Thanksgiving Dinner. Here’s Our Plan.

By Karen and Erica

Thanksgiving is upon us. Many of us will be traveling, hopefully. Many of us will be cooking. Everyone will be eating. (To make sure of that, we won’t forget to help out the local food services as best we can.)

Those that are cooking—what do you plan to cook? Let us know in the comments!

Here’s our plan.

First, we will get ourselves and our guests in the mood with cocktails. Sparkling cranberry sangria? Or maybe a maple old-fashioned.  Depends how cold it is.

• Turkey. For Thanksgiving dinner, obviously, turkey. We like our turkey spicy. We also think rubbing mayonnaise all over a bird before roasting is brilliant. The turkey will be moist and crisp. This recipe features spice and mayo. Perfect. Think how good the leftovers will taste. 
• Stuffing. Cornbread stuffing is the best, in our opinion. Here’s a recipe that looks good. Of course we cook the stuffing separately from the turkey, and hope that the stuffing too will be both moist and crisp.  We’re also thinking about adding sumac. Does a gorgeously citrusy spice go with cornbread? We think it might.  And we will bake the buttermilk cornbread ourselves, too, because … why not?
• Cranberries. Fruit, especially cranberries, play an important role at any Thanksgiving meal. We like to put equal amounts of raw cranberries, quartered oranges, skin and all (but seeded), maple syrup, to taste, sometimes a few walnuts, into a food processor and process til roughly mixed. We make it a few hours early and let it marinate. A perfect, tart complement to the rich turkey. 
• Vegetables. Brussels sprouts are a favorite, and we believe Dijon mustard was invented to go with Brussels sprouts. We would use more than this recipe calls for. A little syrup caramelizes them. (We love anything caramelized.) 
• If we need more greens, we might make green beams with cranberries and bacon. Sounds like a meal all by itself, but what’s Thanksgiving for if not for excess?

After all this, we will need a break before dessert. We will keep drinking champagne or zinfandel while we get ready.

• Dessert. We have always loved lemon curd, especially home-made. We recently discovered cranberry curd, which makes a brilliantly red tart. You could add creamy vanilla ice cream, but that might be gilding the lily.
• For another option, pumpkin cake with brown butter icing. Brown butter seduces us every time, and this combination sounds amazing.

Of course we will do our best to design a festive table, all red and orange and  gold, with some of those branches with little red berries, but low, so we can talk across the table. Maybe an orange paper tablecloth and gold napkins? With gold votive candles? And a small foiled turkey at every place? Or is all this gold over the top? No, of course not!

Having dressed the table, we will now have to dress ourselves. We don’t want to look like the foiled turkeys, exactly, but we don’t want them to show us up, either. We need something shiny and fun. But also easy to wear while cooking. A 1950s gold lame sheath dress? With a crazy green organza apron? Seems ideal!

Obviously, we do want to serve good food in a festive atmosphere, but the real point is to have family and friends near, grateful to be together. We hope you and yours will gather as well, and that you have a warmly wonderful day.