What's your Thanksgiving timetable?

oh lord i am already behind. i'm doing thanksgiving tomorrow. was gonna make my chocolate mousse (i don't do pumpkin pie!) tonight, but we got back from hiking around 7:45 and i have not had the energy. so... big day tomorrow!

Some of my family members will probably take charge of my grandma's kitchen for part of Thanksgiving. My grandma will keep walking into the kitchen (despite people trying to shoo her out) making sure nothing wrong happens and I'll probably hear he say "Ai-Yi-Yi" a couple times throughout the day. Then we'll eat Thanksgiving dinner around 5 pm

i'm working all day, then coming home to make a vegan (oh lol) thanksgiving dinner and share it over skype with our family in chicago, since we can't be there with them all.

Pumpkin pie finally in the oven! Tomorrow, all I have to do is bake the zucchini casserole (pre-made Tuesday), and prep some mashed potatoes (gonna try Julia Child's version, wooo, potato ricer and everything)...then cart them all over to my in-law's house.

Been using the Cook's Illustrated recipe for pumpkin pie every year for about 3 years now, and every year as I'm pouring hot pumpkin filling into a running food processor I think, "I really need to find another recipe." Love America's Test Kitchen but godammit they know how to make their recipes OTT.

Confited the legs and wings in olive oil yesterday. It is now cooled and in the refrigerator. My son has started getting into 'Good Eats' and saw the pumpkin pie episode with pie made with fresh pumpkin. He and my wife baked a pumpkin yesterday evening, cooled it and turned it into puree. The neat thing about the Good Eats recipe is that there is extra filling. When I saw that, the first thing that came to my mind is pumpkin ice cream!

VegemiteGrrl -- Too late for this year, but I know in the Alton Brown recipe and in the latest CI recipe they don't use a food processor, but the more traditional form of making a custard -- making the filling on the cooktop, tempering the eggs with the filling and returning to cook until thickened. They get around the food processor by straining the filling.

All that's left now is roasting the turkey breast (my wife will not knowingly eat confited anything) and yams, making the cranberry relish and my part of the T'day labor is done!

gonna light the smoker in 30 minutes, doing two birds; been brining them since Monday night (not just brine, but Jim Beam + fruit also). The chaos is underway.

It felt weird not to cook anything on T'day (I am doing the restaurant thing this year), so I made chocolate chip pecan cookies.

Hope there is something PUMPKIN at the restaurant! Turkey I am OK without, but I do really love stuffing and PUMPKIN confections.

. . . although not so much pumpkin pie, oddly. But pumpkin bread, muffins, mousse, custard, ice cream, cake, puree. . . big fan.

my meal came out pretty awesome. i think the stuffing was my favorite (kale, butternut squash, turkey sausage, focaccia, leeks). probably should have put the turkey in the oven later (i wasn't actually as behind as i thought!) because it was not quite warm enough by the time we ate. but, it came out even better than my practice chicken, so yay :)

my menu:
turkey
gravy (need to work on this)
stuffing (linked, bc everyone should try this at some point)
blanched green beans w/ citrus vinaigrette, dried cherries, and toasted pecans (served at room temp)
mashed golden potatoes
cranberry-orange sauce (bought from tj's)
chocolate mousse w/ bourbon-scented whipped cream, tangerine zest, and blackberries on top

gonna make a stock w/ the carcass probably tomorrow. today all i will do is eat leftovers and watch movies, i think?

in terms of timing, i think i started the mousse around 12:30 and cooked til about 4, then showered/got ready, and finished gravy and green beans after people got here.

All of my father's living siblings are in town for the holiday (there are five of them left out of the original dozen), so I made my super-crowd-pleasing carrot cake yesterday -- http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Tropical-Carrot-Cake-with-Coconut-Cream-Cheese-Frosting-107949

tehresa, those green beans sound really good

thanks! i started doing them that way a few years ago after i finally decided i was done w/ the mushroom soup/fried onion topping green bean casserole (a staple of childhood thanksgivings, but not as appealing to my adult palate). sometimes i've tossed in a little red onion, too. but i forgot this year.

that cake sounds nommmm.

It is totally nommmm -- it's almost not a carrot cake anymore, with coconut, crystallized ginger, macadamias, pineapple, etc -- it's got a lot of competing texture/flavor storylines happening at once, but it's ridiculously good

Apple tart is made
Pomegranates are juiced and juice is reducing for sauce
Serviettenknödel is ready for the hot water
Going to butterfly the pork tenderloin, and the red cabbage stuffing was made yesterday, so it will go in the oven as soon as it is stuffed

I don't know what serviettenknödel, but I'm pretty sure I would very much like to eat it!

All came out great!

quincie, here is the recipe I used:
http://www.germanfoodguide.com/recipes.cfm?recipe_number=172

Next time, though, I'm going to use my regular turkey stuffing recipe, and wrap it in foil, the cheesecloth was a bit of a mess.

tofurkey roast in the oven
mashed potatoes done
water boiling for minted peas
found mint sauce
cauli and brocc in dijon/tarrogon/lemon sauce in oven
lamb chops ready to fry

combo nz/vegan thanksgiving

Whoa a STUFFING LOG? Amazing!

xpost

About to head out for late night Chinese food. Have pumpkin and chocolate cakes awaiting our return.

waiting for bf to get home so we can share the last serving of chocolate mousse from last night...

Ok, all done cooking and eating for today.

