So You Are Going To Host Thanksgiving Dinner

Have you hosted Thanksgiving before? I’ve  hosted Thanksgiving for a few years now and without fail year after year it goes something like this.

So You’re Going To Host Thanksgiving Dinner

Photo Credit: The Fabulous Food Fairy

One Month Out from Thanksgiving
Decide that you will host! You are so excited to host . Hosting a holiday screams I’m an adult! I will serve homemade food on real plates with real napkins. It will be classy and memorable.
Start planning menu. Have adventurous ideas about the culinary masterpiece you will prepare. Pour over Pinterest and magazines searching for a menu that says traditional but not too traditional. You want a mix of old favorites and new dishes. You want a meal that people will talk about for weeks to come. Yes, you can just hear them saying, “remember how amazing those sweet potatoes were”.

3 weeks out

Realize your in laws think you eat yuppy food and could possibly ruin Thanksgiving with chorizo stuffing and an apple based casserole . Refuse to change your menu. After all this is your house and you will cook what you want. And you are not a yuppy, who even uses the word yuppy anymore.

10 Days out
Guests ask what they can bring. You brush them off or regulate them to appetizers. You’ve totally got this on your own.

1 week Out

Decide you can’t simply serve the free turkey from the grocery store. Instead you must drive an hour to the organic grocer for a free range organic well loved turkey.  You imagine him having frolicked in the fields being fed by hand. Arrive at store and discover that said turkey costs twice as much and doesn’t look any happier than the freebie, after all they are both dead.4 Days Finalize menu. Think you may have taken on too much . Begin to panic start slashing appetizers and side dishes from the menu like it’s a horror flick. Call your mother and casually ask what she’s planning on bringing .
Night Before

Pour large glass of wine and start prepping food. Make massive to do list. Enlist the husband to clean the house and put the extra leaf in the table. Turn down all invites for night before Thanksgiving drinking. You’re an adult don’t they know you have a dinner to prep!? Pour another large glass of wine.  Stumble up to bed at midnight ready to get up and do it again .

 

Day Of

Oversleep, realize the husband forgot to put the leaf in the table. Get distracted by Black Friday ads. Drink your coffee and wonder why you agreed to this. Take out turkey and realize that your fresh never frozen organic grass fed turkey is slightly frozen inside . Panic! Start googling quick ways to defrost turkey .Place turkey in sink with cold water and put husband in charge of changing water every 30 minutes.

6 Hours Till Dinner

Get distracted by Thanksgiving Day Parade. Think I’ve got 6 hours. See that Santa is coming up in the parade. Race around the house to find your son and force him to know that joy that is Santa’s arrival at the Thanksgiving parade.

5 Hours Till Dinner 

Panic. Where did the time go? Get the turkey in the oven and say a quick prayer. Make a mental note of where the chinese take out menus are, those places have to be open on Thanksgiving, right?

4 Hours Till Dinner

You’ve been working like a mad woman peeling potatoes, dicing apples and basting that free range turkey like it’s nobodies business. Who needs Martha Stewart when they’ve got you?

3 Hours Till Dinner

Realize husband has been sitting on the couch drinking a beer and watching football and that none of the stuff you asked him to do last night is done.  Realize that your son has pulled all of his toys out of the playroom and into the living room. Huff into the living room turn off the TV and start giving orders. Don’t they know this is not the time to mess with Mom?

2 Hours Till Dinner

After the chaos of the last hour things seem to be going ok. You are cautiously optimistic.Husband is in the shower and son is quietly playing.

1 Hour Till Dinner

Turkey appears to be done too early. Realize you forgot to make the salad and the apple sweet potato casserole looks nothing like it did on Pinterest. Say, screw the salad, who eats salad on Thanksgiving anyway. Pour yourself a glass of wine you are in the home stretch.

Dinnertime

Guests are late. Pace the kitchen nervously. Worry that the food will get cold. Pour another glass of wine.

Photo Credit: Opera Singer in the Kitchen

 

15 Minutes Later

Guests arrive. Pour glasses of wine. Attempt to keep relatives who don’t get along apart. Start serving appetizers and attempt to make conversation with guests who are in your way lingering in the kitchen.

Serve Dinner
Watch as everyone except your child digs into the meal. Try to convince your child that turkey tastes just like chicken and yes he has had mashed potatoes before and loved them.

Enlist others to clean up, your job is done. Box up leftovers and send the guests on their way.Curl up on the couch with the Black Friday ads and a glass of wine. Look back on the day and think that went well. Maybe it’s the tryptophan in the turkey or that 4th glass of wine talking but you have forgotten all the craziness of the day. Remember how happy you are that you have all these crazy people in your life and that you didn’t volunteer to host Christmas.

Day After
Put your kid down for nap and make a giant Black Friday sandwich or two and turn on Love Actually. You deserve it.