Thanksgiving Plans

[Owlie]

But do you spatchcock it? You need a WHOLE lot more horizontal space for that.

A food-service-sized baking sheet would be big enough, but I'm not sure one would fit in my oven, and I know I'm not buying one.

Yeah, spatchcocking a turkey of that size would probably require more space than would fit in our oven. We just roast the thing whole.

[redrhodie]

DBF and my best friend are cooking, and my brother is coming over, so just 4 of us. I'm looking forward to it. We have really great vegetarian food, and I can stay in my pj's (or is it pjs ) if I want to.

[Giulianna23]

We are meeting at my oldest brother house like every year. I will try to stick with the healthy stuff.

It looks like its going to be above 50 degrees after mid morning tomorrow so If so..I will be riding my bike before noon . Maybe 10-15 miles to get my workout for the day. Don't know if I should go to the Monon or stay around my area..I believe the traffic will be very light at that time so I may stay around my neighborhood. I have some backroads that are pretty quiet on the Holidays.

[owlice]

bmccasland, be patient with yourself as you figure out how to redo your holidays (and you will figure out how to redo them to suit you, I promise!).

My Thanksgiving holiday tradition has evolved to be a several-hour bike ride, followed (sometimes) by a steak dinner (filet mignon, grilled mushrooms, asparagus, Béarnaise sauce, salad, and a baked potato, and oh, yes, I use the Béarnaise sauce on everthing except the salad!) with red wine. This meal is easy and comparatively quick to cook, so I'm not spending all day in the kitchen, and it's a meal I really really really like. (I usually make it just for holidays.) And after dinner, I do a ton of online Christmas shopping!

I look forward to this! My exH#1 (yes, yes, I get to number them now) has a family that cherishes the Big Family Dinner, so for Thanksgiving, even if it's my turn to have the kid with me, I think it's good for the kid to go to those Big Family Dinners. The kid and I will have our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday; I'm not cooking tomorrow. It's taken some years for my tradition to evolve, and sometimes I do do something different (volunteer somewhere, go to a friend's), but now this is what I usually do.

(My attitude is that my happiness is up to me. On my most recent birthday I felt pretty sad, I went out and bought Georgetown Cupcakes, called a 20-minute unit meeting, asked people to bring their own napkins, and we sat around eating cupcakes, my treat. Best meeting ever, and it completely turned my day around! I now have these meetings every four-six weeks. )

[7rider]

Another one with no family in the area - and we'll be driving north to visit them for Christmas. So, Thanksgiving will be just DH and me. Hope to get out for a run in the a.m., and/or a bike ride.

I braved a grocery store tonight, now that we're confirmed as solo for the holiday. I bought the smallest (11#) "free range" fresh turkey the local store had, and cut it in half. Half is in a pan in the fridge for tomorrow. Half went in the freezer for another day. Plans are for a fire (if it's cold enough), a bottle of wine, turkey, sweet potato (yes...one will do fine for the 2 of us), and green beans. Even got this tiny little caramel apple pie. They didn't have half pies (I prefer pumpkin...DH goes for pecan), and the only slices were of cheesecake - which I would've been all over, but I don't think DH likes 'em, and I couldn't justify all four of them.

[Catrin]

I typically have Thanksgiving dinner at a friends house from church and will be doing so tomorrow. I take beer to share, so that even fits in with our TE Beer Fest!

I also hope to ride tomorrow, outside, for the first time in almost two weeks. Either neck, weather or work has kept me on spinning bike or trainer recently. I am hoping it won't be overly windy so I can hit my empty cornfields, but we will see. If nothing else should be able to do that Friday even if I must ride in the park tomorrow.

[marni]

I have an oven that works once again! while it does away with my plan to possibly take a short ride while engineer husband, mathematician son, linguist DIL, sound editor daughter and computer nerd friend all try and figure out how to either butterfly the turkey or deep fry it, it does mean that I will not be dealing with a variety of cooking and or housekeeping disasters and that the whole house should stay more or less in tact.

Turkey is currently being brined in a in maple syrup apple cider brine. happy holidays everyone!

marni

[Koronin]

It's just hubby and myself for Thanksgiving, actually for any and all holidays. Both of us basically prefer it that way. One reason we like being several hours away from any family. Although I prefer the distance from Charlotte better than here. In Charlotte it was 8 hrs to my family and 4 to his. Now it's about 2 to 2 and a half to his and 12 to mine. I'm actually one of those people who actually volunteered to work holidays to avoid having to spend the entire day with family. Then when I moved since I was single I volunteered to work holidays because well, I was by myself. After I was married the one year hubby had to be out of town over Thanksgiving a great friend/neighbor had me spend Thanksgiving at their house. I really enjoyed it spending it with her family. To this day I truly appreciated her inviting me to spend it with them.

[WindingRoad]

Well I made it the largest part of my route to my parents house. Had to get a bailout from my Mom with 8 miles to go due to a persistent rotweiller and a slight wrong turn :-( Must remember to go another route next time, soooooooo many dogs it was rediculous! It sucks that if there are no cars to harass u then u have to defend yourself against everyones dogs :-( Thankfully I wasn't bitten by any of them but I did have to mace a couple. Exhausting ride for mostly the wrong reasons but nonetheless I got a heck of a workout and I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner :-)

[Catrin]

Yikes WindingRoad, sorry to hear you had to bail so close to the end because of dogs! So very glad to hear you didn't get bitten or crash because of them I had wondered after what you said on facebook...but wasn't going to ask there. Enjoy your dinner and time with family

I've been single a long time, and live far away from family by choice. I typically am invited to spend Thanksgiving with a friends family from church and I always appreciate that.

[Crankin]

We've been doing Thanksgiving with friends for about 9 years. Since I no longer speak to my relatives who live in the area, that's it. My son who lives here is always included, even if we are going to our friends' house. In fact Thanksgiving is one of the reasons we stopped seeing my relatives. The one year my exchange student was living with us and I really wanted to have a traditional Thanksgiving, we went to my aunt's house. My cousin had to have Kosher food, which was all bought and prepared, not home cooked, and we had to eat on paper plates, since my aunt's home is not Kosher. The food sucked and and it was pretty much the worst Thanksgiving I've had. Thankfully, Richard came to visit us for Thanksgiving in 2007, so he got the real deal.

[goldfinch]

My parents are long gone and the spouse and I have no kids. But for years we have joined with my siblings and maybe some cousins for thanksgiving. We are not this year as we are back down in Iowa on the first state of going south.

I miss them.

We are making chicken soup with dumplings. We cooked the chicken in the slow cooker all night long. Now it is cooling and in a few hours I"ll debone it. My spouse has a friend here in town who just got out of the hospital. We will bring him soup, visit for a short bit, and go home.