My Thanksgiving game plan: More planning, less work, more family time

Black Friday is one of my favorite days of the Thanksgiving holiday. Not because I want to go shopping, but because I can spend the day relaxing with my family, enjoying leftovers and playing board games. That doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of several weeks of planning and preparation.

Over the years, I’ve learned to approach Thanksgiving much like a project. There are tasks to complete, supplies to purchase, people to coordinate and deadlines to meet. By organizing the work and spreading it over several weeks, I can avoid spending the entire holiday in the kitchen.

I’ve prepared Thanksgiving dinners for as few as three people and as many as 100, and those experiences have taught me a great deal about planning and organization. While the amount of work changes with the number of guests, the same basic planning principles apply. I’m not trying to create a perfect Thanksgiving dinner, but I do want the work to be manageable, so I have more time to enjoy the holiday with my family.

Six to eight weeks before Thanksgiving 

My Thanksgiving preparations begin long before I purchase the turkey. About six to eight weeks before the holiday, I start taking inventory of the pantry, planning our meals for the coming weeks and cleaning the areas of the house that will get the most use. 

I concentrate on the kitchen, pantry and laundry room (which serves as a second pantry and clean-up area). This includes cleaning out the refrigerator and my large upright freezer. As Thanksgiving approaches, I’ll need room for ingredients, prepared dishes, and, eventually, leftovers. This also helps to ensure the food in my freezer is cycled through annually.

I also take stock of all my home canned food to see what needs to be used up. Taking inventory also helps me plan our everyday meals leading up to Thanksgiving. I can use ingredients we already have, identify what needs to be replaced and avoid purchasing things that are hiding in the back of the pantry.

These aren’t tasks that need to be finished in a single weekend. I spread them over several weeks, making progress as time allows. By the time I’m ready to begin shopping and cooking, the spaces I’ll depend on are organized and ready to use.

Getting the menu and schedule together

One advantage of hosting Thanksgiving year after year is that I don’t have to reinvent the menu every November.

Our family has developed a collection of favorite dishes, and everyone has a few things they enjoy making. My oldest daughter makes the creamed corn, while my youngest makes the Brussels sprouts. They’ve each perfected their recipes, and those dishes have become part of our Thanksgiving tradition. Years ago, I created a booklet with our Thanksgiving menu and recipes in PowerPoint, printed it and kept it in a binder. That binder is somewhere in my garage now, and the menu has changed quite a bit since then.

I’ve also used a spreadsheet for years to organize the work involved in preparing Thanksgiving dinner. Each year, I update it based on what worked, what needs to change and the tasks that need to be completed. It helps me keep track of the shopping, preparation, cooking schedule and plans for leftovers. I’m sharing an updated version of that spreadsheet as a free download, so you can use it to organize your own Thanksgiving preparations. You can change the tasks, dates, and responsibilities to fit your family’s menu and schedule. 

This year, I’m also trying something new with our family Thanksgiving recipe book. I’m using Google Docs to create an updated collection of our recipes, including links to favorites we’ve found online. If the new approach works well, I’ll share more about it in the future. 

Knowing what we’re cooking is only part of the planning. I also need to know when everything needs to happen. I work backward from Thanksgiving Day, identifying which tasks can be completed ahead of time and which ones need to wait. Cleaning, shopping, food preparation, cooking and even meals made from leftovers all have a place in the plan. 

Of course, you don’t need special software to organize Thanksgiving. A notebook or calendar can work just as well. The important thing is having a system that helps you manage the work.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving

About two weeks before Thanksgiving, I begin ordering the ingredients we’ll need for the holiday. I start with items that will store well. Having already inventoried the pantry, I can check what we have on hand before placing the order. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I place another order for perishable ingredients and anything that won’t keep as long. Dividing the shopping into two stages helps spread out the work and makes it easier to manage refrigerator and pantry space.  

I order our groceries online for pickup. The service is free where I shop, and it saves me a considerable amount of time. Instead of navigating crowded grocery aisles, I can review my list, place the order and pick everything up. It’s a modern convenience I’m happy to use. Preparing a traditional Thanksgiving meal doesn’t mean everything has to be done the way our grandmothers did it.

