The better-half and I hosted my parents for Thanksgiving yesterday. My mom brought over a very delicious turkey breast she made in her crock pot, corn pudding and apple pie (bonus jars of apple sauce too). We provided roasted brussels sprouts, sage sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and a lemon meringue pie. We had never made a lemon meringue pie, but it tasted pretty good. We need to work on our whipped meringue…practice makes perfect.
The weather was beautiful and we ended up opening several windows and ran our Blue air purifier. Safety protocols were on our minds and we are uncertain what Christmas will hold. We were able to Zoom with my sisters and their families.
So the holiday was different, but it was also OK. The better-half and I found a new stuffing recipe and learned how to make a lemon meringue pie. My father got to feel useful by disposing of some concrete we busted up as part of our deck redo and my mother got to relax on a major holiday.
To avoid unnecessary personal meltdowns while cooking this meal, I’ve learned to match my expectations with my reality. This means nothing is getting done more than three days before Thanksgiving, and I refuse to panic about it. Even with that relatively generous timeline, all the real cooking I do for Thanksgiving simply happens the day of, in a very small New York City kitchen with an extremely small refrigerator and an even smaller oven. It can be done, and if I can do it there, you can do it anywhere. Here’s what I’ll be cooking, and how I’ll pull it off.