Breakfast:
*quasi chilaquiles with potatoes instead of tortillas and extra vegetables
*fancy coffee i got for free at whole foods

Lunch:
*warm pear and spiced walnut salad (arugula/baby romaine) dressed with walnut oil and orange champagne vinegar
*toasted french bread with herbed goat cheese
*la chouffe spiced belgian golden ale

Dessert:
banana with chocolate sauce and dulce de leche/cajeta/caramel

Dinner:
* potato soup
* giant sea scallops
* beef tenderloin (fancy pasture raised, grass-fed beef!) with red wine/herb reduction
* brussels sprouts with garlic-white wine-butter sauce (had some lemon but forgot to put it on there)
* butter rolls (an annual tradition)
* herb butter

Dessert:
pumpkin pie with maple whipped cream

I've never felt obligated to eat turkey on Thanksgiving, so I always experiment. One year it was an ill-advised stuffed pork tenderloin. I've made turkey, but usually it's a time to do something classic, but different than what I normally make/eat.

giant sea scallops <3 <3 <3

whatcha doin this year, ilxors?

embarking on a new pumpkin pie - either plain old Libby's recipe off the back of the can, or possibly a Bobby Flay joint that has a graham cracker crust and a fluffier filling (still baked). leaning towards flay bcz it seems like a nice change and is still v simple/not fancy.

same old Zucchini Sausage casserole, every year by request of inlaws. I don't really like it much myself but they love it.

And a small sweet potato/apple gratin for my mother in law.

Apparently we're having steak for thanksgivign this year, lol. I don't really mind, as long as we get something good to eat.

This year I am going to Tulum and eating tacos.

Last year we went to the Bahamas and ate steaks cooked on a beach fire.

If I never did a "traditional" T'day again, I'd be OK with that.

I'm going to be completely diagonally across the country from my kitchen (hello Miami area!) at my son's house - chips and wine is my plan.

I do love my parent's stuffing. That I miss a little, but I can make it in a roasted chicken any ole time.

Mr Veg brined a turkey one year and then smoked it...goddamn that was good. I want that again.

so thanksgiving is friendsgiving and my peoples were too slow to get a "nice" turkey. it is from trader joe's and it is pre-brined. any idea how to deal w/ this, not that my orig brining idea is redundant?

you can sort-of-unbrine with distilled water. Mr Veg has done it, abt 5 gallons distilled water overnight will pull a fair bit of salt out.

-have started to incubate the turkey egg, hoping for good results

<3

Driving to my sister's house downstate, dinner at a lakeside resort, no cooking this year.

hi again -- it's more like, how do I additively work w/ the brining?

TJ's has some butter-under-the-skin thing it suggests, but that sounds Harder than it needs to be; also last year we did not baste or do any of that shit and it was DELICIOUS and TJs is suggesting we do that.

I'd leave the pre-brined bird alone and just stuff good things inside (either stuffing or at least some onion/celery/lemon slices/herbs) before roasting breast down for the first half of roasting, then flipping boobs up for the last part. I'm a big fan of the high-heat method of Barbara Kafka. I'm not a baster, and Alton Brown recently confirmed that it doesn't do squat except drop your oven temp.

I've never done this before. I'm a vegetarian and I've never cooked any poultry and now I'm making a turkey. What do I do!? If said turkey is purchased today do I just leave it out to thaw starting now. This is going to be a disaster. HELP.

It's going to be fine!!! Deep breaths! You can try leaving it in the fridge to thaw starting now - not advised to just leave it out. (I will admit to leaving out with no ill effects, also submerging in warm water in a panic.)

JtM - You could do some kind of dry rub? Or, just roast as is.

E - you just need a simple, easy method. here is a really simple recipe to roast a turkey. I've only done it once but it worked for me. (Make sure you have a thermometer)

http://www.chow.com/recipes/29040-basic-roasted-turkey

Uhh guess I'm going thermometer shopping tonight!

But thank you for the advice and link! :)

<3 good luck!

Thermometer's pretty U&K for meat cooking of all kinds. I got a digital one from a restaurant supply store that was ~$10 and works for making cheese and candy as well as meat.

Definitely get the thermometer, the rest is way easier than our moms/dads tried to make it out. Turkey is by far easier than mashed potatoes, green beans, pie, etc.

Is your turkey frozen? Not a problem if it is! Just pop it in the fridge and it will be fine for roastin on Thursday. Whether it is frozen or not at this point, a brine is U&K and also super easy. Just google Alton Brown Turkey Brining and you will be fine so long as you have salt, sugar, and water at your disposal.

TBH turkey itself is my least anticipated part of T'day; it is the stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pie that really float my boat. I could easily be a vegetarian at T'day and be perfectly fine (except for the gravy part). As for stuffing, I recently learned that Hillary Clinton and I yearn for the same Pepperidge Farm stuffing that we both grew up with:

http://www.pepperidgefarm.com/RecipeDetail.aspx?recipeID=60428

we have a thermapen, they are great but a little $$
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B003P601S2

I am putting together a menu now. I may have more questions tomorrow! So far I have turkey, brussels sproouts with parm and pine nuts, and mashed potatoes on the list. There will be more but I also don't want to kill myself. I am totally buying the pies. Can't even deal with having to make dessert too.

Oth ppl supposed to bring dessert iirc?

Nobody else is coming just the guests who are visiting but they've offered to buy the desserts so that works for me.

Yeah keep yr sides simple, and try wherever you can to make or prep as much as you can ahead of time so you can breathe easier on the day.

Make lists, use timers. I usually have two or three different timers going at once, all measuring different things.