As much as I love to host Thanksgiving for a few or a crowd, it is truly a labor of love. It takes a lot of effort and patience for the day to seem effortless and calm! The Fancy Pants Kitchen approach is to find recipes that can be made completely in advance, if possible, or to prepare as much as I can ahead of Thanksgiving.
A key hack to making everything run smoothly is a timeline. I use a timeline starting at about two weeks ahead of Thanksgiving and I put one together for the day of. I refer to them constantly to make sure that I don’t miss a beat!
This year, I am featuring recipes that are fairly easy and quick and most important, will allow you to enjoy the holiday along with everyone else.
When I’m planning my timeline for the weeks ahead of the holiday, I will make anything that says it can be done in advance. In this case, the cranberry sauce, cornbread and gravy can all be made one or two weeks in advance. Most of the other recipes can be prepped one to two days in advance. Gotta love that!
I’m a big post-it note girl but for my favorite holiday, I stepped up my game to my golf notepad!
So this is what my initial timeline looks like. I will also do a grocery shopping timeline that will include any ingredients I need, along with flowers, wine, soft drinks and table decor. I confess that I can go to the market many times over the course of the week or two before Thanksgiving as I want my ingredients to be very fresh.
I will also set my table a day or two in advance (2 days is ideal) but I leave the plates until the day of. They will be stacked on the buffet table.
My timeline for Thanksgiving Day is the most important tool I have on that day. It is a two-part process. The first is what can I do early in the day and what needs to happen with the actual cooking.
Much to the chagrin of my guy, we eat relatively late (6:00 pm). We are transplanted Canadians who regard this meal as an evening dinner (as my daughter Haley asks, “what else would it be?”) whereas he is a transplanted mid-westerner who is used to eating in the early afternoon, watching football and then eating again later. Wayyyy too much food for my Canadian sensibilities!
So, I work backwards. If I want to serve at 6:00 pm, for example, when does the turkey need to come out of oven or off of the grill so that there’s enough time for it to rest and for me to carve it? Figure a minimum of 20 minutes for each part of that.
The minute the turkey comes out of the oven, the sweet potatoes and green bean casserole (that’s already prepped) can go in. With this recipe, it’s not an issue since we are grilling the turkey, but if you decide to make a traditional oven-roasted turkey, this is what you would do. And so on…
I back into the entire timeline. But, it’s important that every recipe be on the timeline. Otherwise, something gets forgotten.
One other hack that is mandatory for me (but you do you) is that I don’t have a cocktail until I’m ready to serve. The last thing I need is to screw it all up because I was a little looped!
Last thing…have fun! Enjoy your guests and don’t worry if something gets a little messed up. These are all people that love you and appreciate that you are doing this so they don’t have to!
Happy Thanksgiving…I appreciate you all for being the best readers in the world. I am so grateful for your support throughout the years and wish you the best of holiday seasons!
Hugs,
Francine
