This is my recipie. You can tell because I don’t really use units of measure, but don’t worry- this will make the most amazing mashed potatoes and you don’t really NEED a recipie. We’re cooking them today because while you can make them earlier, they take up a lot of room in your fridge, and you can already tell that’s getting a little scarce. These potatoes are lacto vegetarian friendly, but can be easily altered for either a meat lover’s dish (put bacon on/in it) or completely vegan. You will need:

• Potatoes
• Onions
• Garlic
• Heavy whipping cream
• Butter
• Mushroom Stock, other stock, bullion (optional)
• Salt

Fill a large stock pot with 3/4 or more water, or any stock or bullion you might have handy. If you don’t have stock or bullion, don’t worry about it. With the amount of liquid we’re talking about, it’s not hugely noticable. Start the water to boil.

Slice up 2-6 large, sweet onions and toss them in the water. Peel and gently crush a head or two of garlic. Don’t worry about fine slicing them, this is supposed to go fast. Skin them and GO. The long boil takes the tart flavor out, leaving you with sweet, delicious, mellow garlic and onion flavors in your potatoes. Yum.

Slice up a lot of potatoes. Don’t bother skinning them, first it takes time, second there’s a lot of vitamins in the skin, and third even people who hate potato skins in their mashed potatoes love mine, so you’ll probably be just as happy. I usually use half a 15 lb sack to start, and rarely have leftover mashed potatoes, but you know the size of the group you are hosting better than I do. Pull out as many as you think you need, then add 5.  The size of the chunks you cut your potatoes into is not important, but it IS important to make them fairly consistent. Drop them in the boiling water.

Set a timer for 2o minutes and make your dinner for tonight. When the timer goes off, check the potatoes. If they are done, drain the water through a colander and toss your potatoes into whatever Tupperware they’re going into your fridge in. If you have multiple crock pots with removable inserts you lucky bitch, I want that SO BAD, use one of those, or optionally sacrifice and use your only crock pot for this. That way you can just pop the potatoes out of the fridge and dump them into the crock pot on Turkey Day and you’ll be SET.

Mash the potatoes whatever way works with you- a potato masher, a plunge mixer, a food processor, magic elves- it does not matter.  Mash the onion bits and the garlic bits in with them.Put in about half a pint of heavy whipping cream, or substitute some (or most) the cream for butter/olive oil and stock (if you’re going vegetarian with this).  I would use a mushroom stock instead of a standard veggie stock.

Salt to taste. These potatoes really do need salt to bring out their flavor.

If you want your potatoes extra creamy, keep mashing, otherwise you’re done.

Ways to spice up/fancy up these potatoes:

• Drizzle some truffle oil on top.
• Mix in some mozzerella cheese
• Fry up some bacon, and use the bacon fat instead of butter and crumble the bacon on top.
• Fry up some portabello mushrooms (in bacon fat if you like it, or in olive oli), tear them up by hand, and mix them in.
• Cut up some chives and sprinkle them on top
• Shape into the mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and start telling your friends about the aliens.

You are done for today, and you should have been able to fit making these potatoes in with making a regular dinner. Pat yourself on the back, do a little happy dance, clean up your kitchen and maybe even feel a wee bit smug for getting ahead of the power curve.

It’s Sunday, you’ve had a day to take it easy yesterday, and today? Today is a good day to pie.

I’m afraid I am going to abandon you here a bit today. You see, while the pies I am going to help you make are good and quick, they are that way because they are lesser pies. I make an honest-to-goodness family secret recipe that was handed down from my great grandmother, so while pumpkin pie and buttermilk pie is awesome, they will never be the star of the show in my home. I thought about it long and hard, dear reader, but I just can’t hand out Great Grandma Mable’s recipe willy-nilly over the internet. If I do I just KNOW the ghosts of my ancestors would show up and make fun of my Ikea furniture, but let me just tell you this- it’s a coffee pie, on an Oreo crust. TO DIE FOR. You might be able to figure out something similar from that.

Anyway, I’m sorry to be a pie-tease, but I promise the pies you are going to make are not only delicious, but they are super fast and easy, because my family pie recipe is a pain in the ass that involves a double boiler (another hint!), and we didn’t want guests deciding they wanted lots of slices. They’d always load up on pumpkin pie first, so we’d get first shot at the good stuff. Anyway. These are the pies I make year round for nice meals, and they are a snap to put together. If you bake the pumkin pies today they will seperate a bit if you freeze them, and if you put them in the fridge, gnomes and elves will eat them before thanksgiving- but you can fill the pies and freeze them today before baking, or freeze all the pie crusts and mix all the fillings for the other two pies today and set them aside until T-day. Your call, depending on available fridge/freezer space.

