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Your Guide to a Stress-Free Thanksgiving

Posted by Danielle Bean in Homemaking on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:00 AM

Are you hosting a Thanksgiving gathering at your house this year? If so, I am here to tell you this:

Breathe. Relax. You can do this. It’s going to be just lovely.

We’ll be hosting Dan’s dad at our house this year. I am sad that my sister and her wonderfully big family won’t be able to join us like they did last year, but we truly are a wild enough gang all on our own.

Whether you’re hosting a small gathering or a colossal event, a little preparation ahead of time will keep you smiling on T-Day.

When I’m planning a complicated dinner, I find that using a written schedule keeps me on track. It takes a little work ahead of time, but it really pays off in organization and peace of mind in the last-minute heat of the moment. And what hostess doesn’t need that?

Here’s how you do it:

1. Write a list of everything you plan to do or cook or prepare for your dinner. Put absolutely every last detail on there—baking the pies, stuffing the turkey, making the cranberry sauce, heating the rolls, setting the table ... everything.

2. Next to each item, write down an estimate of how long it will take to prepare, from start to finish. Some items can be done ahead of time, even the day before. Make note of these as well.

3. Using the time you plan to serve dinner as your starting point, work backwards to make a master work schedule for yourself. For example, if you want dinner ready for 4:00 and you know that the potatoes will take 20 minutes to peel, 40 minutes to boil, and another 15 minutes to mash, giving you a total of 75 minutes ... you would schedule “peel potatoes” for 2:45, “boil potatoes” for 3:00, and “mash potatoes” for 3:45.

4. Go back through your schedule and make reasonable adjustments to allow for limited space in your oven and the fact that you can’t do 6 things at once, all in the last 15 minutes before dinner. For example, if you think that the mashed potatoes can stay reasonably warm, covered and on the stove, for 30 minutes, plan to have them finished by 3:30 and schedule more pressing things—like heating rolls and breads or carving the turkey—for the last minute.

In the end, you will have a pretty detailed master list of what needs to be done when—one that begins a day or two before your Thanksgiving meal and ends when you plan to serve it. You can know at a glance what you need to be doing when and you can delegate tasks accordingly.

See what I mean? You can host a peaceful, organized Thanksgiving dinner at your house—no matter how big the crowd.

And that’s definitely something to be thankful for.

PS: Stay tuned! I’ll post links to my some of my favorite Thanksgiving recipes in a post later today!

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What Do You Have to Say for Yourself?