NATCHEZ, Miss. - Regina Charboneau, who is much more organized than you are, will host 145 people at her house this Thanksgiving. She is related to nearly all of them. Her family tree has been growing in this tiny charm of a town on the shores of the Mississippi River for eight generations.Charboneau (and, to be fair, an assistant) will make almost every one of the 15 dishes and five desserts on her table, down to the Creole gravy and cranberry-jalapeño chutney. The day begins at 11 a.m., when her family arrives to eat Cajun sausages and tortas made with fresh fig preserves and walnuts. The sausages are a tribute to her father, who was raised in Louisiana and was the cook in the family. At 1 p.m., an uncle will say a blessing. Then Charboneau will shout, "God bless the cook!" and the guests will sweep into the grand dining room of her 1832 plantation house to eat.If the day goes according to plan, it will all seem effortless. "I guess it's the Southern belle in me," she said. "I don't like being frazzled, and I don't like breaking a sweat." But indeed, she will have sweated, a little bit every day, since before Halloween, when she began her long march to Thanksgiving.
Do not let Charboneau's superior planning skills send you into a spiral of hopelessness. The point is this: A brilliantly executed, low-stress Thanksgiving meal can be yours with a solid game plan, freezer space and some simple but delicious shortcuts. And it's not too late to start.Charboneau, 60, has developed an array of tips and tricks that can make the dinner seem elaborate and elegant without countless hours in the kitchen. Think of it as culinary stagecraft with a Southern twist. "Even if you can't cook that well, you can take canned whole cranberries and layer them in a pretty glass bowl with some orange marmalade," she said. "Little things like that make a difference. They add up."Almost daily from early October, she takes calls from friends around the country who are deep in the holiday weeds. "People think they can do Thanksgiving all in one day, and that is wrong, wrong, wrong," she said. "I want people to be one step ahead, always. It's just the key." Planning ahead means less work on a day when the house is filled with both people and expectations. Begin now, she advises, by writing a menu. Then gather all of the recipes, and start filling in a calendar. Make a prep list, noting dishes that can be made this week or the next. Make shopping lists so you won't be running to the store a dozen times."You need lists for your lists," she said. Hers are rendered in precise detail. In October, she begins saving drippings and making stock for gravy. A week before the holiday, she will bring up the wineglasses from the basement. Next to her notation for the Cajun sausages, she wrote, "Have Jimmy bring day before Thanksgiving on his way to hunting camp."For the past few weeks, Charboneau has been making dishes that freeze remarkably well. Don't gasp. A good bit of her meal will have been in the freezer weeks before it is served. "The only thing I really sweat is what happens if the electricity goes out," she said. "I am constantly checking the freezers." She has already filled two hotel pans with her beloved Natchez creamed spinach, and several more with two variations of dressing. The caramelized sugar custard and other components for her banana trifle are in there, along with disposable aluminum pans of brisket already sliced and in gravy. (Brisket has become a tradition ever since she went looking for an alternative to turkey, which she doesn't much like, and decided that prime rib was too expensive.)Clearly, Charboneau is not your average home cook. In the 1970s, she took a job making food at a construction site in rural Alaska to earn money to attend culinary school in Paris. In the 1980s, she ran Regina's at the Regis in San Francisco's theater district. In the 1990s, she opened the nightclub Biscuits and Blues a block away.Along the way, she became a biscuit-bearing Thanksgiving fairy to a parade of friends and celebrities, which explains why she has framed snapshots of Robin Williams, Shirley MacLaine, Tim Curry and Lily Tomlin on her bookshelves. Mick Jagger and other Rolling Stones are among her fans, the proof hanging on her wall in the form of Ronnie Wood's self-portrait.In 2000, she moved back to Natchez to raise her sons, Jean Luc and Martin. She runs a bed-and-breakfast at her Twin Oaks plantation house, and is the culinary director of the American Queen, a cruise steamboat that plies the Mississippi. Her husband, Doug, recently took a sabbatical from his job in New York as a bankruptcy consultant to open a rum distillery in an old building next to the historic King's Tavern in Natchez. The couple bought the buildings last year, turning the tavern into a restaurant with craft cocktails and brisket flatbread."We just don't want to be bored," she said. "When you find yourself watching 'Dancing With the Stars' and looking forward to 'American Idol,' you think, 'We need to get busy.'" She took over the family