How to Plan an Organized Holiday Meal (With Kids to Watch!)

Because of cancelled plans and a crazy year, we stayed at home and celebrated Thanksgiving with our little family of four this year. We ended up cooking out Thanksgiving meal two days early because that's what day the turkey ended up thawing on. I bought our 13 pound turkey on Saturday morning and put it into the refrigerator to thaw because there was no room for it in any of our three freezers. Yup, you heard that right. We have THREE freezers - two refrigerator freezers and a chest freezer - and they are ALL full. Full of what? Liquid gold! No, I'm not talking about melted cheese. Breastmilk. And some food. But mostly breastmilk. 

This freezer is completely milk bags. 

I’ve repurposed bubble wrap packaging and empty tissue boxes very well. 

So Tuesday was the day.

I organized Thanksgiving as I was taught to lesson plan during my years of pedagogy and education classes or how to write a paper for everyone else who doesn't go the education route.

1. Pre-planning

I made a list of everything we wanted to eat for Thanksgiving. For us, that included turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, macaroni and cheese, brussel sprouts, and rolls. You might be thinking I'm missing a classic staple of green bean casserole. I'll explain why later. Keep in mind I'm making everything from scratch here so that is why I used recipes for things I wouldn't normally use recipes for. 

2. Planning

I wrote out a brief outline of my Thanksgiving dishes. This included finding the recipes for dishes I was using recipes for and writing out which kitchen appliances I would be using for each dish. This is a key step of organization that makes everything go SO much smoother. We all know how many dishes can take up the oven for Thanksgiving. Well, an oven only has so much room and a house only has so many ovens. We have one oven. I could have made every single dish on our list in the oven, but that would be a terrible decision because it would take an entire day to cook and by the time the last dish was done, the first would be cold. This is why we nixed green bean casserole off the list because as much as we both love green bean casserole, it would have lengthened our cooking time by at least an hour. And when you have two mobile children to look after while cooking, time is of the essence. 

These were the recipes that I used for the dishes involving recipes:

Turkey: https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/easy-no-fuss-thanksgiving-turkey/

Mac and Cheese: https://thestayathomechef.com/stovetop-mac-and-cheese/

Rolls: I used the recipe on the back of my yeast packet.

Stuffing: https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-stovetop-thanksgiving-stuffing-225090

Giblet Gravy: https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/giblet_gravy/

3. Cooking

For my 8 items to cook, I cooked one the day before: Mashed potatoes. I chose to cook my mashed potatoes ahead because I thought they were the most reheatable dish on the list without losing out on flavor and texture. Everything else we cooked on the day of. To maximize your time, you have to cook everything in overlapping times. While the turkey was in the oven, I was starting my gravy, starting my corn, making mac and cheese, prepping brussel sprouts, and preparing dough for my rolls. If I wasn't doing any of that, I was doing the dishes so the pile in the sink wouldn't reach the ceiling. 

Somehow, in five hours, everything got done, and my two kids didn't get into anything dangerous or cause any trouble. Yes, we were taking turns glancing over to watch them play or feeding them. So no, we did not completely ignore or neglect our kids for five hours. In fact, my daughter helped me wash dishes and make the rolls. 

By 5pm, everything was cooked and we were eating around 5:15 pm.

By 6 pm, we were done eating.

By 7 pm, everything was cleaned up, the turkey bone was simmering on the stove for stock, and we began the kids' bedtime routine.

So all in, it was a very busy 7 hours in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, but it was absolutely worth it to make a turkey dinner once a year. If we ever do Thanksgiving again at our house in the future, I may consider pre-making a green bean casserole and then just using the oven to heat it up on the day of to save time and still be able to use the oven for the turkey. 

As for Christmas this year....we'll most likely be cooking ham instead. And you guessed it. I’ve already started planning 😉.