My husband and I cooked our first Thanksgiving dinner for a group yesterday and I have to say that it went very, very well! All the food was delicious; I can't take credit for any of the recipes, but I can take credit for the work! We learned some valuable lessons though and I think we will be much better prepared for next year.
First lesson: Pay attention while shopping
I had never cooked for a group before so I just bought A LOT of groceries, thinking that we would just use any leftovers for ourselves. That would have worked out well if we had a refrigerator about twice the size of the one we have. We did make it work, but next time I think I should really pay attention to recipes and only buy what we need. I bought a ton of sweet potatoes to mash and we only used about half of what I bought PLUS we have leftover mash. I love sweet potatoes, but I think that might have been overkill.
I rubbed butter under the skin of turkey and figured it would mix with the natural juices of the bird while cooking and create a basting liquid. However, I think partially do to the leanness of a free-range bird, not a lot of liquid was seeping out. So we created an emergency basting liquid by pouring olive oil, white wine and a little honey over the bird about half-way through and then basted it about every 20 minutes. We saved it but I wish I had known to do that in the beginning.
Third Lesson: Unless you have proper chafing dishes, buffet style may not be a good idea
Fourth Lesson: Keep it simple!
This is always the most important to me. I never cook for a large group and also almost never try really creative things, so it was important to keep everything simple and only use recipes I knew I could make. I think it is fun to try one or two things that you never have before though, like I rolled out my own pie crust for the first time (NT recipe). And made mashed potatoes for the first time. But both of those tasks I knew would be pretty low- stress. Also, when cooking for a "non-experimental" group of eaters, it makes things easier to have simple staple dishes. Plus, you can bring out wonderful flavors, like the sweetness of grass-fed butter, in simple dishes.
Some thing did work out very well. We bought a beautiful local turkey and mostly organic food, so we kept up with our usual ideals. I actually have used Thanksgiving as a time to try a new farm that I have not tried before and get a "taste" of what their chickens may be like for future buying. We compromised, of course, on all the food not being local. If we had been with a group that would appreciate local produce, we could have changed the food choices and have included them. But like always in these situations, I just do my best to buy regionally or domestically (whole foods has asparagus from Peru this time of year! That is just too crazy for me...)
As things have been a little stressful around here lately, it was nice to have a day where we turn off our minds to our everyday lives and tell ourselves we deserve a little break. I am definitely looking forward to the next holidays for that very reason. This was actually the first year in a long time that I have not worked on Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving is a big restaurant day in NYC) so my heart goes out to those who did have to work. It was nice to have a taste of what a "normal" holiday can be like!
I would love to hear how your Thanksgiving went; what would you change and what worked?
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