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How to have your first Thanksgiving
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Since my sister and I live together, and my brother lives in the same town, we decided to invite our parents to our house for Thanksgiving last year. It was the first time we had planned Thanksgiving from start to finish. We made a lot of mistakes, and we wanted to share them in the hopes that no one else would make the same mistakes!
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How to have your first Thanksgiving
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We did do one thing right, (at least I think so), we had our first
Thanksgiving while we were still single (essentially). We only had our folks and
ourselves to worry about; we didn't have crying kids, crazy in-laws to appease,
or distant relatives to entertain. We only had to figure out how to prepare,
cook and serve the meal.
1. Defrost your turkey days in advance. I won’t tell you how we did it, because I’m afraid you’d all get salmonella, and I don’t want to get sued. Suffice to say, put that turkey in the fridge and then call your mom, dad, nearest adult relative, or (as I did) ask your co-workers how they defrost their turkey. We brought our turkey home three days before Thanksgiving, and I put it in the freezer. I didn’t think about it, I just put it away! It was huge, and I wanted it out of the way! Once I found out (at work) that I should have already been defrosting the thing in the fridge, I panicked and I was afraid we would have to serve a big block of iced turkey.
2. Decide the menu a week in advance. We decided two days in advance (which we thought was great). However, our parents decided to take a vacation on the way to see us, and were not only out of pocket half the time, but (since they weren’t at home), couldn’t get the recipes we needed to prepare our “traditional” Thanksgiving side dishes. We had to wing it. Make sure you can get those recipes, better yet, ask your family for them now, and put them someplace special. You’ll want those later, and it’s a big hassle to spend half the holidays on the phone. We know! When our parents had their cell phones turned on, we were calling them! I think they “accidentally” shut them off, just to have a few moments of peace and quiet!
3. Know how to make the dishes for which you now have the recipes. You think these are the same things—but not so! We knew that fried onions went on top of the vegetable medley, we just didn’t know they went on at the end of the baking cycle. We ended up with burnt onions on the top (“Yum, it just makes it crisper,” says daddy. “I didn’t even notice,” says mom. “Burnt onions?” says stupid brother.)
4. Make a list and check it twice. No it’s not just for Christmas! I bet I made three extra trips to the store per day for the two days leading up to Thanksgiving, not to mention Thanksgiving Day, and the planned trips we made for the food itself. I was relying on my sister to do all the planning and only expecting to do the grunt work. Write out what you want to eat, write down what you need, and double check it. Don’t forget the snacks, (our traditional “relish tray” was almost forgotten, after all, our parents always have pickles, olives, etc. in the fridge), napkins (we didn’t have enough cloth napkins, and ran out of paper towels, oh the shame of using wash cloths during Thanksgiving dinner!).
5. Don’t forget serving dishes. We are barely out of school single girls - we don’t have any serving dishes! We ended up using cereal bowls for the olives, pickles, etc. Baking pans for most of the side dishes and serving the turkey out of the kitchen (because the tin pan we bought to cook it in didn’t survive the trip out of the oven). Beg, borrow or steal dishes (only buy if you must, but how often will you really use the roasting pan?), so review your menu and figure out what you need.
6. Plan the seating. We have a small table, but I figured it was about the same size as the table we ate at growing up (in fact, I think it is the table we ate at growing up!), we should still all fit, right? I didn’t take into account the fact that we are all much bigger than we were then, and so are our appetites. We didn’t have enough chairs (we supplemented them with our patio chairs, which were oh, so, comfortable), and we had to make trips to the kitchen to refill our plates, because there wasn’t any room left on the table. Next time -- buffet style on the couch, please.
7. Make ahead, but not too far ahead. I know this seems like common sense, but make anything you can ahead. Especially things which are served cold. However, for things that are served hot, put together what you can, but don’t cook it (unless you really don’t have any choice). We ended up trying to reheat so many things in the microwave that by the time the last one was done the first one was cold! Not to mention that we hadn’t kept track of the pans we were using to contain the items ahead, and had a big mess when we discovered the only big bowl we had was filled with mashed potatoes in the fridge. So we had to make the cold fruit salad in a big cook pot. It would have been easier if we had realized we could leave the mashed potatoes in the pot to reheat and made the salad (ahead) in the bowl.
8. Plan the storage. It sounds silly, but we ran out of containers for the leftovers. I found that plastic zip bags work really well, even for things like mashed potatoes and turkey. They also are more easily fit into a full fridge!
9. Plan the timing. I’d like to say I figured out how to do this, but I haven’t. Maybe theoretically. If you’ve made everything you can ahead, then you prepare everything you can the day of (while the turkey is cooking), all you have to do is figure out when to put each thing in to bake. Try to time them to be done at the same time as the turkey. So, you have to keep in mind that you need space in the oven for other items below the turkey, or a nice neighbor (whose oven you can use, maybe while they are at their parents). You also may have to adjust cooking times for the temperature at which the turkey is cooking. My parents always served everything, but put the rolls in when they pulled out the turkey. By the time the gravy was made, everyone had gathered and grace was said the rolls were ready! I wish that had occurred to us!
10. Last, but not least, you’re the cook—pay attention! I, not being used to
cooking at all, let alone cooking for the whole family at the holidays, got
involved in a television show and forgot about my steaming cauliflower. When
people started smelling something burning, I didn’t know what the smell could
be—after all, water doesn’t burn! By the way, the burnt taste is passed on to
the items being steamed, even if they aren’t actually burnt themselves!
All in all, we had a great Thanksgiving. Stressful, but great. A little burnt, but great. I don’t care what anyone says, the boxed gravy tasted great. Don’t be afraid to take short cuts, either. After all, it’s your holiday too!
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