If you’re stuck for inspiration on what to cook for your Thanksgiving feast, don’t despair. The New York Times offers a handy menu generator that offers 16 recipes at a time based upon your party’s size, cooking experience, dietary restrictions, preference in level of tradition and most importantly, the time you have left to cook. Applying the slider settings just 48 hours ahead of the feast, for example, suggests recipes for stuffing, mushroom risotto, creamed onions and brandied pumpkin pie. Get started now, and your guests will think you slaved away in the kitchen for weeks!
Tag: Thanksgiving
The Clock Is Ticking on Thanksgiving Prep
Thanksgiving is just three days away, so if you’re hosting a feast, it’s getting down to the wire to start on the menu. A frozen 12-pound turkey takes 36 hours to defrost, so that should go into the refrigerator immediately. You can also beat the crowds by shopping for perishable ingredients — fresh herbs and vegetables, salad greens, whipping cream, etc. — early in the week and during the off-peak hours, says the Food Network’s Thanksgiving Countdown Calendar. Tomorrow, you can start prepping dishes that will reheat well on the big day such as casseroles and soups.
Declutter Before Your Thanksgiving Feast
Hosting Thanksgiving can be a huge responsibility. The major menu items — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and so on — aren’t incredibly hard to prepare, but can often be messy and time-consuming. Add to that the need to make your home inviting and presentable for the feast, and the holiday can quickly get to be an unwieldy chore.
If you declutter your home ahead of the feast, however, you will likely find all of the tasks on your list will suddenly become more manageable. When you don’t have to trip over stacks of stuff you don’t need before your guests arrive, your stress will dissipate fast.
The kitchen will see heavy use during the Thanksgiving feast, so make sure it offers the chef a streamlined workspace. Apartment Therapy recommends eliminating clutter by paring down the numbers of duplicate utensils in your drawers. Keep a maximum of three spatulas, three whisks, one can opener and one corkscrew, it says, and donate the rest.
Now, throw away junk that’s collected in the kitchen such as condiment packets, takeout menus, orphaned Tupperware lids and extra glass jars. Toss old rags and sponges, used candles, and expired canned goods and spices. Finally, get rid of anything chipped or less-than-perfect, and file away that refrigerator artwork to make space for a new selection of masterpieces.
The second phase of the kitchen streamlining project should store occasional-use items such as party platters, pie tins, apple peelers, melon ballers, cake stands and pastry bags somewhere other than the kitchen. You may need some of these things for Thanksgiving, the story notes, but taking inventory ahead of time will help you find them exactly when they’re needed.
To keep the home clutter-free for the big day, The Spruce suggests creating a complete “game plan” for the feast and keeping the decorations minimal. Arrangements of mums, fresh fruit, shell nuts and fall gourds make for a simple, seasonal scheme. If you already have lots of Thanksgiving-themed decorations, consider which may be starting to look a bit shabby and get rid of them.
As you streamline your kitchen and decorate your space ahead of the holiday, set aside those kitchen utensils, appliances and other goods you no longer need and contact ClothingDonations.org for a pickup. Before you know it, your house will be free of some of that clutter and full of family and friends — and that’s what makes lasting memories.
Make Room for Your Black Friday Buys
Since the advent of the indoor mall, the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — has become a holiday unto itself. The overwhelming, all-American desire to get a good deal on holiday gifts has made the day a huge event for consumers. And retailers are only too happy to oblige, since many chains look to the last two months of the year as their biggest opportunity to command a profit for the year.
Retail stores expect to post $3 billion in sales this Friday, up 11.5% from 2015. And Black Friday’s online corollary, Cyber Monday, is set to match those figures. In fact, Black Friday is no longer just a single day; Amazon launched 35 straight days of “Black Friday” promotions last week, offering a new deal every five minutes through Dec. 22. And eBay, Macy’s, Target and Walmart aren’t far behind; many retail stores will open when the sun sets on the Thanksgiving feast.
As you head to the malls and superstores this year to get a great deal on a big-screen TV or Playstation VR system, don’t forget that you’ll have to make room for those bargain finds. Because for every people-pleasing gift of Black Fridays past, there’s a sweater that just didn’t fit, a toy nobody liked or a countertop appliance that was used once before getting shoved to the back of a closet.
Bag up that unwanted apparel and other items and call ClothingDonations.org for a pickup. They’ll be taken to a thrift shop and resold, putting them into the hands of people who use and appreciate them while funding programs that benefit the nation’s veterans. You’ll earn a tax deduction, and be secure in the knowledge that the deals you found on previous Black Fridays and abandoned won’t add to landfills.
You’ll also give thanks for the newfound space you can use to hide any deals you find this Black Friday and Cyber Monday before you wrap them up for gift-giving. And that will make for happy shopping and a happy holiday!
Plan Ahead for a Stress-Free Thanksgiving
Hosting a holiday feast? Plan your menu now to ease the stress. Divide your grocery list into perishables and nonperishables and buy the latter this week; closer to Thanksgiving Day, pick up the produce, dairy products and bird. Make space for it all by cleaning out any unused or expired leftovers and condiments—just like you would clean your closets when you donate to ClothingDonations.org.