Thanksgiving, cont.

I’ve already sent Katie about a million messages this morning, so I’m redirecting my planning-energy here rather than anywhere else.  Do feel free to skip this entry unless you particularly want to hear about the recipes I’m planning on doing for Thanksgiving.

Have printed off two recipes for roast turkey; one is a maple-glaze turkey, the other is a maple-syrup-glaze turkey with Riesling gravy.  Honestly the glaze on the first one looks better, but the gravy on the second one sounds amazing.  I may end up combining these two recipes actually.  Oh the second one calls for fresh ginger in the glaze, so maybe I’ll use the second recipe but apply techniques from the first one.  Basically — the first turkey ends up with a crunchy, crystallized glaze whereas the second one doesn’t.

Found a very highly-rated Slow Cooker Stuffing recipe on Allrecipes, which sounds perfect.  Will modify it to be vegetarian, but using a slow cooker will be great since it’ll free up room/time in the oven.  It’s a very traditional stuffing recipe, which is totally fine with me since so much of what I love about Thanksgiving is traditions.

For the mashed potatoes, I found a link to a recipe on Pinterest – but the link doesn’t work, so I’m going to have to improvise.  It’s called Caramelized Onion and Mashed Potato Bake, so I’m going to caramelized a shit ton of onions in a bunch of olive oil, and prepare mashed potatoes separately (with butter and cream most likely).  Then I’ll put the caramelized-oily-goodness of the onions on the bottom of a baking pan, and spoon the mashed potatoes on top, then sprinkle on some kind of white cheese (e.g. mozzarella or some such).  Does that not sound absolutely heart-stoppingly amazing?  Yeah.  I know.

I was thinking about getting pre-made bread for this meal, but since I’m going to do the stuffing in a crock pot, I figure I’ll have time to make some yeast rolls.  Found two recipes from Martha Stewart.  Will probably make the dough the week before and freeze it until that Wednesday.

And I am going to be lazy with the cranberry sauce and/or relish — not making that.  Will have to buy some.

The dessert is going to be great.  I’m going to make a crust and instead of finishing the crust with the typical fringy-thing that goes around the edge (you know, right?) I’m going to put leaf cut-outs around the top edge of the crust.  That will be baked, then the filling added, and on top I’m going to put a bunch of sugared cranberries and serve with whipped cream.  Last time I made this, I put the whipped cream all over the pie (think lemon meringue pie style), but this time – to make the cranberries and the leaves stand out – will just use the cream as a garnish.  Yes, it’s going to be excellent.

Lastly, I mentioned the cheese platter.  This will be to snack on while we’re drinking wine and cooking.  Components will include but not be limited to ——- as much variety of cheese as we can afford (thinking goat, swiss, brie, havarti, cheddar, camembert, etc), figs (if I can find some fresh), green olives, grapes, pistachios, probably another nut (almonds or something), artichoke hearts, capers, honey, and some crackers/crostini/bread thing.

I would like to fast-forward, now, to the week of Thanksgiving so that I can go grocery shopping and decorate my house.