Just the 2 of us this year. I have to work the night before and Thanksgiving night. So I am keeping it basic:

Bacon Wrapped Turkey Tenderloin with gravy

Chicken Dressing

Mac and Cheese

Collard Greens (yuck, I make them because I love him)

Hash Brown Casserole

Rolls or Cornbread or Maybe both(rolls for me cornbread for him.)

For dessert, Pumpkin Pie and Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie.

He did say he wanted me to add something but couldn't offer any suggestions. When and if he does, I will make whatever he suggest to go with.

Four of us. It's just dinner, but Thanksgiving flavor.

Turkey breast

Gravy (probably chicken gravy, but maybe mushroom)

Stuffing, but probably in a casserole. I ordered a French loaf so I don't have to bake it, and I might add some matzah.

Cranberry sauce (homemade)

Green beans (steamed and plain, the way we like lt). Maybe also some baby broccoli. ETA, the baby broccoli is gorgeous, so we're having that.

Mom's Apple Pie, and pumpkin pie

— - - —— - - - —- -

This weekend, I'm making pumpkin soup, sunchoke chips and commercial chicken sausage, and I also want to make pumpkin cinnamon rolls. After T’day, I'm making pumpkin lasagna, and maybe pumpkin dinner rolls...

LOL, Bragu, you've got 4 food groups covered there!

Mine will be the same as it is every year. We will be having dinner on Friday, and I think it will be Elery and I, the girls and the grandkids. Mother won't be there, more than 2 or three people and she gets anxious. State guidelines say no more than 10 people from no more than 2 households and Ashley's husband is working the holiday weekend for overtime, so we will have 9. We're having:

Turkey

Glazed Ham

Stuffing (both cornbread and sage/onion/celery

Mashed Potatoes

Gravy

Sweet Potatoes, one dish candied and one just baked plain

Homemade rolls

Fruit salad and maybe 7 layer salad

Green Beans cooked with bacon and onion

Pumpkin Pie

Apple Pie

Cheesecake with assorted fruit toppings

Something chocolate!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Annie

I’m trying for a small, simple homemade meal for just us two. I don’t want large portions or a lot of leftovers.

Drunken Duck - It’s my version of a roasted duck recipe I found in a early 1900s cookbook. The duck is marinated in a spicey-boozy rub before slow roasting.

Cornbread Dressing - A much smaller version of my Grandmother’s recipe. It has nothing to do with the duck, but it’s not “Thanksgiving” without it.

Cranberry relish - Plain, but homemade. I plop it on top of the dressing!

Steamed Broccoli - Maybe with a hollandaise sauce.

Arugula Salad - just arugula dressed with vinegar and lemon.

Tidbits - Deviled eggs

Sweet Potato Fluff - Whipped sweet potatoes with raisins or cranberries, spices, butter and a bit of brown sugar to stand in as the dessert.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Caroline, will you please post your drunken duck recipe? I'm always looking for a different thing to do with duck and spicy-boozy sounds good!

I usually drive to my sister’s house on T-day (4.5 hrs if traffic is good), but that can’t happen this year. I’d prefer to skip the whole thing and just play the par-3 in the cold and fiddle in the gardens, but my mother is here alone. To be extra cautious, I’ll be bringing dinner to drop off for my mother. She wants it to be traditional, so I’ll be making turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and pies... I haven’t asked yet what she wants for pies, but I’m thinking pumpkin or pumpkin-pecan, and either apple or mixed berries.

We haven't cooked Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves for the past 4 years. Since it's just the two of us we have gone out for dinner at the Old Yarmouth Inn. I've always ordered the Cape Cod bay scallops which are small and sweet. They are only in season for a short time. This year we have ordered a meal to go from the Barley Neck Inn and they will deliver!

