Thanksgiving Tips, Recipe Round-Up, and The Holiday Bundle is Live at EHK
I'm here to help keep the food stress to a minimum.
I was going to post a recipe this week that was unrelated to Thanksgiving, but I’ve only been fielding Thanksgiving recipe and cooking questions all week, so I’m not going to try to distract from the task at hand.
Some tips I’ve learned from making thousands of Thanksgiving dishes, from hosting, to guesting, to pre-testing recipes, as this is the most community-based meal, I advise leaning on your community instead of taking on everything yourself:
-Outsource as much as possible to people who know how to cook. This is self-explanatory, but don’t overwhelm yourself by taking on too much. Spread the burden of the day among the people who want to help out by bringing more dishes.
-Enlist the people who don’t cook to bring the wine and do the dishes. Listen, it’s pricey to host a dinner, even a potluck. If someone can’t or won’t cook, they can bear some financial responsibility or put in some sweat equity.
-Along the same lines, enlist a friend to be the bartender to help serve the cocktails/pre-dinner drinks, if you’re doing those before you serve dinner. It will take so much off your plate to have help in that department. Then that same person can help get all the water glasses filled on the table.
-If you are needing special food due to food allergies and you don’t communicate and make arrangements with your host ahead of time, make sure to bring some things you can eat.
-If you are a guest, BRING YOUR DISH FULLY COOKED. I can’t stress this enough. Getting a little oven time to warm your dish before serving is perfectly acceptable, but do NOT bring your ingredients and expect to take over the kitchen of your host and make your dish there. You will screw up the timing of everything your host has planned.
-If you are the host, write down everything you are planning on cooking/prepping/decorating and cross it off as you go along. This includes dish components in order by the days you will complete them (for example, “make pie crust Wednesday morning, bake pie Wednesday night”). This seems like over kill, but writing the game plan down keeps you from forgetting ingredients and having to run to the store last minute during the rush, and you will make a more realistic timeline if you prep with writing it out in advance.
-Do your best not to stress! Thanksgiving is a LOT of effort for about 10-15 minutes of actual eating. Enjoy yourself, and ask for help when you need it.
Any other tips you guys have? Put them in the comments below!
Right here are more Thanksgiving recipes than you can shake a stick at, but first, we are having our first ever Black Friday sale over at Eat Happy Kitchen.
The sale is just the holiday gift bundle, but it’s still a great deal! It’s the cutest gift bundle with sauce, spices, and merch, including the coveted EHK tea towel, for $120, including free shipping to the lower 48 states (the regular price is $150). So go grab one while they last as we only made 100 gift bundles for this season.
CLICK HERE TO FIND 13 NSNG/LOW CARB AND 6 LOW SUGAR, GLUTEN FREE THANKSGIVING RECIPES!
I hope you all have a magical Thanksgiving, or at least I hope you can relax a little. For everyone who has to work or can’t be with family or friends, I’m sending you some extra love. I am thankful for all of you, Happies.
XOXO
Anna The Turkey
Doing the Lords work here! We love the Queen of all Cooking!
Thank you for these great tips and all the wonderful recipes. I wouldn’t be able to stay on this way of eating if it wasn’t for you, your cookbooks and recipes and the great people on your fb page! I’ll be making some of your recipes again this year and since the turkey will be cooking at 325° for 4 hours, I was wondering if any of the sides which cook at 350° for anywhere from 20 min to 1hr, can be made in advance. Partially cooked or completely cooked , refrigerated or frozen. In particular: wild mushroom green beans, stuffing muffins, and sweet potatoes with pecans. Thanks again Anna!