My oldest , 22, made a vegan main dish (mushroom pie) and cut up a pineapple for fruit salad. Also helped clean. My younger one, 19, made Martha Stewart’s very complicated baked Macaroni & Cheese. I bought pies, rolls, and a pre-cooked Turkey breast and cooked the rest (stuffing/dressing, Brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, etc). I really don’t enjoy it. I would’ve been happy buying it all but I think the kids would’ve been disappointed.
Husband cut up strawberries and washed the other berries for the fruit salad (he kept messing with other stuff so I had to give him something to do) and then he did all the clean up and putting stuff away, which is a huge job.
I’m not cooking for a week after this!! Well at least through the weekend.
Ours wound up looking pretty nice, but was easy. We bought a turkey, dressing, gravy from a local barbecue place. And a precooked sliced ham and two pies from the grocery store. All I had to do was heat them up. And some garlic knot bread too. Those were a last minute toss in and they were super.
I made mashed potatoes (that’s the one thing I can make), and a new super simple cornbread casserole. S1’s GF made a sweet potato casserole.
Other last minute purchase was 8 very large thick Xmas/festive paper plates. They were perfect. Clean up was a breeze. And everyone helped clean up. I chased most of them out because in some ways it’s just easier for me to do it.
I still would have preferred a frozen pizza or Chinese food, but it really was a nice evening. I drove younger S to the airport at oh dark thirty this morning. Boo. Older S won’t leave til tomorrow at least.
My husband likes to cook so usually he and my daughter do all the cooking on Thanksgiving and I clean up. The one job I dislike is putting the leftovers away so someone else does that (I don’t care who.) This year was a little different because instead of the usual group we were separated into three groups: those who had mostly recovered from a recent bout of Covid, those who had active cases of Covid, and those who didn’t want to get anywhere near the first two groups. So there were only four of us at my house and my husband did all the cooking. He made Cornish game hens and we delivered some to Covid daughter and husband who live about a mile away.
Thanksgiving was much less stressful this year with just S, DIL, their toddler & me. I did all the shopping and prep. DIL made her favorite side, S made the mashed potatoes, he and H grilled the turkey, and I coordinated the other sides/condiments/desserts/drinks, etc. We all chased the toddler around. I put away leftovers and H washed the dishes. We clean as we go so it wasn’t too bad.
Send S home with leftovers. Made stock out of the turkey carcass and froze most of it. Pot of turkey mushroom soup and it’s a wrap. On to Christmas…