We’re going to make at least five pies today, which sounds more impressive than it is, due to the joys of batch cooking.

We start with your favorite pie crust recipe- make enough for 5 pies. For me, that recipe comes from the back of the Crisco label. Honestly, with all the quiche baking I do, I have yet to find a pie crust recipe that I can make consistently come close, much less outperform that recipe. It’s been a classic since 1930 for a very good reason. This little YouTube video shows exactly how easy it is, or you can read about it strait from Crisco’s pie crust page.

The ingredients are:
1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening (it does NOT have to be Crisco brand!)
2-3 tablespoons ice water

Mix the flour and shortening together with a fork until it forms pea-sized chunks. Roll out the pie crust (between sheets of wax paper or saran wrap if you like that sort of thing, I just flour my counter top), and then plop it in a pie tin.

You’ll want to do this 5 times. I don’t recommend increasing the recipe because pie crust gets tough if you overwork it, and this is such a lovely crust it’d be sad to ruin it.

You are going to want to make three pumpkin pies. I honestly, again, use the pumpkin pie recipe on the back of the can of Libby’s canned pumpkin. I would buy one can of their pumpkin puree, and then two cans of whatever the cheap generic on sale was, or if I’d thought ahead that year, I’d use homemade puree that I had made after Halloween when all the pumpkins were on sale.

* 3/4 cup granulated sugar
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
* 2 large eggs
* 1 can (15 oz.) LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
* 1 can (12 fl. oz.) NESTLÉ® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk
* 1 unbaked 9-inch (4-cup volume) deep-dish pie shell
* Whipped cream (optional)

Directions:
MIX sugar, cinnamon, salt, ginger and cloves in small bowl. Beat eggs in large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk.

POUR into pie shell.

If you really want this to last until Thanksgiving, freeze them right now. If you are willing to sacrifice a pie to the pie gods today,

BAKE in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F (and put in the buttermilk pies); bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Top with whipped cream before serving.

Now, for the other two pies, we are going to make a quick, simple, and delicious Southern favorite- buttermilk pie. If the name throws you off, as it did me, ignore the buttermilk thing. This pie is basically a custard tart, except unlike most of the custards I’ve dealt with, which were delicious but finicky little bastards, this is fast, easy, and hard to mess up. In fact, it’s so easy to make that my friend Brian, who does not reliably know which end of a spatula to use, made the first buttermilk pie I ever tasted, and it was amazing. He uses a family recipe that I keep trying to pry out of him, but this one is also good (from Chickens in the Road) and tastes pretty similar.

How to make Old-Fashioned Buttermilk Pie:

1 cup sugar
3 T flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
2 T butter, melted
3 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
one unbaked single-crust Foolproof Pie Crust pie shell

Line greased pie pan with piecrust. Combine sugar, flour, and salt in a large bowl. Add egg yolks, buttermilk, and melted butter. Mix well. In another bowl, beat egg whites and cream of tartar until stiff. Fold egg whites into buttermilk mixture. Mix carefully and pour into the prepared pie pan. Bake at 375-degrees for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The link has beautiful pictures of the pie.

If you make 5 pies there is a chance they will make it to Thanksgiving, because you can sacrifice one to the Pie Gods. Just to check and make sure it tastes right, of course.

My mother loves making delicate, amazing, and delicious cranberry relishes. I don’t like them. I like my cranberries jiggling, oversweetened, and strait from a can.

If you are not a barbarian, there are lots of places online to find amazing fresh cranberry relish recipies. I am not the person to judge, because I’m not making dozens of cranberry relishes that I would then have to EAT so I can tell you which is the easist to make and the tastiest, because… well, I’m a barbarian and I don’t like it.

So, today, if you have a cranberry jelly or relish to make, this is the day for it. Cranberries are nice and acidic and they’ll keep till Thanksgiving.

However, there IS a recipie that I tried that was delicious. You know me and my inability to follow directions creative spirit, and how I love to destroy fiddle with recipes, so I figure I will simply give you the original recipe I’ve been mauling making to try to find shortcuts that work with whatever crap is in my pantry or about to go bad perfect it. I’m going to include it here as well as a link, just in case the site it’s on ever goes down. If you get a chance check out the link, the comments are fantastic.

This is the “World’s Most Convenient Green Bean Casserole” from Kitchen Parade. You can make two- one to eat tonight, and one to freeze for the Big Day. It’s delicious, I like it because I don’t like canned green beans and these are fresh. Here you go, a real recipie with measures, temperatures, times and everything! Don’t get spoiled, now.