Thanksgiving week: Preparing ahead

The Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving are when much of my preparation takes place. 

I use those days to make ingredients and components that can be prepared ahead of time. For example, I make homemade cream of mushroom soup for the green bean casserole and cranberry-pecan-orange bread that will become part of our stuffing. 

A day or two before Thanksgiving, I do much of the chopping and other ingredient preparation as well as assembling many of the sides. Having these tasks completed makes the day run more smoothly when Thanksgiving arrives. I also set up our temporary buffet table in the music room, which was originally the formal dining room. Getting the serving area ready ahead of time means one less thing to manage on Thanksgiving Day.

Wednesday has its own tradition in our house. We call it Pie Day. That’s when we make the desserts, and the kids generally each take responsibility for one. Pie Day is part of the preparation schedule, but it’s also an opportunity for us to spend time together. We’re working on the meal, sharing responsibilities and continuing a family tradition. 

By Wednesday evening, much of the preparation is behind us.

Thanksgiving day: Putting the plan to work

We generally eat Thanksgiving dinner around 2 p.m., so I organize the cooking schedule around that time.

I start the turkey on the grill, leaving the oven available for assembling and baking the side dishes.

One thing that helps simplify the process is using consistent equipment. 

There’s a principle commonly used in business: ‘Standardize before you optimize.’ I’ve found that it applies just as well to organizing a household. All of our Thanksgiving side dishes are prepared in either 9-by-13-inch or 8-by-8-inch stainless steel pans with lids. Using the same pan sizes makes it easier to plan oven space, arrange the buffet, and store the leftovers. I don’t have to transfer every dish into a different container when dinner is over. 

The buffet table is already set up in the music room, and I use warming mats to help keep the food ready for serving. As a side note, it’s important to verify that warming equipment can maintain safe hot-holding temperatures rather than assuming any warming mat will do the job. 

Because much of the preparation has already been completed, Thanksgiving morning is largely about finalizing the assembly of the side dishes, managing cooking times and getting everything ready to serve. There’s still plenty to do, but the work is much more manageable when I don’t have to start every dish from scratch.

After Thanksgiving: Making the most of leftovers

My Thanksgiving game plan doesn’t end when dinner is served. 

After the meal, I remove the remaining turkey meat from the bones. The bones go into my large countertop roaster with water to make broth overnight. When making broth this way, it’s important to maintain a safe cooking temperature and cool the finished broth promptly.

The remaining side dishes go into the refrigerator in their covered stainless-steel pans. They stack nicely and fit easily into my refrigerator. Those pans make the next day’s meal especially convenient. On Black Friday, I can reheat the leftovers and arrange them buffet-style for another family dinner. During the rest of the week, I can keep condensing the leftovers and slipping the pans into my dishwasher for easy clean-up as they are emptied. 

But I also plan for what happens after we’ve had our fill of the traditional Thanksgiving meal. My recipe collection includes dishes that repurpose leftovers, and I incorporate those meals into the Thanksgiving planning timeline. For example, I make muffins with the leftover sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce and a version of Shepard’s pie with a stuffing crust, a filling comprised of the turkey and leftover vegetables, all topped with swirled mashed potatoes. That means I’m thinking about how we’ll use the remaining food before Thanksgiving even arrives.

Planning for leftovers helps reduce food waste and makes better use of the time, money and effort invested in preparing the meal. It also means I don’t have to spend the days following Thanksgiving figuring out what to cook. And that’s where all the planning really pays off. By Black Friday, most of the work is behind us. We have plenty of food ready to enjoy, and I can spend the day relaxing, playing board games and spending time with my family.

Thanksgiving takes work, whether you’re feeding three people or a hundred. But I’ve found that spreading the preparation over several weeks makes the holiday much more enjoyable.

You don’t have to follow my menu, use the same equipment or begin preparing eight weeks in advance. The important thing is finding an approach that works for your household. If you’d like a starting point, download my Thanksgiving project-planning spreadsheet and customize it for your own celebration. Use it to organize your tasks, assign responsibilities, and keep track of what needs to happen before and after the holiday.

For me, the real benefit of planning ahead isn’t just getting Thanksgiving dinner on the table. It’s having more time to enjoy the people and traditions that make the holiday worth celebrating. 

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