Turkey, with pints of gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash, cranberry relish, and green beans with mushrooms. We added a 9" maple pecan pie (would have preferred pumpkin but not an option, only apple and maple pecan). It's the smaller of 2 meals they are offering and feeds 2-4. I'm sure we'll get more than 4 meals from it. Six pounds of turkey is a lot! It's actually less expensive than going out to eat, and we'll have leftovers. Supporting a local restaurant, as well.

I have a photo file going back to 2014 on this computer. The duck year was fun. Photos helps with my grocery list. Seems we have the usual cast of characters/ingredients as the past few years. Much more than we will use scaling back this year. A following weekend lasagna is a good idea.

Ordered a small local heritage turkey. If something goes awry we have a couple racks of lamb in the freezer for a back-up. Lots of local veg with that order as well as Misfits. Should be similar to last year...

Maybe two small tart sized pies, a pecan and a pumpkin. Need a better biscuit recipe. The two cranberry sauces and a cranberry/pomegranate salad dressing.

I get daily e-mails from Gov Cuomo. Cute story...

Awwwwwwe He’s so precious.

Amylou, i just ordered a 'cookbook for two'...i'll give to hubby so he can add all the 'extras' his little heart desires... We aim to please... after all. it's the holidays! :-)

P.S.

I don't have to cook this year... we have reservations at a cajun restaurant,

There will be 7 of us this year...5 adults, a 5-year-old and infant. This year our SIL is cooking a turducken. He's also making the stuffing and gravy. My part will be the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, Ina G's Spinach Gratin (or maybe green beans), and pecan pie. Our daughter is making a pumpkin cheesecake.

YUM!

Its going to be a crazy amount of food for three people! Here we go:

Smoked turkey (DH got a smoker as an early Christmas gift)

Mushroom gravy

Sausage & bread stuffing

Sausage & sweet potato stuffing (GF)

Mashed potatoes

Cranberry sauce

Harvest apple Challah

Green beans or asparagus in a mustard sauce (?)

Butternut squash, apple & cranberry bake

Hot buttered rum apple pie

Caramel pecan pie

Pumpkin walnut pie

Yes three people three different pies!

There will only be six of us this year. I will go a half mile away. This is our menu so far.

Baked turkey

Mashed potatoes and gravy

Candied sweet potatoes

Corn

Green beans

Dressing

Home made yeast rolls

Cranberry sauce

Pecan Pie

Pumpkin Pie

There will be other things added as time goes on.

Sue

Strange times but no matter who we miss and what we eat we are very blessed and as hard as it is to think that right now......much to be thankful for. Celebrate the best you can.....this too shall pass.

What a cool owl!

Here are some links to its call. The comments can be interesting. I am so happy that someone spotted the owl and it was rescued.

Northern Saw Whet Owl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwgTcxjLnTo

And, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3mEFg9ECYs

But, it seems to me when I took a birding class, that the call was quite different.

Anyone else with a different impression?

So, Rockafella, rode in the tree for many hours?! Some owl!

The Kid has to work on Thanksgiving Day, but they'll come up Sunday, so we get two dinners. Thursday DH and I will stay home since their governor wants a 14 day quarantine before entering his state. I have a ham left from the last pig, so I'll make that and this cheesy sour creamy potato casserole. Other sides and dessert will depend on how lazy I am.

Sunday we'll have the turkey. Coyotes got our homegrown turkey a few days before they were to be butchered and I looked all over for a turkey that wasn't shot full of saline solution. I'd given up, then found a lovely little free range bird at our little podunk grocery store. We'll have the usual dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy (SIL will have cauliflower mash), sweet potato and caramelized onion casserole, whatever veg the grandkids want, whatever the kids decide to bring and maybe a salad. Thinking a pumpkin flan or something...has to be GF. Oh, and there HAS to be cranberry sauce even though hardly any of it gets eaten. I'll probably make a small batch of cranberry chutney.

petalique, that is the call I'm familiar with. Here's a few others from The Cornell Lab site:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Saw-whet_Owl/sounds

Sometimes the Northern Saw-whet owl is confused with the Eastern Screech-owl. I would not consider any of their calls a screech. They come in two color phases. The gray phase E. Screech-owl somewhat resembles an overgrown saw-whet when the screech owl does not have the "ear" feathers raised.

