Thanks to the Getting Ahead for the Holidays series, I was super motivated and had all the food cooked for Thanksgiving by Tuesday night. I did this so I could enjoy the holiday. As it turned out, I appreciated it even more because I came down with a cold on Tuesday night. Booooooo. I was so frustrated!!!
All day Wednesday I sat in my recliner blowing my nose, trying not to talk, watching Netflix, and being thankful I did not have to cook. I prayed that I’d be able to enjoy Thanksgiving. I took a bath with Epsom salt and essential oils. I drank hot tea by the gallon. I rested.
Thank you, Lord, for make-ahead meals – especially a make-ahead Thanksgiving meal.
Come Thursday morning, I was slightly better, though quite stuffy and low on energy. Matt and the boys cleared out the living room and set up tables and chairs. Brittany worked her magic to decorate. I worked on warming up the prepared food.
My mashed potatoes (which had been prepared and frozen) turned into soup on my crock pot. Now that wasn’t supposed to happen.
I transferred them to a pot on the stove to steam off some of the liquid. It took about 30 minutes, but it worked great! Below, you’ll see that while I was sick, I wasn’t too sick to take an ugly picture of mashed potatoes steaming in a pot for you. Now that is blogger dedication.
Meanwhile, all the other dishes sat warming in the oven. It took longer than I had planned. The more you load your oven, the longer food takes to heat up. Imagine that.
I helped myself to another cup of hot tea while the food heated and we waited for our guests to arrive. We had super icy weather that day (still do, actually), so a few of our guests weren’t able to make it. :(
When it was all said and done the tables were beautiful, the food was delicious, and we had a wonderful time with all our guests. If you look closely, you’ll see that I cheated and used rolls I had bought from Bountiful Baskets.
What you see there in that 9×13 pan is my friend Maureen’s famous Pumpkin Bars. I need the recipe. We all need the recipe. Maureen? We need the recipe. ;)
Since Thanksgiving day, we’ve eaten more delicious food, watched a couple of movies, and played a 6-hour game of Settlers of Catan. Only the Coppinger family can make Catan last 6-hours. In our defense, we had added several variables, which always adds time – even if you aren’t a Coppinger. But let’s just say that some of the people in this family are verrrry thorrrrrough with their turns. (Don’t look at me. I am a short turn-taker.)
Kleenexes and sore throat aside, this has been an awesome week of Thanksgiving break. Tonight we’re having Lasagna, tomorrow we’re having a new soup recipe Brittany and I came up with, and tomorrow night Asa and Brittany move back to the dorms. School commences, along with all the normal real-life stuff like work and chores. Ooh, but it’s Christmas season, so there is much to look forward to!
Rebekah Walden says
Sorry you were sick over the holiday. But it looks like you pulled off a miracle Thanksgiving. We had a great one as well 14 of our usual 25 gathered and ate great food laughed a lot. Just wondering where I missed info on Brittney. Since you have all boys is this a cousin or a girlfriend?? Will be looking forward to your Christmas time posts. Merry Christmas.
Laura says
Ahh, she is a girlfriend. :) I mentioned her here: https://www.heavenlyhomemakers.com/gratituesday-why-i-will-always-have-coffee-in-my-fridge but forgot to link back to that post on this one! :)
K. Ann Guinn says
Glad you pulled off a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, and survived to tell about it (it sounds like you even enjoyed it, though sick).
We had a nice quiet day with family at a brother-in-law’s home. It was good to be together, if not a little sad, as there are three family members dealing with extended sickness, and one who is declining some with cancer.
We were thankful to be together for one more year. It makes you realize how precious it is each time we get together.
This week I will roast our turkey of which we will probably eat a couple (or more) meals, then freeze the rest for later (including a nice ready-made Christmas dinner). I’ll so stuffing on a different day and also freeze some of that. I’m also hoping to do some baking and decorating this week, since I find myself recently laid off.
Blessings for your holidays.
K Brunner says
I could have swore there was a Thanksgiving thief out there running around trying to steal my joy! I too, made a majority of the food ahead of time with you as my inspiration and I too, was met with some ‘bumps’ along the way. The biggest and most dramatic of these was a small-ish (but I ask, can they really be small) grease fire!! I slopped some of the grease into the oven as I was pulling the bird out of the oven to rest before cutting into. It’s by the grace of God my clothes did not catch on fire. Luckily, I got the bird on the stove, slammed the door shut and the flames fizzled out quickly.
On a positive note, I did my green beans, stuffing and sweet taters in advance freezing all 3. Next year I will pull them for thaw on Monday, not Tuesday as it does take time to heat thru. Additionally, my cranberry sauce was runny, so I didn’t serve (it looked like borscht). I took your advice on the mashed taters from a previous post and had the wee ones peel and chop, soaked in cold, salted h2o on the stove and turned up the heat turkey morning. YUMMY!!!! Your advice, and experience inspired me to cook ahead enabling ME to enjoy the holiday outside the kitchen despite all of this year’s mishaps. I am going to do the same for Christmas this year, but need a menu. Historically we have a repeat of Thanksgiving, which is fine, but there’s no shame in spicing this up a bit, right? Looking forward to your insight as Christmas approaches.
Vickie Houser says
We were supposed to go about 2 hours south for Thanksgiving with family, but due to the ice/snow forecast we did not. However, we did have a lovely meal with all the trimmings. I had cooked a turkey (’cause we love turkey) a few days before for freezing into meals. We had a little in the fridge still so that was nice. I took some leftover mashed potatoes and made half into potato dumplings. Thawed some frozen turkey drippings (from last January) and made gravy. The heated up some frozen sweet corn, left over green beans, & home canned cranberry sauce. We had 4 deep dish pumpkin pies that we were supposed to take with us, so there was plenty of desert too! Yum! After our meal we Skyped with family and worked on making some Christmas presents. It turned out to be a good Thanksgiving anyway!