It was our turn to spend Thanksgiving with Brian’s parents this year. The problem? Brian’s dad was having knee replacement surgery the Monday before Thanksgiving and was scheduled to come home on Thanksgiving day (everything went fine, by the way). Obviously, he was not going to be able to travel and Brian’s mom was not going to have time to cook.
Brian’s brilliant idea was to make hamburgers or something on the grill and have that for our Thanksgiving dinner. I upped the ante and proposed cooking dinner at our house and transporting it to theirs. That said, I didn’t get too fancy with the meal. I figured the logistics were enough of a challenge. I normally don’t get very fancy with Thanksgiving, anyway. There are things people expect to eat on that day, so that’s what I make.
Since it was just the five of us, I didn’t have to make an enormous amount of food. I prepped what I could on Wednesday night and made the rest of the stuff on Thursday. We didn’t go there till suppertime so that helped with the cooking since I had all day to do it.
I packed everything up and off we went. Brian had a great idea to put the mashed potatoes in a slow cooker. Everything else, I just wrapped in foil. I put the hot stuff in the oven at 200 when we got there, so it would stay hot while I made the vegetables and the gravy and Brian carved the bird. I have to say dinner turned out pretty good. I made a pecan pie for dessert. I’m not much for nuts, but even I liked it.
There were just enough leftovers for us all to have another meal so at least we don’t have to spend the weekend coming up with creative ways to eat turkey.