Eastern Screech-owl:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Screech-Owl/sounds

We are having traditional Thanksgiving foods with mashed potatoes, beets, applesauce, squash, and carrots from our own garden. No turkeys raised here, though :)

Just me and my guys. We don't like turkey but Dad might like one for a change of pace. Don't know that we will find a small one. Always a challenge for me, even more so this year. No local sources for a farm raised one or fresh one. I might do duck for me and Dad and hubs can have chicken. That would work. Wish I could find a source for a turkey like Sleevendog's.

Then nothing special--stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans almondine, salad or coleslaw, cranberry relish from the can.

The special thing is hubs will make a pumpkin cheesecake. That's his tradition.

Sawhet owls are just about the cutest thing imaginable! Such a shame he got caught in the tree! I hope his story has a happier ending than it's been going so far . . .

That Rockefeller tree came from my cousin's neighbor! It's the second time in 5 years that the Rockefeller tree was taken within walking distance of their home. So sad about owl. Their instinct when in danger is to freeze motionless. :(

Mine is the same as what I've always eaten -- turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, pumpkin pie with whipped cream. It will just be the two of us. Years ago, we did away with salads and such. The above makes a nice plate of food. I would rather make a lot of one thing than a bowl each of 3 other things and have all of that leftover -- dips and dabs.

Locally, COVID-19 cases are increasing at an alarming rate. Therefore, our usual Thanksgiving group has decided to stay at their homes instead of coming to mine. Am still going to prepare Thanksgiving Dinner and eat leftovers for a few days. For the first time, did not purchase a whole turkey, just bought a 3-lb turkey breast, which I plan to cook in the Instant Pot and brown in the air fryer. So here is the plan; I really pared it down from our usual.

Turkey Breast

Gravy

Cornbread Dressing

Green Beans

Mashed Potatoes

Hot Yeast Rolls

Cinnamon Apples

One year hubs and I did that WC, just got the breast part. I have to say I was secretly THRILLED to not have to feel guilty and deal with the turkey carcass by making turkey soup . . . not that there's anything wrong with that . . . . ;)

Nice to see everyone scaling back and accepting the new normal for this season. Planning what is comfortable or traditional or not caring at all. Why we are comfortable with whatever happens. I checked my order being delivered tomorrow and the turkey was 700 dollars. 😬. It is a NYC wholesale restaurant supply...panic thinking I ordered 15 turkeys, lol. They corrected the error but then it was off the order completely, no turkey. 🙄

I think we are good now, but heck, what a mess. We do like the Friday-saturday following without much meal needs. Stock, soup, breakfast hash, biscuit sliders, ....once a year.

We will miss the 15-25 crowd. Something to look froward to next year me hopes.

I do have a couple lonely neighbors that enjoyed a delivery 'take-out' container from us years past, so hoping to see that turkey tomorrow.

People are definitely scaling back. The store was out of my usual heirloom chicken, and parts too. I think many were buying them instead of turkey parts. I have a good turkey beast on order, which one of the minions will pick up tomorrow...

just the two of us

drunk turkey breast [a la duck recipe]

sausage dressing (big pan for leftovers)

sweet potatoes

green beans

home made 'grandmother's' Parker house [scalded milk recipe] rolls

deviled eggs with hint of wasabi in the filling

maybe a pie or cookies for later

Hubs could only find a turkey breast in small portions. No duck, no cornish hens. Dad doesn't like white meat, I'm not crazy about it, so hubs is going to be eating a lot of turkey sandwiches this winter. He also got a really nice chicken for roasting. And decided he just wanted plain cheesecake so I might switch to mashed sweet potatoes . . . and I decided to also make apple tart tatin. Hubs and I discussed that even though I have made cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries many times, I pretty much gave up because it tasted just like the stuff in the can and also cranberries I think are overpriced before Thanksgiving. I buy a few bags every year AFTER Thanksgiving when they are half to 1/3 the price and then put some in the freezer for later. I have no idea what possessed hubs to bring home a can of cranberry jelly . . . something NO ONE likes.

