It’s that time of year again! It’s time to unveil my menu and meal prep strategy for Thanksgiving! If you’re new around here you might not know about my love obsession with Thanksgiving — it is my FAVORITE holiday. It’s an entire day dedicated to my two favorite things. Cooking and Eating. So I like to post what I’m eating, how I’m cooking it and when I’m cooking certain parts of it!
And because it’s my favorite holiday I really, really like to prep and get organized! It’s the best way to stay in budget and on track. There’s nothing worse than missing out on the eating part of the day because the cooking part is taking entirely too long!
Thanksgiving this year is just the two of us {I think…} or is it four, if you count the dog and cat … they both eat Chicken/Turkey! So we’re going to have tons of leftovers {woohoo Dinner for a few extra nights!!} And I’m also going to be taking some stuff to my parents house the following day which will have little ** next to it! I’ll post some pictures of the food and state of my kitchen a separate post after I make it all next week!
Also — we’re highly nontraditional. So nontraditional that it’s almost funny. So our menu won’t look like most peoples. But heyy — it’s going to be yummy either way 😉
If you want to see what we made for a Mini-Thanksgiving Last year check out this post!
2013 Menu
• Chicken Salad
• Roasted Sweet Potatoes
• Stuffed Mushrooms
• Guacamole w/ Bacon {Guacamole Recipe in Book!}
• Fresh Salsa
• Some kind of sausage / kielbasa fried in butter
• Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese
• Deviled Eggs {Recipe in the book!}
• Coconut Chocolate Sweet Potato Cookies {Recipe Coming Soon!}
• Almond Butter Truffles***
• Grape leaves***
• Bark ***
*** = taking to my parents house so we’re only going to have a few, except for the bark — that is only for my Dad! It’s his favorite holiday treat!
Prep/Cooking Schedule:
• Make Chicken Stock and use Chicken Meat for Chicken Salad and make Chicken Soup for dinner that night!Tuesday:
• Make Hard Boiled Eggs
{I could make the Truffles Today … but neither of us have will power when it comes to these things. Soooo the later I make them the better!}
Wednesday:
• Make Almond Butter Truffles
• Prep Leaves for Grape Leaves, Chop up Herbs and onions
• Make Chicken Salad
• Really easy No Chopping Required Dinner Tonight! I’m cooking + we have an engagement shoot!
Thursday {The Big Day!}:
In order of how it’ll probably happen in my kitchen!
~6:00 am – Primal Puggle and Evil Kitty will get into an epic battle of wake Mommy up to get breakfast, I swear they work together on this one.
–somewhere in between here and 9:00 am I get some Green Tea and try not to eat any truffles, which I’ll fail at and sneak one 😉 —
~9:00 am – Watch the Parade {Fall Out Boy preforming at some point, so cue epic dance moves}
~10:00 am {or post- Fall Out Boy} Assemble Grape Leaves and set them cook
– Make Deviled Eggs and Coconut Chocolate Sweet Potato Cookies
– Slice up Sweet Potatoes and pop those in the oven
– Make Stuffed Mushrooms and pop them in right before Sweet Potatoes are done.
– While those are cooking quickly make some bacon and fry up sausages/keilbasa in butter + bacon fat
– While those are cooking, make Guacamole and everything plated up!
Whenever that’s all done {hopefully by around 1-2pm at the latest I’m guessing…if I’m moving slow!} I’ll serve it up buffet style on the table and we’re going to have an epic geeky movie marathon which will probably include some of the following: Pacific Rim, The Hobbit {extended version}, Man of Steele, and The Dark Knight Rises
And while cooking I’ll probably be rocking Old School Julia Child or Doctor Who Season 5 on my iPad via Amazon Instant Video { I <3 Amazon Instant Prime}
All in all I’m thinking I’ll spend around $30.00 {give or take a few dollars} on everything extra that I need {I already have things like chocolate, Almond Butter, Onions, Bacon, Seasoning, etc which will keep a lot of the extra costs low!}. Which to me isn’t too shabby! Considering that the chicken is included in that $30{ish} and I’m getting Monday Nights Dinner out of it and the leftovers will feed us for at least an extra night! So really three nights worth of food for around $30.00 is a win in my book!
So what’s on your menu? Are you going super traditional? Nontraditional? I want to hear!
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