Thanksgiving Eats: The Menu

I love Thanksgiving. It’s easily my favorite holiday, even though there are no presents. You know why? Because there is just so. Much. Food.

I grew up Italian, so Thanksgiving dinner was always a big gluttonous festival of foods. Even when my parents moved to Florida and my grandparents had passed away and my whole family was in shambles and it was just the three of us, my mom would always cook for like eleventy billion people and then send me home with tons of Tupperware filled with mounds of every dish.

I like carrying forth traditions, so I also cook for eleventy billion people, even though there are usually only four of us — Mister Mister, my dad, and my dad’s missus. This year, the verdict’s out on whether there will be two or four of us — my dad’s step daughter usually spends the holidays with her in-laws, but there was some… um, stuff that happened, so now there are no in-laws, and she may want to spend the holiday with her mom. Fair enough. I’ll still pork out like a proud preggo. Particularly now that our kitchen is humongoid compared with the shoebox I was cooking in last year.

So what exactly do I make every year? There are some variables, but the menu is more or less set.

Turkey

Easily my least favorite part of the dinner, it’s still a must. Maybe I’ll just buy a smaller turkey this year. I’m still searching for the perfect recipe, but here’s a nice basic one from Queen Martha. Online friends turned me onto this Alton Brown recipe for a brined roast turkey, so I’ll be trying that this year. The bonus is it requires me to stick it in the fridge to thaw on Monday instead of my typical Tuesday, so it should be totally thawed by Thanksgiving morning.

Photo by tuchodi via Flickr

Gravy

I make my own. It’s awesome. I use Martha’s Pan Gravy recipe.

Photo by Miia Ranta via HubPages

Cranberry sauce

As much as I love the jellied stuff (comfort food), this recipe for Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce is just the best, and pretty easy.

Photo by MGF/Lady Disdain via Flickr

Stuffing

No Stovetop Stuffing! I made this Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing last year and it’s now The Stuffing For All Years (not pictured above).

Photo by Meng He via About.com

Broccoli casserole

My mom found this recipe in some magazine or got it from a friend or whatever, and made it for the family like 30 years ago, and everybody thought it would be gross and wouldn’t eat it. So she forced a big spoonful onto everybody’s plate (I totally am my mother’s daughter). And then next year everybody was begging her to make it again. So it was her recipe, and now it’s mine. As much as I want it every single day of the year, we keep it Thanksgiving special.

I’ll be sharing the recipe in a future post, so stay tuned!

Photo by Kathryn Hill via The Kitchn

Mashed potatoes

Natch. I don’t really have a go-to recipe, I always forget each year which one I used the year before and forget to print it out and save it. And throughout the year I always just end up using a different recipe. Yeah, I need a recipe to make mashed potatoes. Sue me.

Photo by plasticrevolver via Flickr via The Circle of Moms Cookbook

Corn

Just because. Dude, my recipe is sooooo good: I buy a bag of frozen corn, and cook it. Wow. I’m a culinary genius.

Photo by my_amii via Flickr

Sweet potatoes

Potato Part Deux. Because you have to. Last year I tried some new sweet potato casserole thing I found online and it was TERRIBLE. It didn’t cook the sweet potatoes at all and we didn’t even try to eat it. This year, I’m hunting for some approximation of how my mom made it: Simple, with the sweet potatoes peeled and halved and cooked with some sort of buttery maple glaze thing going on. Any ideas?

Photo by Wally Hartshorn via New Frugality

Appetizer: cheeseballs

This is my all-time favorite party recipe. I usually only make two, ditching the cheddar cheese one. They are so effing good — a perfect starter to gorging. I use Martha’s Cheese Balls Three Ways.

Photo via MarthaStewart.com

Appetizer:  cashews

Again with the Martha: Chili Lime Cashews.

Photo via MarthaStewart.com

Dessert: French silk pie

I don’t make this shit. We buy it from Perkins or Village Inn. Has to be one of those. “Chocolate cream pie” is NOT the same thing.

Photo via Rolling Sin

So there you have it — my “it could feed a third-world country but instead we shove it into 4 mouths, pick off it for 2 days, and throw out the rest, American style” Thanksgiving dinner.

Now I’m hungry (even after eating three breakfasts this morning).