How do your Thanksgiving preparations generally begin? Mine usually starts with an emptying of stored food from our garage freezer...stuff we harvested or made just a few months ago, much of which was stored specifically with Thanksgiving 2014 in mind.
I will be honest with you; the months of August through November are not pretty ones for my freezer. It seems like every day during summer I try and fit more and more of my harvest into it, and it's not pretty; we've had arguments erupt over freezer space. For instance, last week Big Ag brought home two extremely large bags of enchiladas from the cook at the ranch, and finding space for them was a huge issue. Big Ag wanted to save them for the kids (who are coming from college this week) and I wanted to eat them now -- just to save freezer space, of course. Of course.
Anyway, today began with taking out a couple of big bags of last summer's ollalieberries, most of the spinach and a quart of broth, among other things, which took my freezer from the "overflowing" category back to just "pretty damn full."
I'm going to begin fixing things today and putting them in the fridge so I can just pop them in the oven on Thursday and heat them back up. This will include my spinach casserole, maple pecan yams, cheesy potatoes, pies, cranberry sauce and stuffing. That will leave just the turkey and Yorkshire puddings to fix on Thanksgiving day. This is a strategy which will hopefully leave plenty of time for games of Cards Against Humanity, Scrabble, a long walk on the beach and maybe even a nap on the back patio, in the sunshine.
And I have already made my usual pronouncement that I am not helping with dishes. Three days of cooking is enough work for this "holiday," although even with all the work, I must confess that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year.
I love thanksgiving too. Sometimes my family mass-migrates to South Carolina; but this year my family is home. The other 2/3 of the extended family are away. So it's a rare opportunity for me to make a small Thanksgiving dinner. I've never had less than 15. This year will be seven. A nice change of pace that affords me the ability to focus more on the details and work at a relaxed clip. Like you, I begin planning for Thanksgiving in the spring with my garden. I freeze a big batch of herb butter in the summer and freeze my pie crusts when I have time off in the fall. The true kickoff for me is when I make the bread for the stuffing. I always do that on Sunday and it is the first official task for the holiday. I feel so lucky that I can take off a nice big chunk of time to prepare my family's Thanksgiving meal. All it takes is organization in October. I reach out to all my clients with a personal message and let them know my schedule. Everyone gets in before, and I'm free to cook. Yesterday I had an adventure driving deep in the country to pick up duck eggs, which I love for baking. I enjoyed every minute of the drive and truly thought about being thankful. Wishing you and your family a fabulous Thanksgiving. How I love the thought of Yorkshire pudding with turkey! I made a big batch of biscuit dough this morning. I snuck a few rounds off and baked them to test the quality. So good! Especially with cranberry relish.
ReplyDeletePS-you're braver than I re: dishes. I wouldn't trust my family to TOUCH my pots and pans and china! Let alone clean them!
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