Like many of you, we are adapting our Thanksgiving plans this year.  We discussed our ideas during a recent “walk & talk” session - which, together with Zoom, has had to replace our weekly lunches - and found we are taking three different approaches to planning the meal portion of Thanksgiving.

Thip

Thip is used to hosting a large crowd on Thanksgiving.  She typically spends the entire day cooking, serving, and cleaning.  While she loves hosting, she is looking forward to enjoying a much less intense Thanksgiving Day this year.  For the meal, she is planning to prepare all of the same dishes, just halving the recipes.  Her dinner will include turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and sweet potatoes.  She ordered two pies from her favorite local farm – apple and pecan, which she cannot wait to try.

Stacey

With a greatly reduced crowd at Stacey’s house and a family who doesn’t really love the typical Thanksgiving dishes, Stacey is considering revamping her Thanksgiving menu.  Her current thought is to kick it up a notch and prepare Nantucket bay scallops and lobster for her family of four.  She will round it out with mashed potatoes, Brussel sprouts, corn casserole, green bean casserole, and stuffing.as sides with apple and pecan pies for dessert.  If she goes this route, the kids will have to suck it up and get dressed up to enjoy this special holiday feast. 

Candice

So, Candice cried about Thanksgiving back in June when her husband informed her we would still be dealing with the pandemic and wouldn’t be able to have houseguests.  Even so, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that she realized her Thanksgiving would drop down to 4 people because her oldest is abroad for college.  Factor in the fact that her two other kids’ ideas of a Thanksgiving meal is the turkey and the rolls and she realized she would have to make some changes to her traditional menu.  Since there are too many dishes she and her husband enjoy for Thanksgiving, she is planning to prepare Thanksgiving dinner over the course of the week.  She will prepare and serve green bean casserole, butternut squash, sweet potato casserole, and cranberry sauce earlier in the week.  On Thanksgiving, rather than focusing on one large meal, her family will eat turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and salad, along with the leftovers from earlier in the week, for lunch and dinner.  She is also ordering truffle mac and cheese and pumpkin bisque from a local restaurant because they sound too delicious to pass up.  They will enjoy pumpkin pie and bread pudding for dessert.

We’ve included more information about our plans for celebrating in our other recent posts. How are you planning to celebrate this year?