Lots of good ideas above. Here is an excellent recipe from Sharon(Chase). Herb Crusted Rack of Pork - Sharon 2, 3 to 4 pound racks of pork ( or enough for one rib per person and then a few extra) 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 1/2 tsp salt 7 garlic cloves,minced 1/3 c fresh basil,chopped 1/3 c fresh thyme,chopped 1/3 c fresh parsley,chopped 2 TBSP pepper,coarsely ground 1 1/4 c butter (or margarine),cut up 1/3 cup all-purpose flour 2 cans chicken broth 1 TBSP tomato paste 2 TBSP fresh sage,chopped 1/4 tsp pepper [Note: Serve with Garlic Parmesan mashed potatoes and green beans] Rub pork with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt. Stir together garlic and next 4 ingredients; press onto pork. Place pork on a rack in a lightly greased broiler pan; cover bone tips with aluminum foil to prevent burning. Bake at 350 for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a meat thermometer inserted into thickest portion registers 140 to 145. Transfer pork to a serving tray. Pour pan drippings into a skillet. Add butter to drippings; cook over medium heat until butter melts . Whisk in flour until smooth. Cook, whisking constantly, until caramel colored. Gradually whisk in broth and next 3 ingredients; cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, 2 to 3 minutes or until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Serve with 'pork. Garnish with herbs, if desired. Yield: 8 servings Note 1: I often don't make the sauce but it is a nice elegant touch and very yummy! Note 2: Ask your butcher to French the bones and remove the chine bone. Makes for a lovely presentation and easy carving. I've used the rack of pork and a pork loin using this recipe. Always a winner for me! David

This year I saw some contributions to the groaning table from my kids for the first time. Younger son visiting from the other coast pitched in with setting the table, reaching for the too high storage, and washing the wine glasses that had not been used since last year and other odd jobs. Local son and girlfriend brought lovely homemade yeast rolls and a homemade apple pie. Sister and her husband brought wine, vegetable, and salad. Son-in-law brought wine, DD and busy, darling grandsons. I roasted the stuffed bird, made the gravy, pumpkin bread, corn pudding, candied sweet potatoes, twice baked potatoes, minced meat peaches, coffee, and cranberry relish. I don't know how I would do it without our old and trusty double ovens. Everyone kept commenting that this was the best Thanksgiving dinner ever, but I don't know why. We have a basic holiday meal we like to make and only vary the dessert, salad and vegetables. However, it was too much but yummy.

So the gravy involved experimentation, yelling, throwing food out, and frenzied remaking. I had a little pork stock and a good amount of duck stock. I expected someone to bring some turkey drippings, and we had boxed chicken stock for an emergency. I thought it would be fun to make a few kinds of gravy. So I did something that made perfect sense to me. I put about 2 c of AP flour in a saucepan and browned it. It was fun, I got to do that rolling thing where you move the pan to get the contents to roll into a wave and thus mix. Okay, the kitchen got a little smoky but oh well. My idea, you see, was that I'd have a jar of this pre-browned flour on hand for future "instant" gravies and general thickening. Because sometimes you need a sauce thickened right away and don't have time to mix raw flour with a little of the liquid, whisk it smooth, add and cook until the floury taste is gone, and you don't want the texture of a cornstarch thickened sauce. Then I made the gravy for my low cooked deep fried pork cubes. I simply put the pork stock in a small saucepan, added butter and pork fat, then stirred in the pre-browned flour. It worked great: dissolved right away, no clumping, no further cooking of the flour needed, and easy to adjust the degree of thickness by adding a bit more pre-browned flour (let's call this PBF for short) because the thickness responded immediately. That was easy, I thought. Then SWMBO started, not yelling exactly, but loudly expressing her disappointment and astonishment that I had cooked the raw flour, which is Never Ever Done and Unheard Of. DD took a few minutes to comprehend what I had done, then joined in the vocalization of Great Dismay. Protesting, DD proceeded to make the duck stock with my PBF. And immediately claimed it was a disaster. I was busy frying confit duck breasts so I didn't see what she did. I think she may have used the PBF as if it was raw flour, starting the roux by cooking butter and flour. Maybe the PBF quickly became burned - since I didn't do any additional cooking of PBF during the actual gravy making, I am not sure how it would tolerate further cooking. I just don't know. Anyway she said the texture was gritty and the taste was burned, and that all the duck gravy had to be thrown out. Throwing out a pint of duck stock is not something that makes DD happy. She said so. In the end, she started all over with the Normal Sane Roux Method You Dummy and made gravy with the turkey drippings and chicken stock, and it was fine. The pork bites drizzled with gravy turned out to be very popular. So there. And I have a jar of PBF that I need to hide or label as something else, lest SWMBO or DD find it and throw it out.

That all sounds great! Congratulations on the successes. I had some minor emergencies, like I set the oven to preheat so it would be good and hot, and found it cold when it was time to put in the "bird". 9 pound double turkey breast. I figured the latch didn't completely catch so it didn't turn on. It heated quickly, however, and didn't really affect the timing much. Breasts don't need the kind of resting time than whole, and I made sure all the dishes, etc., were pulled and placed, and that which stood still was washed and put away. The turkey breast was just sprinkled with poultry seasoning and placed in an unbleached parchment turkey bag. I couldn't help myself, however, and (literally) threw in a wedged onion, a couple chunked carrots and a couple chunked celery stalks. :) Tore open the top for the last half hour. Perfect! Steamed in its own juices. The gravy was made ahead with chicken stock, plus some turkey juice day of. I've been making this gravy for years. It's little more than a velouté. Dead easy. Foolproof. Plus, I use Wondra. But just now, I managed to make lumps in Wondra. And it separated in the fridge. Not broke. It never came together. It was a suspension. As I was heading to bed, Wednesday, something I often have said came to mind: Once something has been emulsified in the Vita-Mix, it stays emulsified. Couldn't hurt, I thought. So I dumped it in, gave it a whirr and got a perfectly velvety, never to separate gravy. :) OTOH, I overcooked the beautiful broccolini. :( Not badly, but enough It still got mostly all 'et up. The stuffing was a success. A few years ago I figured out the key to making it like my mother's. Her instructions didn't work for me. Instead, I pretend I'm making bread pudding a la velouté instead of custard. :) Not really. The eggs go into the dry bread first, then the stock, but it's the quantity of stock that matters. I bought a loaf or organic par baked French bread because I was in no mood to bake bread for the stuffing. I baked it off according to directions, and was surprised that it was very sour on the sourdough scale. Not my usual definition of French bread. But it lost some of that sour as it dried out. I added some mandlin and matzah, and a big bag of restaurant chow mein, for variety. And was very proud of myself that the quantity I eyeballed in my bowl was exactly the right amount to fill my mother's dish. The cranberry sauce was ... normal. The Libby's recipe pumpkin pie was fine, but not very pumpkiny. Not the texture I was looking for, like my autnie's, but very much like Lindac's recipe, which I make with fresh pumpkin. The whole wheat spiced crust was a good call. I used Stella Parks's pinch recipe for the crust for the apple pie. It was wonderfully flaky, but it was obvious that gluten had developed. I used Gold Medal AP, as usual. I think it spent too long in the fridge and went all no-knead dough. I have Swansdown, which it never occurred to me to use, but I think I'll buy some pastry flour if I want to make the dough ahead again. It tastes good, mind you. It's just not 100% "right". Not that anyone noticed. They gobbled it all up. :)