Thanksgiving shortly after they returned to Natchez and immediately upgraded the menu.Her mother, an expert hostess, had insisted on real plates and silverware; the guest list got so big she had to wash them in the bathtub. Charboneau has moved to good-quality plastic plates and flatware.In one of her many nods to convenience over convention, she buys prepared pie crusts from a shop in town. Other shortcuts include using grocery-store hot-dog buns instead of brioche in her mushroom-brioche dressing. She also gets her brother to smoke a few turkeys. (She encourages novice cooks to consider buying a smoked or otherwise prepared bird so they can focus on making spectacular side dishes.) The Monday before the holiday, she moves frozen dishes to the refrigerator. On Thanksgiving morning, she begins heating them.The dressing bakes first. Piping hot, she packs it into white Igloo coolers until she is ready to put it into chafing dishes. With her oven free, she can make her ridiculously easy sweet-potato dish. She rubs the prettiest orange-fleshed sweet potatoes she can find with oil, kosher salt and coarse black pepper and roasts them for an hour or more. Then she slices them in half, nestles them on a platter and adds a spoonful of sour cream and an artful dollop of cranberry-jalapeño chutney. The chutney has been made well ahead of time, of course."It's effortless, and people love them, love them, love them," she said. Last, she bakes her biscuits. She makes them in advance, using a laminating technique that leaves streaks of butter. They get cut and frozen. She pops them into muffin tins at the last moment to bake. Julia Reed, the Southern author, has eaten more of those biscuits than may be polite to admit. In a foreword to Charboneau's latest cookbook, "Mississippi Current," she calls them "the flakiest, most meltingly delicious biscuits I've ever tasted in a long and active life of tasting them."The biscuits have seduced many guests over the years, including Tate Taylor, a Mississippi native best known for directing the film "The Help." Last fall, Taylor was in Natchez shooting the James Brown biopic, "Get On Up." He and many cast members, including Allison Janney and Chadwick Boseman, ended up at Twin Oaks for Thanksgiving. "It is extremely organized chaos," Taylor said. "She has a rigid schedule she has been working for weeks." The results, he reported, were stunning: a glorious Thanksgiving tableau dripping with elegance. "It just appears," he said. "You don't see the carnage."And that is a perfect Southern holiday.RECIPES
Regina's Butter Biscuits With Orange Marmalade Butter
Adapted from Regina Charboneau
Time: 50 minutes
Yield: 3 dozen 2-inch biscuits, 12 servings marmalade butter
For the biscuits:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, chilled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) salted margarine, chilled and cut into 2-inch cubes
1 3/4 cups buttermilk, chilled
For the marmalade butter:
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, at room temperature
3 tablespoons sweet orange marmalade1. Make the biscuits: Put flour, baking powder and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Turn the machine on low and blend for 15 seconds. Add the butter, margarine and buttermilk to flour mixture before turning mixer back on. Turn mixer on medium and count to 10. This goes very quickly; the key is to not over-mix the dough. There will be large chunks of butter and margarine, the size of quarters, in the dough.2. Scrape dough from the bowl onto a generously floured work surface or tea towel and shape into a long vertical rectangle about 2 inches thick. The dough will seem rough and messy. Using the edges of the towel, fold the lower part of the dough (about one-third) toward the center, then fold the top portion down. With a rolling pin, roll dough out to a 2-inch thickness. Fold the two ends in again, lifting the edges of the towel to help move the dough. Give dough a one-quarter turn, and roll it out again to a 2-inch thickness. Continue folding, turning and rolling dough until it is smooth, with noticeable yellow ribbons of butter and margarine throughout.3. Roll dough to 1 1/2-inch thickness. Using a 2-inch biscuit cutter, cut dough into rounds. Punch cutter into dough cleanly, without twisting. When refolding and re-rolling the dough, gently stack it to retain the layers. Do not overwork.4. Place biscuits on a baking sheet and freeze. Once they are frozen, transfer biscuits to plastic bags. The unbaked biscuits can be frozen for 2 months.5. To bake, heat oven to 350 degrees. Place frozen biscuits in the cups of muffin tins. Let thaw in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Bake until golden brown, 23 to 25 minutes.6. Make the marmalade butter: Put butter and marmalade in a mini food processor and pulse to combine. Alternatively, whisk together butter and marmalade in a bowl. (Can be made a week in advance and refrigerated.) To serve, bring to a cool room temperature and transfer to a serving bowl. Serve next to hot biscuits.
