A step aside from the kitchen, well, a little bit. With (American) Thanksgiving coming this week I thought I would talk about holidays and organizing. While I am talking about Thanksgiving, it applies to all large family (or even company) dinners.
I used to make Thanksgiving dinner for our families. Since I am Jewish and my husband is Roman Catholic most family type holidays are different for our two families. Thanksgiving being an American holiday which crosses religions and ethnic backgrounds was the only holiday for which both our families wanted us for dinner at the same time. For years we waffled at what to do and generally ended up going out to dinner with his family. Then one year his sister was married just before Thanksgiving. Dinner with just his parents and grandmother seemed too small. I suggested we make Thanksgiving dinner in our little apartment and invite both families. He took some convincing that we could and that we could fit everyone in our apartment. So for 25 years we did. The year we moved from our apartment to our house - in October - we still had Thanksgiving dinner here in November - on the good china and cooked by us. Depending on the year we had 10-14 people, ranging in age- at various times from 2 months old (my niece - when her brother first came he was 3 months old) to my grandfather in his mid 90's.
In the apartment we would have to move stuff into the bathtub and close the curtain and into the trunks of our cars to make enough clear space for the dinner, especially when we were running a crafts business in the apartment (finished goods to the car trunks...). We would take my small electric clothes dryer put it in the corner of the living room and put a table cloth on it and use it for server for cheese and crackers and soda - so it was not in the way and we had the top to use. The small washer had to be shoved in the corner of the kitchen to be out of the way.
My mom would make family dinners for holidays and I learned to organize the meal from her. We cheated and had the turkey cooked by a local deli (and later their not so local related deli when the one near us closed). My sister and her family were nice enough to pick it up for us on their way here - it was a hot pickup on Thanksgiving in midafternoon. This left our efforts and oven available for other foods.
Due to our different background our families had different foods for Thanksgiving. When people have been interviewed about what they have for Thanksgiving the answer is generally “turkey and all the trimmings”. It was only when people were questioned about “trimmings” that it came out that each area of the country, each ethnic group, and each family has a different idea of trimmings. His family, being Italian, had manicotti as a course before the turkey. My family sometimes had dinner at kosher deli, as a relative we had Thanksgiving with was kosher, and my sisters and I would order corned beef sandwiches as mom made turkey sometimes for dinner and corned beef sandwiches were much rarer to us. (The deli staff was shocked at the idea, but they were offering their full menu.) To combine our families we went with traditional American. I made Pennsylvania Dutch beef vegetable soup, mashed potatoes, Colonial Williamsburg’s recipe for sweet potatoes (no marshmallows of course), “pop open can” rolls, canned cranberry sauce, canned gravy (plus the gravy that we got with the turkey), boxed stuffing, canned pumpkin pie (the pumpkin was canned, the pie was baked by us), apple pie (crumb topping as I prefer same, also baked by me), brownies (from a mix) and vegetables. As we went along I added venetians (rainbow cookies) and the vegetables varied including green bean- wax bean-carrot mix a couple of years, and one year I made succotash as my niece had a line in the Thanksgiving performance at school “Please pass the succotash” and I thought she should know what it was.
I tried to split the shopping into 2 trips, one, the second week of the month and the other, the third week of the month. (Of course there were still midnight Wednesday night runs to the 24 hour supermarket the first few years.) Cooking started in advance. If I was making the venetians it started on Tuesday as it was a 2 day process, if not, on Wednesday when I made the soup - most of the day it was on the stove - and we baked the pies and brownies and set up the sweet potatoes to bake the next day. I knew after awhile that on Thanksgiving the white potatoes went into boil first - they were baked later and by doing them first the stove was available and they could get cold as they would be heated in the oven later. The rest followed. I preplanned which pots and baking dishes, as well as which serving bowls and pieces were to be used for each dish. I kept each year’s meal in a spiral notebook with notes for the following years. In the first few years I listed what each dish would be cooked in and served in, as the years passed I knew what I had used before and it became instinct.
