Seasons by the Sea: Make Room Now

Here’s the best advice you’re going to get while preparing for your Thanksgiving dinner. Make room now in your freezer and refrigerator. Be brutal. Just as we are told to change the batteries in our smoke detectors at daylight saving time, you should take the time twice a year to go through those mystery meats, leftover loaves of bread, soups from 2010, chutneys, whatever. And now is the time, well before Turkey Day.

The best way to attempt to make Thanksgiving Day stress-free, low-labor, and well-organized, is to make a checklist and timeline. Order your turkey, create your menu, try as best as you can to determine how many guests you’ll have, and delegate. Does your Aunt Matilda make the best Brussels sprouts dish? Let her bring that in an attractive, ovenproof casserole that can go straight from the oven to the table. Is Uncle Buck a wine aficionado? Let him bring the pinot noir or chardonnay or festive Beaujolais nouveau.

Not a baker? Get your pies from Blue Duck or Carissa’s Breads. Don’t you feel better already?

Now what can you do in advance? If you have a dining room that doesn’t get used much, set it ahead. Polish your silver and put out those wine glasses you only use twice a year. Isn’t that pretty? The only things missing are your floral centerpiece and Grandpa Roy, who’s going to tell you why Donald Trump should be president.

Food-wise, there are quite a few things you can make in advance and freeze. If you are making mashed potatoes with full-on fat content, as in whole milk and/or cream, and butter, this freezes very well. If you use watery, low fat ingredients (broth, low fat milk, and why would you on Thanksgiving?), the texture will not be so great. If you are ambitious enough to make your own pies, freeze them unbaked, then bake when needed.

The most important thing to consider when preparing food ahead and freezing is to allow the cooked food to cool rapidly to room temperature, then freeze tightly wrapped in a shallow layer. To cool mashed potatoes, quickly spread them out in a two-to-three-inch layer, cool, then pack into Ziploc baggies, squeezing out as much air as possible.

I love all manner of cranberry relishes, jellies, and chutneys, even the canned stuff. I have already made Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish, a recipe that NPR’s Susan Stamberg shares every year. After about 25 years of this popular broadcast, Craig Claiborne contacted her and said, “Uh, that’s not your mother’s recipe, it’s mine.” He-he, oops. Regardless, it is an unusual and delicious combination of raw cranberries ground with onion, enriched with sour cream, and perked up with horseradish. It is frozen, then served partially thawed, in all of its Pepto-Bismol pink glory.

Personally, I like all of the old-fashioned dishes I grew up with, from the green bean casserole with canned fried onions on top to mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows. When I was little, I got the assignment of garnishing the sweet potatoes with the mini-marshmallows. I’m pretty sure this activity planted the seed of my brilliant cooking career.

There are also some things you should have on hand for other meals throughout the weekend. I keep a dense loaf of nutty bread for toast in the morning. For heartier appetites you can make one of those eggy-cheesy-mushroom-sausage casseroles that you assemble the night before and bake in the morning. Plenty of cut-up fruit is handy, along with a big bowl of clementines.

One of my favorite ways to use up leftover turkey is in mole enchiladas, or enmoladas as they say in Mexico. Get some tortillas, Monterey jack cheese, and a jar of mole sauce in advance.

An unusual but tasty leftover turkey idea is sandwiches with a dollop of cheap, supermarket caviar. I thought my English friends were the only ones who knew about this, but even The New York Times offers a recipe for this sandwich. Of course theirs is gussied up with chive enhancements and Cognac tears, whatever. Basically you just construct an open-faced turkey sandwich with whatever fixings you like — leftover stuffing, mayo, white bread — and top it with a tablespoon of caviar.

Do you know how to make perfect gravy? Two choices: either have a canister of Wondra flour to sprinkle into your broth and drippings or make a slurry of equal parts softened butter and flour. Add a bit of hot broth to the slurry, then slowly whisk this into the pan and thicken. Voila! Perfect, silky smooth gravy, sans giblets, I hope.

I don’t believe people should be gorging themselves on heavy cheese platters and boozy drinks before they sit down to the biggest feast of the year. I put out a bowl of spiced nuts, maybe one hard cheese (a little bit goes a long way), and have a light, low-alcohol aperitif like vinho verde or sherry. Stick to your schedule, and if possible, eat early enough in the day so that everyone can take a long constitutional after the meal. Some fresh air and exercise after all that soporific turkey tryptophan will do everyone good. Actually, turkey has no more tryptophan than other poultry, so there goes that myth.

Hopefully, these few tips will help ease your preparations for Thanksgiving Day. Keep in mind that a few grocery stores may stay open that morning, and there are plenty of caterers willing to do the job for you if you want to go that route.

Remember what the day is really about: giving thanks. Or as Oscar Wilde once said, “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.”

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