$700 for turkey would panic me too! Do you use Chef’s Warehouse?

Our Thanksgiving this year is just our little bubble - me & hubby, my son and my mom, so I'm keeping it simple, since I'm cooking everything: roast turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, dressing, sweet potatoes, fresh green beans from my garden, rolls, pumpkin pie and whipped cream.

Smallest turkey I could get was 13#, so we'll have plenty of leftovers = )

P.S. I always add a chopped sweet orange to my cranberry sauce - and canned cranberry jelly thinned with orange juice makes a great poke cake topped with whipped cream.

lpink, I don't know if there is one near you, but Aldi has Wisconsin cranberries for 79 cents a bag. I bought three, I'm going to make LindaC's cranberry jezebel with one bag and then probably can cranberry sauce for future use.

Our local Meijer has turkey for 31 cents a pound and sweet potatoes for 29 cents a pound, potatoes $1.77 for 10 pounds. Hopefully more local families will be able to afford a traditional meal at those prices.

Annie

Thanks Colleen. Because I am definitely going to be posting, "What to do with leftover cranberry jelly" sometime soon . . . I have a couple of recipes for the sauce with the whole berries, but not the jelly . . .

And thanks Annie. I have to dare to venture out today to drop off something at Dad's, might just pop into Aldis to see if they have any cranberries and also any type of smaller dark meat bird or bird parts. Dad of course is complaining about chicken instead of turkey . . . I used to be able to buy turkey legs and turkey thighs at the market, separate. That was pre-covid and out East though . . . . Hubs does the shopping for us both now, no point in us both exposing ourselves and he can get in and out as fast as anyone. We do have considerable list problems though . . . I try and make them ever more and more specific but I don't think that is the problem . . .

The Saw-whet owl was released and healthy. The wildlife center got lots of press and lots of donations. 😀

Making my three cranberry sauces/dressing. (the odd one from NPR that we love). Turkey dry brined and uncovered in the fridge.. 700$ price tag corrected.

Wild rice on the stovetop, bread freezer bits toasting. Cornbread next. Neighbor texted she is bring over a pie😁. Co-worker good friend with an organic dairy farm gave us butter and cheese. DH hired him to help out his covid struggles.

We have been using Baldor wholesale every couple months. They were fancy 'restaurant only' until March. They use lots of local organic farms and half the price of most grocery things. Not all bulk. (why I thought I may have mistakenly ordered 20 turkeys😳). They have their own trucks. Free delivery but must order at least 200. Not a problem as I consistently order 10lbs of ginger, 5 lbs turmeric root, and 20lbs of golden beets for juicing. A wheel each of a couple cheeses, prosciutto, olives, anchovies, a case of yogurt, etc.

I pink, 😂, my grocery lists get details and even pictures sometimes. Very specific at times. He likes the details. (three small 'firm' red onions the size of a baseball or smaller, lol).

Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, butter beans and corn, rolls! DIL making a salted caramel cheesecake and pecan pie. Our children, their spouses and grandchildren will be over late afternoon. It will be seven of us!

I have a very small family, so it will just be the three of us. I love cooking and do the full version no matter how small a group we have. We have a 17 pound local turkey which we will stuff with sage and onion stuffing. To go with the turkey, we will have homemade cranberry orange sauce, potatoes au gratin, roasted carrots and green beans. Dessert will be ollalie berry pie with vanilla ice cream.