Not everything went well. One early year we were making chestnut stuffing from scratch. The chestnuts had to be cooked and then shelled and peeled. Peeled? We did not know that chestnuts had a skin to be peeled inside the shell. It took hours and hours and then we just dumped them in with the skin. At one point a drinking glass fell out of the closet and broke - not only did the glass need to be cleaned up, but the chestnuts which were out at that point had to be discarded! I was near tears, but we muddled thorough and never made chestnut stuffing again - although I did think about it this year. Another year towards the beginning I decided to bake a Colonial Williamsburg recipe bread. I tried it in advanced and it came out great. The day before Thanksgiving while I was making the soup and baking, I mixed up the bread mix and put it on the back burner of the stove to let it rise “in a warm place” as I had done previously. This day the kitchen and stove were much warmer and the dough rose much more - much, much more. It rose out of the bowl and onto and into the stove! The bread ended up coming out great, but I had to stop and clean up a huge mess in mid baking/cooking. I made rolls from scratch in a later year - again the trial run was fine, but this time I had done something wrong and they did not rise. The corn muffins one year did not want to leave the muffin pans (and they would have been such cute little teddy bears too). Believe it or not with all these baking problems I am a blue ribbon winning baker at the county fair. I learned not to make anything with a cream sauce which had to be made at the last minute - too much to do in the rush of the day.
We also had one year where my niece (then in high school) had gone to a dance near us the night before Thanksgiving and we picked her up for her parents and she stayed overnight for Thanksgiving so she helped with the baking, setup and cooking. One year we were watching one of husband’s nieces, preschool age at the time, the day before Thanksgiving and I had her help me set the table.
One thing I did to make it easier was to clean as I went, yes, everyone suggests this, but it works. I had figured out back in my mom’s house when we had dinner with extended family that if we stopped leaving everything to wash after dinner was over and filled the dishwasher and ran it when full, there was much less to do after everyone else left. In our apartment and after my house dishwasher died (and I have not replaced it yet) it meant to wash when I got a sink of stuff to wash and set it aside to air dry; when I had a dishwasher I would load it as I went and start it when full - unload it when dry to have it ready to reuse.
Generally I did not get around to setting the table until late Wednesday night or on Thanksgiving day. When we first started we used 2 folding tables the length of our apartment living room. For a while when we were first in the house we had to assemble the top we made which clamped on to our kitchen table to hold everyone - eventually we got a dining room table that when open almost filled our dining room, but we could squeeze in at one end and one my sisters and a child or two children, could fit at the other end. I have been gradually clearing away items which were sitting on the dining room table and putting them where they belonged (many in our tiny RV as they came in after the last trip to be emptied and never went back out.)
Today (Wednesday) I cleared the dining room of items which needed to go the basement and we had not brought down and of additional, larger items which needed to go out to the RV. The table is open and the table cloth, napkins and the table pad are waiting for the table to be set tomorrow for the two of us. Tonight I baked a pumpkin pie (low sugar) and assembled the sweet potatoes (also made with low sugar) in a casserole for tomorrow. I am trying new instructions for the turkey which involved some preparation tonight and it is done.
Each Thanksgiving night (or any other dinner I made/make) ALL of the dishes, pots, etc. (unless a pot really needed to soak) were washed that night - not necessarily put away or dried, but washed. Pots were done last. I would use extra towels to put items on to air dry as needed. In our house I also took the tablecloth outside the house and shook it out of crumbs and it and the napkins were washed in the washer and drying in the dryer before I went to bed. In the apartment it would be shaken out and all would be in the laundry bag for the next time I did laundry. I would put everything away starting Friday and have it mostly done by Sunday (some items still being used for the leftovers).
Leftovers from the main course were put into plastic containers or zipper plastic bags immediately after the main course. Family members, including children - especially children - are wonderful for helping with this, as well as clearing the table. (Children love to help, they think they are being treated special as grownups.) Leftovers from dessert and the soup were put away after the guests left. (The leftover soup needed to cool before being put back into the refrigerator.) The garbage went out Thanksgiving night.
We all have that collection of plastic containers that accumulate. Some we bought, some came filled with something and were too good to throw away, some just appeared, but they do accumulate. Since I used more of them after Thanksgiving dinner for leftovers than at any other time during the year, in the days after Thanksgiving I would look at what was left and after making sure I had a good size assortment, I would get rid of the spares which had come filled with food (ones not paid for) and passed along any excess other ones (the ones we paid for) that were not needed. By using this time of year I knew I had plenty of plastic storage containers to use during the year and more would accumulate by the following Thanksgiving.
Recently I was discussing on an online group that Thanksgiving is the unique American holiday that is celebrated across all lines. Someone posted back that it is only those with a deity who have someone to give thanks to. I pointed out that thanks may be given to mother earth, providence, the universe, one’s family, one’s friends, one’s luck, one’s self, etc. A Happy Thanksgiving to those here in the USA. Please remember that what is for sale on “Black Friday”, “Small Business Saturday”, “Cyber Monday” or any other day is just stuff and most of us have too much of it. Remember more stuff for you or those you gift it to, is more stuff to organize and deal with and the sales are not really as great as they seem.
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