Last year we made a simple Thanksgiving family lunch, since we were more or less in lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Things weren’t looking much better this year, but we wanted to host a proper Thanksgiving and decided to have a “2G+” celebration with two other families, each of which brought a toddler/baby along, on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Since we have a toddler ourselves, the group dynamic worked really well.
What we underestimated was the amount of coordination it took to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for 6 adults + kids, all while wrangling said toddler!
F planned well and took Friday off to get a lot of preparation done. In the end, it took us a good day or so to prepare everything, and we were perhaps a bit overambitious with the menu, but it all turned out deliciously and everyone seemed to have a good time. I’ll spare more narrative, since this post is mainly to remind myself what we did, and include what we made below:
- Mains
- F salt-brined an entire turkey, roasted it, and it was delicious
- U & V made our sweet potato casserole recipe
- This bread stuffing – it was a hit!
- Simple boiled green beans
- Brussels sprout & tomato salad
- Vegetarian & non-vegetarian gravy (F made the latter with homemade stock – yum)
- Desserts
- I made cranberry upside-down cake, as usual
- We made two pumpkin pies: Emma’s recipe, plus this one that F’s boss had recommended. The latter was too sweet for us (we even reduced the sugar in the recipe!), but we liked the addition of black pepper to the spice mix.
- F & E baked a delicious apple pie
- Whipped cream, of course!
And with the leftovers? F made delicious turkey-stuffing meatballs and Brussels sprouts mashed potatoes the day after the feast. They fueled me well for the Advents-Aaseelauf. I continued to enjoy the cranberry sauce on bread with cheese throughout the following week.