🥧Meal Plan Monday - Thanksgiving Edition! 11/23

ec1212

Options on what to share this week! Either share your meal "plan" as usual OR share a favorite family holiday recipe - type it out, link it or -best option- include a pic of the recipe if it's been handed down.

mkc3888

I was planning to make a pumpkin cheesecake, but since we aren't going to my inlaws anymore and my husband doesn't like pumpkin I'll probably make apple pie.  We'll do turkey, green bean casserole and cornbread dressing.  Maybe mac and cheese, we'll see.  

yellingbanana

We usually have 2 Thanksgiving meals: Thursday traditional food at my moms, and Friday Mexican food at my house with all of my inlaws. (I am half Mexican and DH is full)

This year, we are staying home and no one is coming over. So on Thursday I’ll be making our Mexican feast of enchiladas, red rice, beans with chorizo, and a fresh salad with avocado. 

On Saturday I’ll be making the traditional dishes (but not all): smoked turkey, garlic mashed red potatoes and gravy, sautéed mushroom with cream dish, brussel sprouts, pumpkin pie, and a tray of Mac n cheese (it’s for the kids). We tend to eat more Mexican food regularly, so my kids aren’t that into the traditional Thanksgiving dishes because I only make them for Thanksgiving 🤷🏻‍♀️.

mkc3888

@yellingbanana I may have to hit you up for some good mexican recipes.  I had temales once when visiting family in CA and they were so good.  When I asked my cousin for the recipe we had a hard time translating some of the ingredients to english, so I haven't tried to make any yet.  All I know is that making them is an all day affair

ec1212

Here’s one of the two cheese ball recipes my fam makes (pic in spoiler). I can’t find the port wine one I like at stores, so I’m making this one this year. Serve on a cheese board with crackers. 

ec1212

It's just DH and I this year. Normally we'd be in Florida with my fam or in NH with one of my best friends. I mentioned I do not know how to make small quantities of food for special occasions, so this menu below is actually me trying to scale back.

Apps

- deviled eggs (just a few lol!)
- cheese plate with cheese ball, herbed goat cheese, crackers, olives, gherkins, cocktail onions and marinated mushrooms

Sides

- persimmon salad w/candied walnuts
- green bean casserole
- mushroom stuffing
- mashed potatoes
- corn casserole
- cranberry sauce (canned for life!)

Mains

- vegetable alfredo lasagna (hubby doesn't eat meat, although it's pretty traditional for Italian families to have a lasagna at Thanksgiving anyway)
- roasted whole turkey breast

Sauces

- regular gravy

- vegetarian gravy for hubby's sides

Dessert

- pumpkin pie

mrosek91

I had one good week of meal planning, and am back at staring at my freezer in despair, trying to decide what to make. Will probably make tuna noodle casserole one day this week, but that's as far as I've gotten.
For Thanksgiving, we're not very traditional, my MIL usually does a bagels and lox brunch, and then makes these "turkey dinner" cookies for dessert

The tablecloth is frosting, the turkey is caramel, the green beans and cranberry are sprinkles, and the sweet potatoes are gummy candy.

spartan4life

I made beef and noodles last night so we will eat that tonight for dinner too, and probably tomorrow since it made a ton!

I also have stuff to make buffalo chicken baked potatoes. I just put a few chicken breasts in the crockpot with buffalo sauce for a few hours and then shred it and put it on top of baked potatoes. We top it with either ranch or blue cheese, carrots and celery.

For Thanksgiving it will just be the three of us. We were planning to have my in laws over but that changed so I will still plan to make the green bean casserole, the stuffing, and the oreo cheesecake. They were bringing the ham so I'm not really sure what we will have as our protein. I also have stuff to make mashed potatoes so I'll make those too.

mimser

I think my fiancé will be doing most of the cooking this week even though I think I'll allow myself to help out a little, sitting down, so I'm trying to keep it simple.

I took chicken thighs out of the freezer, I'm hoping to make Greek lemon chicken soup tonight although I'm still wondering if I'm allowed to eat it, but worse comes to worse I'll cook my serving longer (we add raw eggs to the broth and them let it cook for a few more minutes)
https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/greek-lemon-chicken-soup-kotosoupa-avgolemono/

Tomorrow will be steaks, mashed potatoes and brocoli.

We already had our Thanksgiving here in Canada, so no Holiday feast for me!

ccmrc143

We’re just eating pasta and salad between now and Thursday, but here is our pescatarian thanksgiving menu for two:

- Mushroom stuffing
- Mashed potatoes
- Savory sweet potato casserole 
- sautéed green beans 
- freshly baked dinner rolls 
- shaved Brussels sprout salad 
- mushroom gravy 
- some sort of nicely prepared cod 
- cranberry sauce (made from fresh cranberries ... DH loves canned but it’s too jelly-like for me) 

and dessert:
- Cranberry curd tart (almond flour crust, so GF even though we aren’t GF)
- maple pumpkin pie 
- pecan pie bars 

@ec1212 what’s the corn casserole like? Sounds so interesting!! 

ec1212

@ccmrc143 it’s like a cross between cornbread and more of a soufflé. here’s the recipe (this is a small casserole, but to feed a crowd during non-COVID times just double everything). “Oleo” is margarine - I use butter. Stick to 1/4 stick for the small casserole or 1/2 stick for the large version. 

littlelibelula

I might have to hide until after thanksgiving. I love the full dinner with turkey, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce with mashed potatoes, yams, squash, and a good pie. 

But we don't celebrate thanksgiving here and I have no excuse to go crazy cooking. But if I keep seeing all these food lists and thanksgiving YouTube videos I might convince my husband to let me cook a spread and share it with the neighbours or send it to church. 

When I was teaching, they would do a thanksgiving brunch and most classes would have breakfast food because they weren't too familiar with thanksgiving food, but I would go all out cooking a turkey and sides and give them a real thanksgiving meal. I miss those days. 

And tomorrow I have my Costco run, and I know thy have super cheap turkey drumsticks. It will be doubly hard not to make a crazy thanksgiving feast. It tastes so good. 

brynn_mamaof4

For breakfast we will have scrambled eggs, sausage balls and blueberry muffins. For snacks during the day I’ll have out shrimp cocktail and I got things to make the largest charcuterie board ever 😊. For dinner we will have turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans and apple-cranberry-sausage stuffing (and making mac n cheese for my youngest). For dessert I’m making a blueberry crisp and we have vanilla ice cream. 

There will be way too much food but 🤷🏼‍♀️ Good leftovers I guess!