope for the best. You don't even know what I would give for a third rack in the oven.

Of course, this means that we can't have any other side dishes that need to go in the oven. Which is a bummer because the slow roasted green beans with sage were really calling my name this year.

I try to avoid clutter, but I like to save my Thanksgiving schedule each year. It makes my planning the next year easier but the real reason is just that I love these sorts of preserved snippets of life. After our wedding my aunt gave me a giant binder full of old handwritten family recipes with notes and I treasure it - I rarely feel closer to someone than when I get to see the notes they've written to themselves about food they've made.


*If you're hosting it's a really nice touch to pick up a big pack of gladware (or the generic equivalent). This way you can send your guests home with leftovers and they don't need to feel obligated to return the containers later.

**I am incredibly lucky because I'm usually able to take the day before Thanksgiving off, which makes my life much easier. However, you can do everything in one day (I made our entire Thanksgiving meal in 4 hours the year we had to transport it to the hospital) but if you have any free time at all I'd recommend doing as much prep work in advance in the evenings.

**I use Alton's Brown's turkey roasting method and I swear by it. It cuts the cook time down considerably but more importantly, it makes the best turkey. I don't bother with the brining most years because I hate wrestling a cold turkey into a pot of liquid and I don't think it matters if you start with a decent quality bird. I would highly recommend this, not just for taste reasons but for ethical ones. There has to be something wrong with meat that costs less than a dollar per pound. I pay more than double that for our turkey and I opt to buy a smaller turkey so the overall cost difference isn't too crazy. The last two years I've ordered from my local Whole Foods because they offer options from a company I've looked into and feel comfortable doing business with.