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry-Jalapeño Chutney
Time: 2 hours
Yield: 6 servingsFor the chutney:
1/4 pound butter
1/2 cup diced red onion
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup black currants
1/4 cup golden raisins
3 cups fresh cranberries
1 fresh jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon powdered gingerFor the sweet potatoes:
6 sweet potatoes
6 teaspoons canola or olive oil
6 teaspoons sea salt
6 teaspoons cracked black pepper
1/2 cup sour cream1. Make the chutney: Slowly melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add red onion and red and green peppers. Sauté for 1 minute. Add vinegar, brown sugar, currants, raisins and cranberries. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Add jalapeño, allspice and ginger. Cook, stirring occasionally, for another 10 minutes.2. Make the sweet potatoes: Heat oven to 350 degrees. (Use 1 large sweet potato to serve 2 as a side dish, or 1 smaller sweet potato per person.) Wash and dry each sweet potato, then rub with 1 teaspoon of canola oil and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon each of sea salt and cracked pepper.3. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until soft in the center. While sweet potato is hot, cut in half and top with 1 tablespoon fresh sour cream and 1 tablespoon chutney. Serve immediately.Corn Pudding Stuffed With Greens
Time: 2 hours
Yield: 8 servingsFor the greens:
3 slices thick smoked bacon
1/2 cup diced onion
1 pound cleaned, cut mustard greens (collards may be used but will take longer to cook)
2 cups chicken stock or ham stock
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt to tasteFor the pudding:
1/4 pound butter
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced red pepper
2 tablespoons garlic
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 cups crumbled cornbread
1 cup cream
4 eggs1. Make the greens: In a large cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat, add the bacon and cook for 3 minutes before adding onions. Cook for 12 minutes until bacon and onions are browned. Add the greens and stir well. Then add 2 cups water and the stock and crushed red pepper. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring on occasionally, until water is down to about a cup and stems are tender. Adjust salt. Drain well, then chop greens.2. Make the pudding: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion, celery and diced red pepper, and cook until soft. Add the garlic, sage, basil, black pepper and crushed red pepper. Cook for 1 minute more. Remove from heat and pour into a large mixing bowl. Add crumbled cornbread and stir. Stir in cream. In a small bowl, beat the eggs well, then add to cornbread mixture and mix well.3. Fill 8 buttered 6-ounce glass custard cups halfway with the cornbread mixture. Spoon in 2 tablespoons of the chopped mustard greens. Add more cornbread mixture, but do not fill to the top. Place the cups in a 9-by-12-inch baking dish, and carefully add water to about a half-inch. Cover with foil and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. The pudding should be firm to the touch in the middle of each dish. While it is still hot, turn out each pudding and serve. Or wrap well in plastic wrap and freeze. Allow to thaw in the refrigerator and reheat before serving.Sidebar:A Thanksgiving ChecklistRegina Charboneau knows how to make Thanksgiving easier. Here are some of her timesaving tips: Do all the shopping at least a week in advance, except for salad produce.
Set out all of your serving platters and bowls a week ahead, and decide which dishes will hold which food. Do the same with serving utensils. Mark them with a sticky note.Consider making table arrangements with pumpkins or gourds or potted mums that last for a long time so you aren't fussing over flowers at the last minute. Start saving drippings from chickens or roasts to make gravy ahead of time. These can be frozen, along with homemade stock. Do the math to plan how much food you will need. Most people will eat about 6 ounces of meat and another 10 to 12 ounces of other food. If you want a lot of leftover turkey, plan on a pound on the bone per person.Mash the potatoes early in the day. Peel and dice the night before, and submerge the cut potatoes in a large pot of water. Set the pot on the stove and turn it on as soon as you wake up, salting the water well. Mash the potatoes with warm milk and butter. Melt a little butter on the bottom of a slow cooker with a ceramic insert. Keep the cooker on low, stirring occasionally to keep potato edges from browning, until serving time. If you are serving store-bought rolls or chutney or even a turkey, always use the most attractive dishes you have to serve them.
