Just found my complete Thanksgiving menu.

We have a set Thanksgiving menu, but like to try different sides and appetizers. I want to try to carrots. We always brine the turkey, not sure about a buttermilk brine though.

We don't do Thanksgiving in Australia but that menu does look delicious! 

DH and I host a dinner for a group of friends in early December - just before the Christmas rush - I think I will use it for then. 

For some reason, I thought this was going to be a funny thread about typical Thanksgiving foods made out of jello or something. That menu looks divine...and a lot of work. Enjoy!

That looks delicious! Too bad there is only three of us for Thanksgiving at my house.

And before anyone suggests that I invite others, I've been down that road more than once to be burned.

ha- mine will probably be whatever the menu is for the local grocery store catered Thanksgiving dinner, lol. 


It's just the two of us on Thanksgiving, so we've started either getting it catered or going out to a restaurant.  I was making the whole big meal, but I was also putting way too much pressure on myself to create this *perfect meal* with all these dishes, and it also makes soooo many leftovers that really aren't necessary for the two of us. 

When it is just my daughter and I we go out!  But then I make a turkey breast for leftovers, and some stuffing.. because Yum.  Then I tend to make some mashed potatoes. Then maybe some sweet potatoes. 

By the end of the weekend I have usually made a whole Thanksgiving meal just not at once!

Would you please share that recipe?  I would like to try it.

I was thinking that dh and I might need to try a few of theses recipes for Thanksgiving this year, but then I remembered that we are spending that week in a cabin in Broken Bow for our anniversary! Those dates look amazing though. I might need to make those at the very least.

We have a nice Thanksgiving every year, even if I have to work we still celebrate.  But, by the time you make a pumpkin pie/cheesecake and my son's favorite apple cake, the turkey (has to be a whole one because the kids want legs), and all the trimmings there is more food than will fit in my fridge.  Thank goodness for a fridge in the basement and that I live in Ohio.  If it's cold enough, I've resorted to storing things in the garage overnight.  

Plus my birthday is that week and I always make myself a German chocolate birthday cake.  No one likes it but me and I don't care!  Growing up I always had to suffer through a birthday pie instead of cake. I hated pumpkin and the dreaded mincemeat pie my grandfather loved.  It's pretty sad when you don't get to choose your birthday cake until you move out and can have a say.  I typically take my cake to work so I don't eat the whole thing myself.

Thanks PolarGreen12! That is very sweet of you!

Thank you!!  I did search Barefoot Contessa before I asked.  SaveSaveSaveSave

Everything on that menu looks delicious! I'm going to bookmark it for a year when it will be more than just my dh and I. This will be our first year that the kids are both gone, we don't have relatives coming from out of state, and we aren't going to a friend's home. We aren't the going out to dinner kind of people so that doesn't sound good to us.

We have decided that we are just going to do our favorites with no fuss and no muss. We are actually kind of excited about it. We are going to have turkey breast, a green salad, cranberry sauce, gravy and rolls. Neither of us want to go to the effort of anything else. We were at Costco last weekend and they had their pumpkin pies out. My dh said "we are getting one of those and eating the whole dang thing over the 4 day Thanksgiving weekend." We don't really eat very many sweets, so I was shocked he said it, and doubt we will eat the whole thing, but I'm looking forward to the idea of it. LOL

One of our favorite memories is from a year that we had tons of family from out of town staying with us. I deep cleaned the house before they all came, I shopped for the meal, I made everything for the dinner except the yams (my mom does the yams most years), I did all the after dinner clean up myself while the family visited and played games (dh did offer to help, but I told him to keep the masses at bay so I could get my kitchen in order for the next coming days of meals). By the time I was done, I was wiped out and I had barely eaten anything since I was playing hostess most of the meal. Everyone went to bed around 10 pm because of course the women all wanted to get up at o'dark thirty for black Friday shopping. DH and I were in bed talking about how the day went and my stomach started growling. He asked "Are you hungry?" I said "Yes! I'm starving!" LOL He pulled me out of bed, took me to the kitchen, turned on the small light over the sink and proceeded to pull out/heat up rolls and gravy, then he got out the cranberry sauce and pie. We sat together at the kitchen table and dunked our rolls in the gravy, ate a few bites of cranberry sauce each and then proceeded to share a piece of Pumpkin Pie for dessert. My dh isn't the most romantic man on the planet, but the fact that he went to the effort to do that was something I needed in the moment and will always be a special memory for me. We sat in the semi dark, eating leftovers that didn't take much effort, talked and laughed in hushed voices and just enjoyed the peaceful time alone.

This will be our first Thanksgiving alone, so I think my dh wants to just do simple and easy so that we aren't dwelling on that fact. We know we'll get to talk to our dd who lives in CA via facetime sometime during the day and we hopefully will get to talk to our ds that is deployed to Africa sometime during the day. It's just going to be weird and probably a little sad, but we're going to try and make the best of it!