Does keeping calm when Thanksgiving is coming sound like an impossible dream? I can’t promise you won’t have any last-minute scrambling, but you can make Thanksgiving a lot less stressful if you plan in advance. Hopefully, you have your menu set by now – if not, that’s job 1 (check out https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/86833007/posts/2044360688 for some tips). Once you know what you’re eating, it’s time for lists.

First, write out your entire menu – I like to do it in a nice font and even put a picture on top, because the menu is going to be taped to your kitchen cabinets. Save the document, though, because the first printout may be a “working” copy”. Once you have your menu, go through it and make your shopping list and the last-minute shopping list – I usually shop on the weekend, so I don’t buy my turkey and some of the produce (lettuce, for instance) until Tuesday or Wednesday. Be sure to check your spices – there’s a lot of things used at Thanksgiving you may not use during the year, so make sure you have them on hand and they still smell like they should. If you don’t have post-it notes around the house, add them to your shopping list (you’ll see why soon). The other thing I’d recommend is getting a bunch of aluminum half-pans – you don’t need to serve out of them if you have enough serving dishes, but they’re great for things you want to make in advance and warm up in the oven – you can stack them with cookie sheets in-between – and they’re just generally useful.

After the shopping list is done, go through your menu and (a) note every dish someone else is bringing and (b) note what serving dish you are using for each dish. If you feel like re-typing your menu to include those notes, go for it, but just be sure they’re noted on whatever menu you’re hanging up. If you realize you don’t have enough serving dishes or spoons,  you can either choose to serve out of half-pans, ask people to bring serving dishes and/or spoons, or make a run to the dollar store, where you can often get some nice-looking serving pieces for $1.00. Or you can use this as an excuse to buy some serving pieces you’ve wanted. 😉

Next, list every single step that needs to be done for every single dish. For instance, if you’re making mashed potatoes, don’t just write “make mashed potatoes”, write “peel potatoes”, “boil potatoes”, “mash potatoes”.  If someone is bringing something that has to be heated up when it arrives, write it down – “heat stuffing from Gillian”, for instance.

Once you’ve got that master list, hang it and the menu on your kitchen cabinets (or anywhere in the kitchen you can see it). Now it’s time to do a cleaning and “other” list. Again, be as specific as possible – you don’t have to write “dust dresser”, “dust night table” for each bedroom, but write “dust master bedroom”, “dust guest room”, etc. Don’t forget things like washing tablecloths, cleaning serving dishes you rarely use (including polishing silver if you have some), putting out air fresheners, and lighting candles. A note about cleaning – the bigger the crowd, the less they’ll notice dust! Also, if you don’t hang that list up, no one will know if something didn’t get done. Speaking of big crowds, be sure to count chairs and space at your tables to make sure you have enough – if not, doing this in advance will give you time to ask people to bring tables and chairs. Someone you know definitely has a card table and some folding chairs and people are happy to help.

Besides cleaning in advance, which I hope you’re able to do (except the bathrooms, which I do after we’ve showered Thanksgiving morning), look through your food list and consider what you can do in advance. Some things you can definitely do in advance include baking, peeling carrots and preparing some other vegetables (don’t peel potatoes in advance or they’ll brown), making soup, and making salad dressing (you don’t want to make the salad until right before people get there, but you can make the dressing well in advance – if you keep it in a Tupperware,  you can usually just shake it vigorously before you dress your salad).

Don’t forget defrosting time…I usually buy a fresh turkey, but if you buy a frozen one, be sure to leave yourself enough time to defrost it, plus anything else frozen – shrimp, frozen spinach if you’re making spinach dip, and anything else that starts frozen and needs to be defrosted.

Thanksgiving morning, wake up early and go through your list. Set the table and tablescape as early as possible so it’s done. Next, take out all the serving dishes you’ll need for the whole meal, including any nibbles you’re putting out when people arrive and desserts. Here’s where those post-it notes come into play (I know you’ve been wondering). Label each serving dish with what goes in it and put the serving spoon (or other utensil) in the dish. This way, if people are helping you get the food on the table, one person won’t be asking you at the absolute crazy-busiest time, “hey, do you have a bowl for the broccoli?” at the same time someone else is asking, “where’s the serving fork for the turkey?” If you need a hot plate on the table for anything, put it out and put a post-it note on each hot plate to identify what goes on it.

If possible, set up a separate table or area for desserts, so you can park those pies you made in advance out of the way – put the sugar bowl and milk pitcher (empty) on that table so you won’t forget those when it’s dessert time. Don’t forget coffee and tea – if you need coffee pods, make sure however many you need are out (you don’t want to have to go to the basement when it’s dessert time – you can put them in a nice bowl or one of those half-pans), as well as tea bags, hot cocoa, sugar-free sweetener, and anything else you’ll need at dessert time.

The other area I always set up is a drinks area – I actually have a cooler in my dining room, but I realize most people don’t, so make sure if you need a cooler for water, soda, and beer, that you know where you’re putting it and that it’s clean. Also, if your cooler has a plug to drain water, make sure that plug is closed before you fill the cooler – I always check this after one year when someone (who will remain nameless but just might be my sister-in-law) left the plug open in my husband’s 50-gallon fish cooler and I went to the basement at the end of the evening and thought we had a leak! All kidding aside, I like to set up an area with glasses (wine glasses and solo cups for soda), glass markers people can use to identify their glasses, a corkscrew, and a beer bottle opener, as well as red wine and whatever liquor I’m serving. If I’m making a punch or specialty drink, that’s where I’ll set it up too. It makes life so much easier than having to pull water out of the fridge, find the corkscrew for one person and the bottle opener for someone else and get glasses as people need them – you can just direct people to that area and they can help themselves to everything. You do have to budget a little time to run to the local convenience store and get ice, but you’ll save time in the long run.

Then it’s time to cook! Start with things you can do early and warm up in the oven. By the way, the turkey can be done in the morning. Keep it covered with aluminium foil after you take it out of the oven and it will stay warm until it’s time to serve. And don’t feel pressure to have that “perfect” Thanksgiving scene of carving the turkey at the table – show everyone the whole turkey in its roasting pan and carve it in the kitchen where you have a little more room to work. Lots of foods can be started in advance and warmed up in the oven – we do all our mashed veggies (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and parsnips, turnips) in advance, plus when we did a green bean casserole, we did that in advance. Put them all in those half-pans and just dish them out into your nice bowls when it’s time to serve.

Wishing you a stress-free Thanksgiving!