Barbecued St. Louis Ribs (marinated and baked low and slow)

Corn

Green Beans with Bacon and Onions

Mashed Potatoes (mum wants pork gravy for herself)

Pumpkin Pies

Unusual, but it's just my parents and I, and dad hasn't had much of an appetite these days.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Finally a day off from the Hut. Sleepy hugs and waves to you all.

Sounds excellent Brad. Hopefully the lovely cooking smells will wake up your dads palate. Nice to hear you have a day off from work!

Put away all my pie prep last night. A neighbor brought over a chocolate pecan pie,😍....and pro baker. She makes chocolates for a local bakery.

So much food and side dishes for just the two of us...put away two sides to have tomorrow night.

What I'm missing most is the family traditional oyster dressing. Might have to include that in the xmas/NewYear 2 dozen fishes. It is a separate dressing from the bread variety. More like a pan roast.

No traditional TG plans here. Beer can chicken on the grill, twice baked potatoes, and a bag of frozen corn from my brother's garden. Maybe a slice of cheese cake later on.

We do plan to have a more traditional Christmas dinner when my son and his GF will join us. Prime rib roast from our own grass fed beef with Yorkshire pudding of course. Haven't decided on the other sides yet.

We did not join the larger family at MIL's today; I had another potential exposure at work, with a next cube neighbor having a daughter become symptomatic.

Traditional menu with vegetarian variant today: full turkey, imitation turk'y, sage sausage stuffing, veggie stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and veggie gravy, carmelized sweet potatoes, green beans with mustard and feta, biscuits, pumpkin pie. Oh, and DH made me buy a can of cranberry jelly (gag).

Silly me, we didn't have the corn so we had the green beans instead, lol. It was very yummy. Pumpkin pie later on. I had white fudge Oreos for dessert. I may have ice cream later on. Trying to watch my diet, as I look a bit heavier these days (more than usual). But hey, it's only once a year (and what a year it's been-hoping things finally go back to normal next year, at some point). I think I'll rest a while. Didn't sleep well last night (been a growing problem lately). Enjoy your day everyone.

Brad AKA Moonwolf

DD was so looking forward to having the whole family at her new house for Thanksgiving. It disintegrated from traditional big dinner to big dinner outdoors to small dinner outdoors to everyone stay home. I think we are going to have a family Zoom cocktails later this afternoon.

We are having filets cooked sous vide, baked sweet potatoes, and creamed spinach. The jury is still out on dessert. Maybe a Hershey’s peppermint kiss or two. UPDATE: I just scrolled upthread and saw the word “cheesecake”. I may have to re-think dessert.

Moonwolf, I am soooo jealous. I’ve ordered White Fudge Oreos in the last 2 grocery orders from two different stores. They haven’t been able to fulfill that part of the order!

We are making food now - 3 hours behind some of you.

My gelato custard is chilling, I made a double batch so I can make a SWMBO-approved gelato in addition to the scallop gelato.

SWMBO refused to get me scallops yesterday so I went out early this morning and picked up frozen sea scallops, sous vided them in the bag, buzzed a few in the mini-Cuisinart, and am reducing their liquid to add to the buzzed scallops, hopefully to get an intensely scallop-y paste to add the the gelato custard. No time to dehydrate and the Asian market had no dried scallops. Or, maybe they did, but it was kind of crowded and I didn’t want to stay in there too long looking for it, even wearing double masks.

Creme caramels are assembled in ramekins, waiting for the oven.

I’m taking a break before working on the orange sauce and duck.

Hmm, I have a whole duck and am only using the breasts for the l’orange. So I am confit’ing the legs with the sous vide, rendering the rest of the skin for duck fat, and making duck stock with the carcass, neck and wings.

Looky here, there are even bags of “orange sauce” in the cavity - well, I want the fun of making the orange sauce, so in the trash with the bags.

My scallop paste is, um, very scallop-y. I remain confident in my scallop gelato, as I check my creme caramels aka Plan B.