Don't be a martyr. Cut corners where you can so you never appear flustered or rushed. Guests will appreciate a relaxed host more than a homemade dish.© 2014 New York Times News Service
Do not let Charboneau's superior planning skills send you into a spiral of hopelessness. The point is this: A brilliantly executed, low-stress Thanksgiving meal can be yours with a solid game plan, freezer space and some simple but delicious shortcuts. And it's not too late to start.Charboneau, 60, has developed an array of tips and tricks that can make the dinner seem elaborate and elegant without countless hours in the kitchen. Think of it as culinary stagecraft with a Southern twist. "Even if you can't cook that well, you can take canned whole cranberries and layer them in a pretty glass bowl with some orange marmalade," she said. "Little things like that make a difference. They add up."Almost daily from early October, she takes calls from friends around the country who are deep in the holiday weeds. "People think they can do Thanksgiving all in one day, and that is wrong, wrong, wrong," she said. "I want people to be one step ahead, always. It's just the key." Planning ahead means less work on a day when the house is filled with both people and expectations. Begin now, she advises, by writing a menu. Then gather all of the recipes, and start filling in a calendar. Make a prep list, noting dishes that can be made this week or the next. Make shopping lists so you won't be running to the store a dozen times."You need lists for your lists," she said. Hers are rendered in precise detail. In October, she begins saving drippings and making stock for gravy. A week before the holiday, she will bring up the wineglasses from the basement. Next to her notation for the Cajun sausages, she wrote, "Have Jimmy bring day before Thanksgiving on his way to hunting camp."For the past few weeks, Charboneau has been making dishes that freeze remarkably well. Don't gasp. A good bit of her meal will have been in the freezer weeks before it is served. "The only thing I really sweat is what happens if the electricity goes out," she said. "I am constantly checking the freezers." She has already filled two hotel pans with her beloved Natchez creamed spinach, and several more with two variations of dressing. The caramelized sugar custard and other components for her banana trifle are in there, along with disposable aluminum pans of brisket already sliced and in gravy. (Brisket has become a tradition ever since she went looking for an alternative to turkey, which she doesn't much like, and decided that prime rib was too expensive.)Clearly, Charboneau is not your average home cook. In the 1970s, she took a job making food at a construction site in rural Alaska to earn money to attend culinary school in Paris. In the 1980s, she ran Regina's at the Regis in San Francisco's theater district. In the 1990s, she opened the nightclub Biscuits and Blues a block away.Along the way, she became a biscuit-bearing Thanksgiving fairy to a parade of friends and celebrities, which explains why she has framed snapshots of Robin Williams, Shirley MacLaine, Tim Curry and Lily Tomlin on her bookshelves. Mick Jagger and other Rolling Stones are among her fans, the proof hanging on her wall in the form of Ronnie Wood's self-portrait.In 2000, she moved back to Natchez to raise her sons, Jean Luc and Martin. She runs a bed-and-breakfast at her Twin Oaks plantation house, and is the culinary director of the American Queen, a cruise steamboat that plies the Mississippi. Her husband, Doug, recently took a sabbatical from his job in New York as a bankruptcy consultant to open a rum distillery in an old building next to the historic King's Tavern in Natchez. The couple bought the buildings last year, turning the tavern into a restaurant with craft cocktails and brisket flatbread."We just don't want to be bored," she said. "When you find yourself watching 'Dancing With the Stars' and looking forward to 'American Idol,' you think, 'We need to get busy.'" She took over the family Thanksgiving shortly after they returned to Natchez and immediately upgraded the menu.Her mother, an expert hostess, had insisted on real plates and silverware; the guest list got so big she had to wash them in the bathtub. Charboneau has moved to good-quality plastic plates and flatware.In one of her many nods to convenience over convention, she buys prepared pie crusts from a shop in town. Other shortcuts include using grocery-store hot-dog buns instead of brioche in her mushroom-brioche dressing. She