Stuffing from a box or a bag is acceptable, as most people have never had the real thing. You can still use this recipe to fancy up your stuffing. That said, scratch made stuffing is far better.

If you are following the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day, and heeded the November 1st post, you’ll have made a loaf each of cornbread, pumpernickel bread, and a white or wheat bread. If you just went out and bought three loaves, don’t worry- this is still FAR superior to stuffing from a box, you just won’t get that feeling of smug self-satisfaction doing everything 100% yourself.

Slice the bread into thin slices and, if possible, recruit children to rip the bread slices into pieces, as they love being destructive helpful.  Halves are too big, sixths are about right, and don’t worry about getting them perfect. Arrange the pieces on a couple of cookie sheets and toast them in a warm oven. If you’re making a casserole for dinner tonight, that’ll be perfect. You want the bread to be a little crisper than toast-not burned, but somewhere between toast and crouton. The drier the bread is, the more juice it will absorb and the richer the flavor will be. Once it’s nice and dry, just put it in a paper bag in the pantry.

While that’s Doing It’s Thang, take a pan out and make some hahah I know a fancy French cooking word mirepox. Just dice one small to medium sized onion, and an equal amount of carrots and celery. Sauteed over a medium heat, with some oil or fat in the pan-butter or oilve oil works great. Make sure the mirepaux is fairly finely diced, because that really does make the texture lovely, and stir until the onions get translucent and lovely.

If you like, you can add as much garlic as your long suffering family can stand you like.  I know some people who adore the color pop of red bell pepper chopped into the mirepox, and if there’s another vegitable that you just adore, chop it fine and throw it in the pot. I will restrain myself from throwing in some lovely hot peppers due to the fact my husband is allergic to them, but only barely, and only because I don’t want to spend thanksgiving in an ER.

When you pull it from the heat, you can also chop and add canned water chestnuts or jiicima for some crunch. Throw in a good double handfull of the dried currants, more if  you like the flavor.This is the time to throw in the herbs- I personally like sage, rosemary, and a little basil, but do whatever you enjoy. I’ll throw in a tablespoon or two of sage, some chinese five spice powder, and whatever herbs get in my way happen to look good. If you’re not to the point in your cooking where you throw spices into things willy nilly, you can always cheat and simply look on the sides of your spice jars and throw in a dash of anything that says “Good with poultry”, or just stick with the tried and true sage and rosemary stuffing.

Take a half stick of butter and put it in a bowl next to your mirepox while cooking it, and every time you add an herb or spice, put some of it in the butter. When you’re finished with the herbs, mash the butter up with a fork, mix it nicely, cover it with saran wrap and stick it in the fridge- you’ll put this under the turkey’s breast skin when you’re done to make sure the meat stays tender, and to give some flavor continuity between the turkey and the stuffing.

When you’re mirepox is good and adultered enough that hard line cookbook cooks are right QUIVERING with anxiety seasoned to your tastes, you Put the toast in a nice paper bag, all dried and mixed up, and the mirepox in a baggie in the fridge. Mix them early in the morning on Thanksgiving day with a little (a cup or so) of stock, white wine, or some kind of tea (all will leave a distinct, gentle, and slightly different flavor), and let the stuffing rest for a moment. In about five minutes when you get boared of watching stuffing it’s time to stuff the turkey! Any leftovers that don‘t fit in the turkey, put in a piece of heavy earthenware corningware with enough tasty liquid to make it that lovely, soggy stuffing consistency that we all love.

When stuffing the turkey, gently fill the body cavity with stuffing, as well as the flap of skin where the neck used to be. Don’t overfill, as the stuffing WILL expand and if you overstuff it will be weirdly, inconsistantly dry when you take it out.. When the turkey releases its delicious juices mid-cooking, the stuffing will catch some of it and the flavor will be fantastic.

Now you have both parts of the stuffing ready and in your pantry/fridge, and you don’t have to think about it again until Thanksgiving day itself! HOORAY!

This is my Mom’s carrot recipe. It is amazing. Even the most vegetable hating child like my husband will gobble this up, because it tastes like candy and pure joy.

Take a bag of carrots and wash them carefully. Cut off the tops and any bits on the bottom that look strange.

You are going to want to julienne the carrots. I never cut the sides off for carrots, but other than that, this is a good video demonstrating the technique.

Toss the carrots into a zip lock bag. Cover them with a medium-nice sherry. Mix in brown sugar to taste-if you’re looking for a more desert style dish, add a lot (1 cup would be a lot), otherwise, add just a few tablespoons.

