Just a thought. As I sit here late Tuesday afternoon my mother-in-law and I have done some menu simplification. We’ve ended up having only 11 people (and we’re happy to see all of them, of course), and so in the end Jan was the voice of reason and said, no, we didn’t really need a turkey plus a turkey breast, plus three kinds of gravy, plus two kinds of stuffing. We have one vegan guest and I want to have items she can eat, so that’s a nice challenge. Here’s what we’re having, with links to recipes that are linkable:
Vegan mashed potatoes (brought by guest)
Vegan mushroom gravy (me)
Regular turkey gravy (me)
Roast turkey breast (me)
Sweet potato gratin (me—not a sweet sweet-potato dish, but savory)
Green beans with crispy shallots and mushrooms (me—not the creamy version)
Cranberry/orange sauce (me–simplest possible version with 1 pkg. cranberries, 1 navel orange, rind and all but with pith and seeds removed, and 1/2 cup sugar, all ground up in the food processor)
Whole-wheat rolls (me)
Some type of salad with a vegan dressing (me—I may wimp out on this one)
World’s Best Stuffing, with apples, sausage and mushrooms (me)
Brandied Roast Butternut Squash Pie (me)
Some type of pecan dessert (Jan)
I think we’ll have enough food!
I’m sure you have all of your menu planned and all of your shopping done. (That latter item is not true for me, alas. Tomorrow morning looms, and if there aren’t any green beans or mushrooms at King Soopers then I’ll have to regroup.) But you may not, or you may get an idea to tweak a dish. I decided this year that I wasn’t going to make the homemade version of the usual green-bean casserole partly because of the vegan guest but mainly because I watched the Alison Roman video shown below and her beans looked so good! I’ll include mushrooms, though. One principle to live by: You can never have too many mushrooms, with the amount limited only by how many you can stand to prep.
One last thought, and this one will stand you in good stead even if you don’t try any of my recipes, from the great Stella Parks, the pastry wizard who wrote BraveTart, a cookbook I will never use but which I admire. Her principle is applicable all across the board: If you never get the food to the right doneness, you’re in no danger of overdoing it: “You can’t overwhip it until it’s properly whipped. You can’t overcook it until it’s properly cooked. . . . I can’t overdo it until I’ve done it.”
In other words, we’re often so timid that we never get to the right point to begin with, whether in cooking or with life in general. So I was making a dessert once that had a caramel sauce (this was back in the days when I ate such things), and I was so afraid of burning the sugar that I didn’t let it get dark enough and we ended up with the wimpiest, palest caramel sauce you could possibly imagine. Just go for it!
Well, better quit. You all have a great Thanksgiving, and I’ll be back next week!