also gets her brother to smoke a few turkeys. (She encourages novice cooks to consider buying a smoked or otherwise prepared bird so they can focus on making spectacular side dishes.) The Monday before the holiday, she moves frozen dishes to the refrigerator. On Thanksgiving morning, she begins heating them.The dressing bakes first. Piping hot, she packs it into white Igloo coolers until she is ready to put it into chafing dishes. With her oven free, she can make her ridiculously easy sweet-potato dish. She rubs the prettiest orange-fleshed sweet potatoes she can find with oil, kosher salt and coarse black pepper and roasts them for an hour or more. Then she slices them in half, nestles them on a platter and adds a spoonful of sour cream and an artful dollop of cranberry-jalapeño chutney. The chutney has been made well ahead of time, of course."It's effortless, and people love them, love them, love them," she said. Last, she bakes her biscuits. She makes them in advance, using a laminating technique that leaves streaks of butter. They get cut and frozen. She pops them into muffin tins at the last moment to bake. Julia Reed, the Southern author, has eaten more of those biscuits than may be polite to admit. In a foreword to Charboneau's latest cookbook, "Mississippi Current," she calls them "the flakiest, most meltingly delicious biscuits I've ever tasted in a long and active life of tasting them."The biscuits have seduced many guests over the years, including Tate Taylor, a Mississippi native best known for directing the film "The Help." Last fall, Taylor was in Natchez shooting the James Brown biopic, "Get On Up." He and many cast members, including Allison Janney and Chadwick Boseman, ended up at Twin Oaks for Thanksgiving. "It is extremely organized chaos," Taylor said. "She has a rigid schedule she has been working for weeks." The results, he reported, were stunning: a glorious Thanksgiving tableau dripping with elegance. "It just appears," he said. "You don't see the carnage."And that is a perfect Southern holiday.RECIPES
Regina's Butter Biscuits With Orange Marmalade Butter
Adapted from Regina Charboneau
Time: 50 minutes
Yield: 3 dozen 2-inch biscuits, 12 servings marmalade butter
For the biscuits:
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, chilled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) salted margarine, chilled and cut into 2-inch cubes
1 3/4 cups buttermilk, chilled
For the marmalade butter:
1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter, at room temperature
3 tablespoons sweet orange marmalade1. Make the biscuits: Put flour, baking powder and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Turn the machine on low and blend for 15 seconds. Add the butter, margarine and buttermilk to flour mixture before turning mixer back on. Turn mixer on medium and count to 10. This goes very quickly; the key is to not over-mix the dough. There will be large chunks of butter and margarine, the size of quarters, in the dough.2. Scrape dough from the bowl onto a generously floured work surface or tea towel and shape into a long vertical rectangle about 2 inches thick. The dough will seem rough and messy. Using the edges of the towel, fold the lower part of the dough (about one-third) toward the center, then fold the top portion down. With a rolling pin, roll dough out to a 2-inch thickness. Fold the two ends in again, lifting the edges of the towel to help move the dough. Give dough a one-quarter turn, and roll it out again to a 2-inch thickness. Continue folding, turning and rolling dough until it is smooth, with noticeable yellow ribbons of butter and margarine throughout.3. Roll dough to 1 1/2-inch thickness. Using a 2-inch biscuit cutter, cut dough into rounds. Punch cutter into dough cleanly, without twisting. When refolding and re-rolling the dough, gently stack it to retain the layers. Do not overwork.4. Place biscuits on a baking sheet and freeze. Once they are frozen, transfer biscuits to plastic bags. The unbaked biscuits can be frozen for 2 months.5. To bake, heat oven to 350 degrees. Place frozen biscuits in the cups of muffin tins. Let thaw in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. Bake until golden brown, 23 to 25 minutes.6. Make the marmalade butter: Put butter and marmalade in a mini food processor and pulse to combine. Alternatively, whisk together butter and marmalade in a bowl. (Can be made a week in advance and refrigerated.) To serve, bring to a cool room temperature and transfer to a serving bowl. Serve next to hot biscuits.