DD has made her pumpkin pies, and despite lots of problems and hasty fixes, they look good. Too bad they don’t stand a chance.

Now she’s making soup. I didn’t know we were having soup? No one tells me anything.

Ooo, orange sauce is better with just a touch of ginger.

DD is now doing the ham. This is a standard prescliced ham, she just needs to heat and glaze. She is also doing the traditional yams and marshmallows.

DS stayed at college 4 hours later than he was supposed to, and didn’t start the two hour drive home until 4 pm. Except that his car won’t start. Fancy that, when you leave your car sitting unused for months, the battery is going to be comprehensively dead. So he’s trying to get it jumped, and if that doesn’t work he’ll either wait hours for AAA or DD will have to drive down to get him.

Kids today - they think everything is like the internet, it is supposed to “just work” without thought or attention.

So, our dinner is either not going to happen or will be at midnight or will be postponed to tomorrow. It can all be put in the fridge if needed.

Edit: he got it started and has enough gas to get home without shutting the engine off. Tomorrow we’ll replace his battery. So, with luck we’ll eat at 8 pm.

Ok, I need to get up and work.

There were 9 of us in 3 households. Met up outside nephew's house, picked up our portions of the feast, and went back home to celebrate in our social bubbles!

Parentheses indicate who cooked what. My grand-nephew#1 is 11, his brother #2 is 8. Grand-niece at 6 so far is more interested in eating than cooking! Definitely makes her the odd one out in our food-obsessed family, LOL.

Thanksgiving 2020 Menu 2.0

Sushi lox crepes and Inarizushi [peas, carrots, shiitake in the rice filling] (me & Spouse)

Arugula & farro salad with fresh feta (Sister)

Winter Ratatouille (BIL)

Roasted acorn squash (Nephew & Spouse)

Roasted heirloom turkey (Niece & Spouse)
Sous vide prime rib (Nephew & Spouse)

Wild rice, chestnut and shiitake stuffing (Sister)

Mashed potatoes (Nephew & Spouse)
Mac & cheese (Grand-nephew1)

Fresh Salmon cakes (Niece & Spouse)

Gravy (vegetarian and regular) (Niece & Spouse)

Cranberry sauce (homemade and canned) (Niece & Spouse)

Pumpkin pie (Grand-nephew2)

Mini-Almond Cakes with mixed berry sauce (Sister)

Your Grand-nephews are impressive!!!

ok, folks, you’ve shamed me (well, not really shamed, but I now “want” T’day food) into cooking a chicken breast tomorrow and making dressing. I’ll round out our Sunday lunch with sweet potatoes and marshmallows and green bean casserole....or maybe asparagus casserole. I think for dessert, we’ll have scratch blueberry dump cake using THIS recipe.

OMG...I HAD THREE PLATES PUSHED IN FRONT OF ME. need I say more?

DS got home and we ate. The next day I replaced his battery and wiper blades. On Saturday I got snow tires on his car. So he’s set for winter. Snow tires are usually overkill in the Willamette Valley, but he’s not been driving all that long, and when we do get snow here it is so wet that it quickly turns to sheet ice. A couple years ago the ice stayed for over a week, it was so slick on sidewalks and roads that you almost couldn’t walk without traction thingies on your shoes. I feel better with him as equipped as possible, as he drives between Eugene and Portland.

He’s been working on a project for his architecture class all weekend, including working all last night. So he’s staying in Portland longer than he’d planned, but with most classes online anyway, it’s not a problem. After about 36 hours awake, he finally got to bed, and will head back to college tomorrow.

Here’s his model:

He did all the plan and elevation drawings too. He actually did everything twice, because he decided his first effort wasn’t good enough.

The whole project is done old school, with vellum paper and physical modeling. DS needs to get more facile with CAD software, but he feels that starting freehand allows more creativity. He mentioned that his classmates who do everything in the computer are tending to produce designs that are boxes, because the software thinks that way.