Thanksgiving Dinner Made Quick and Easy

Thanksgiving Dinner Made Quick and Easy 

Growing up, the one thing I remember the most during Thanksgiving isn't all the great meals I had and what they consisted of. What I remember the most was my Mom and Grandma staying up all night, preparing the meals, waking up in the morning with them still making food and being exhausted afterward, cleaning up while everyone else relaxed, watched TV and took naps. 

 

The very first Thanksgiving meal I made was a disaster waiting to happen. I thought I needed to stay up all night long, getting deserts ready, baking pies, doing everything that my Mom and Grandma had done. 

 

After a few years I finally realized I get more done after preparing some things ahead of time and getting a good nights sleep. Things you can do ahead of time to make the big day and the big meal a lot easier on yourself are what I am putting on this list. 

 

 Make a menu of everything that you want to have for your big dinner. This way you know what is going to need to be done and you aren't going to forget to make anything that you were trying to remember with the fifty other things you are trying to remember. 

 

You can peel and cut potatoes up to three days ahead of time. You need to find a big enough bowl that you can cover them completely up with. Make sure there are not any of the potatoes sticking up out of the water and cover the bowl, preferably with a lid but you can use plastic wrap. 

 

Having an awesome salad? Two or three days ahead of time you can chop the lettuce, slice the cucumbers, onions, peppers, cheese, carrots and anything else you plan on putting in the salad. Store everything separately in zip lock bags, in the refrigerator with labels and store all together. Make a list with every bag you have prepared so nothing is missing when it comes time to make the salad. Salads are something you want to make the same day so it tastes fresh. 

 

Apple pie can be made up to a month ahead. Don't bake it, just freeze it and pop it in the oven in the morning as soon as you wake up in the morning of the meal. 

 

Pumpkin pie can be made up to a week before. Bake it as usual and refrigerate it, covered. Put it in the oven at 250 for about 45 minutes to re-heat it. Stuffing can be made a couple days ahead. Refrigerate it and re-heat it right before the meal. 

 

I have a good set of china that I like to use for special occasions and I always set it out a day or two ahead of time, with the silverware and wine glasses that I don't usually use. I cover it all with a dish towel or two to keep it clean. 

 

Take your turkey out of the freezer a day or two ahead of time and thaw it in the refrigerator. I usually have a 20 -25 pound turkey and it seems as though the turkey is never completely thawed if I wait until the day before. Cooking the turkey overnight like people used to in the old days isn't any good. It's too easy to make everyone sick by cooking at a low temperature. I cook the big bird according to the directions on the packaging and the weight of the big bird. Usually it isn't an all day event but it does take a lot of time to cook.

 

When it comes time to say what everyone is thankful for, I always say that I am thankful that I have a great family that helps me clean up after all the hard work I have done and I get a lot of help afterwords. This way, I can sit down, watch the game and take a nap if I want to and spend at least half of my day relaxing. 

 

Enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner!

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New Christmas Traditions

New Christmas Traditions 

Making Your Own Traditions for Your Own Family 

Family traditions for the holidays are great, some we just don't keep doing because they were someone else's tradition from long ago and it just doesn't fit in our lifestyle. 

Making up our own traditions and having the kids looking forward to something they helped start is a lot of fun! Every year at Christmas while my kids were young, we came up with our own little traditions that were fun and kept my kids busy while on vacation from school and they were never saying that they were bored. 

One of their favorite traditions, no matter how old they were, was making Christmas cookies and it wasn't just the decorating and eating them that was the big deal! On Christmas Eve we would put two dozen cookies in two different tins with a few wrapped chocolate candies and little candy canes, we would all get in the car and go on a quest for the best decorated houses in the neighborhood. One of our neighbors would end up with one of the prize cookie tins and one of our relatives would end up with the other after everyone in the car voted on which was the best. 

Sometimes the weather gets the best of us and we would end up staying inside at home during the days off of school so besides making cookies we would string popcorn for the Christmas tree, make paper chains that represented the days left until Christmas, clean out toys that were no longer played with or broken and fix clean and donate them to non-profit organizations that could give them away. 

Making hot chocolate was another favorite but we never made plain old hot chocolate, the kids would make their own recipes by adding different things to each cup that we made. Adding a candy can for a stirrer, putting crushed candy cane on top of whipped cream, adding a couple drops of candy flavoring like vanilla or peppermint, marshmallows and popcorn in hot chocolate might not sound good to you, but it did to my son when he was five! Letting the kids add to their hot chocolate what they thought would be good was fun! Usually a small sample cup was necessary just in case something turned out to really not taste good at all. Letting the kids use their imagination and a few ingredients out of the pantry was interesting, entertaining and someone always came up for the winning concoction that everyone liked and while watching the traditional shows and movies and then we all got our own sample to enjoy. 

Helping another family was always something that we liked to do; it wasn't always easy to help another family on our own so we would help pick a few families with our church to help. Collecting and packing items for a family was always something that always paid off when the kids seen the faces of families that we delivered food and gifts to. 

One year there was a family that didn't have a tree, their tree was a paper one that the kids had cut out and colored and taped to the wall and we were able to acquire a fake, already decorated tree for them, delivered it Christmas Eve and we had never seen so many tears of joy until then, especially when the parents could tell their children that Santa would definitely be paying them a visit that night. 

 The kids were always proud that their dad was in the Marine Corps. and we started filling up care boxes to send to military members that were over seas and not able to get things that they liked, wanted and needed. We didn't have to know anyone that is in the service, sending to random people was satisfying enough knowing that someone who was without family for the holidays was going to get a little something special.

My kids are starting their own little families and are keeping some of the traditions, making changes to old ones to make them even better or mixing a couple together, making them their very own.