Sweet Potatoes With Cranberry-Jalapeño Chutney
Time: 2 hours
Yield: 6 servingsFor the chutney:
1/4 pound butter
1/2 cup diced red onion
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup diced green bell pepper
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 cups brown sugar
1/4 cup black currants
1/4 cup golden raisins
3 cups fresh cranberries
1 fresh jalapeño, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon powdered gingerFor the sweet potatoes:
6 sweet potatoes
6 teaspoons canola or olive oil
6 teaspoons sea salt
6 teaspoons cracked black pepper
1/2 cup sour cream1. Make the chutney: Slowly melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add red onion and red and green peppers. Sauté for 1 minute. Add vinegar, brown sugar, currants, raisins and cranberries. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Add jalapeño, allspice and ginger. Cook, stirring occasionally, for another 10 minutes.2. Make the sweet potatoes: Heat oven to 350 degrees. (Use 1 large sweet potato to serve 2 as a side dish, or 1 smaller sweet potato per person.) Wash and dry each sweet potato, then rub with 1 teaspoon of canola oil and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon each of sea salt and cracked pepper.3. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until soft in the center. While sweet potato is hot, cut in half and top with 1 tablespoon fresh sour cream and 1 tablespoon chutney. Serve immediately.Corn Pudding Stuffed With Greens
Time: 2 hours
Yield: 8 servingsFor the greens:
3 slices thick smoked bacon
1/2 cup diced onion
1 pound cleaned, cut mustard greens (collards may be used but will take longer to cook)
2 cups chicken stock or ham stock
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt to tasteFor the pudding:
1/4 pound butter
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced red pepper
2 tablespoons garlic
2 teaspoons rubbed sage
1 teaspoon basil
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 cups crumbled cornbread
1 cup cream
4 eggs1. Make the greens: In a large cast-iron skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat, add the bacon and cook for 3 minutes before adding onions. Cook for 12 minutes until bacon and onions are browned. Add the greens and stir well. Then add 2 cups water and the stock and crushed red pepper. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring on occasionally, until water is down to about a cup and stems are tender. Adjust salt. Drain well, then chop greens.2. Make the pudding: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion, celery and diced red pepper, and cook until soft. Add the garlic, sage, basil, black pepper and crushed red pepper. Cook for 1 minute more. Remove from heat and pour into a large mixing bowl. Add crumbled cornbread and stir. Stir in cream. In a small bowl, beat the eggs well, then add to cornbread mixture and mix well.3. Fill 8 buttered 6-ounce glass custard cups halfway with the cornbread mixture. Spoon in 2 tablespoons of the chopped mustard greens. Add more cornbread mixture, but do not fill to the top. Place the cups in a 9-by-12-inch baking dish, and carefully add water to about a half-inch. Cover with foil and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. The pudding should be firm to the touch in the middle of each dish. While it is still hot, turn out each pudding and serve. Or wrap well in plastic wrap and freeze. Allow to thaw in the refrigerator and reheat before serving.Sidebar:A Thanksgiving ChecklistRegina Charboneau knows how to make Thanksgiving easier. Here are some of her timesaving tips: Do all the shopping at least a week in advance, except for salad produce.
Set out all of your serving platters and bowls a week ahead, and decide which dishes will hold which food. Do the same with serving utensils. Mark them with a sticky note.Consider making table arrangements with pumpkins or gourds or potted mums that last for a long time so you aren't fussing over flowers at the last minute. Start saving drippings from chickens or roasts to make gravy ahead of time. These can be frozen, along with homemade stock. Do the math to plan how much food you will need. Most people will eat about 6 ounces of meat and another 10 to 12 ounces of other food. If you want a lot of leftover turkey, plan on a pound on the bone per person.Mash the potatoes early in the day. Peel and dice the night before, and submerge the cut potatoes in a large pot of water. Set the pot on the stove and turn it on as soon as you wake up, salting the water well. Mash the potatoes with warm milk and butter. Melt a little butter on the bottom of a slow cooker with a ceramic insert. Keep the cooker on low, stirring occasionally to keep potato edges from browning, until serving time. If you are serving store-bought rolls or chutney or even a turkey, always use the most attractive dishes you have to serve them.
Don't be a martyr. Cut corners where you can so you never appear flustered or rushed. Guests will appreciate a relaxed host more than a homemade dish.© 2014 New York Times News Service
Advertisement