Toss the carrots into the fridge to marinade. When the day comes to cook them, throw a couple of tablespoons of butter in the bottom of a small crock pot (PERFECT, this is preferable, do it first thing in the morning) or in a frying pan (more work, put them in around noon and stir occasionally, if it boils down too much add some apple juice to keep the sauce from sticking or burning) and toss in the carrots and the liquid. If it’s in a crock pot, leave it alone even though it smells so good. The outside should be soft, and the inside just sliiighly crunchy.

If you want to be super fancy, you can remove the carrots and reduce the sauce, then pour it on the carrots again. You could also throw a few currants or dried cranberries in while the carrots were cooking to add a nice tart undertone. A little lemon juice or a few sections of an orange could also work nicely.

If you want, when you serve these you could add some orange zest on top. It’s a very elegant looking dish.

Thanksgiving is my holiday. The first meal I learned how to cook was a seven course turkey dinner (when I hit home economics in the 6th grade and we made pizza…on bagels…in the microwave I was underwhelmed) and it’s the psychotic stress-crazy-insanity bringing holiday in my family of origin’s house. While weddings can bring on Greek tragedy levels of psychosis in any family, Thanksgiving was the holiday that made all of the quirks of my extended family really shine. Truly, you can not understand how important Thanksgiving was in my family until you realize that the patriarch my my Mom’s family was not only viciously verbally abusive, but a professional chief who started a culinary school. Even after he died, the level of passion and dedication the women in my family threw at the holiday was both terrifying and addictive, and the whole point was to cook for two days strait while driving yourself (and anyone handy) insane, then have a dinner so delicious that heaven itself wept.

This was the holiday where, as a woman, you were judged by the entire family. Eight year olds would snark you if the food wasn’t up to par, and there was endless praise thrown down upon the heads of those who brought the delicious.

The thing that sucked about Thanksgiving, though, was that this was fueled by the fun that the menfolk would sit around and watch the Macy’s Parade or football with the kids (I used to think this was unfair when I was old enough to be drafted into slave labor help in the kitchen, but now I realize that it was a great way to not only get the kids, but the men, out from underfoot), and followed by an enormous stack of dishes to wash when everyone was sitting on whatever soft surface they could find, stoned on turkey.

No more, my friends and loyal readers. I am going to give you my new, improved, Thanksgiving schedule. I’ve been working on this all year, with little nudges and changes here and there. Here is the plan: every day this week, when you make dinner, you’ll make an extra dish. This should take no longer than 20-30 minutes. You can finish part of it and have it as a side for dinner that night, or toss it in the fridge or freezer and wait for T-day.

And when Thanksgiving comes, dear reader, you will be that calm, cool, collected Martha Steward-esq woman all your friends will hate as you lay dish after delicious, from-scratch cooked, home made dish on the table, without having to face a hideous pile of cooking dishes and not getting to spend time with your guests on Thanksgiving.

My recipes tend to be pretty…generous (they are delicious with a wide range of input), so I’ve included some of my recipes and some recipes from other sources. The things for my recipes will be in loose measure- make as much as you need (potatoes, carrots, and onions fit this bill). The recipes I’ve culled from other sources will have specific units of measurement, so you’ll be able to tell what they are just by the shopping list.

Here is the shopping list and list of dishes for this plan.

• Carrots   (one large bunch)
• Potatoes (large bag)
• Onions (large bag)
• Garlic (5-6 heads)
• Celery (1 bunch)
• Bread: 3 different kinds, on sale if you can get it- white/french baugette, pumpernickle, and cornbread.
• 1 can of water chestnuts
• 1 package of dried currants
• Dried Parsley
• Dried Sage
• Turkey, large enough to feed everyone and provide leftovers
• Flour, yeast (in a jar, not in packages), salt.
• 2 lbs(packages of 4 sticks) of butter. No margarine. We’re cooking from scratch, and you don’t do that and throw margarine in the mix.
• 1 large can of Crisco or lard/vegitable shortening
• Brown sugar
• Regular sugar
• Frozen cranberries OR canned cranberry jelly
• Canned, frozen, or fresh corn (whatever you like best/is cheapest)
• Sweet potatoes- they should be orange in the middle. Sometimes they are called yams. If they are white in the middle… oh well, the recipie will still taste good.
• Walnuts or pecans
• Buttermilk (large container)
• Heavy Whipping Cream (large container)
• Sherry (not the cheapest stuff, you can use cooking sherry if you have it on hand or an OK $8 bottle)
• I will add to this list as I finish adding and refining all the recipies.