Reduce your stress at Thanksgiving...

Years ago I started making about ½ to ¾ of our Thanksgiving meal a day or two ahead of time. Having veggies and or even the entire dish its self prepped and ready to go is the key!

We were living in a house that had a small kitchen and cooking a big meal in there could be quite stressful. Having small children and a husband at home chanting "is it turkey time yet" did not help the matter. Not only did cooking ahead save me on time on the big day but I also found that I wasn't stressed out and better yet... my kitchen wasn't the ominous towering inferno of dirty dishes. I had time to enjoy my friends and family and pulled off a huge dinner and made it all look near effortless -how? Simply because I was organized.

Ways to be organized for Thanksgiving Dinner

♥ Start making your plan at least 2 weeks ahead of time. Plan everything from beverages, to dinner napkins, table linens and of course the food being served.

♥ I find that grocery shopping at least 3 days ahead of time to be the key.

♥ Be sure to have plenty of those inexpensive plastic food storage containers on hand (Glad and Ziploc are the best). They work great for storing prepped veggies, storing leftovers and sending leftover desserts home with guests.

♥ You can bake desserts up to 3 days ahead of time. Depending upon the items being made is how you will have to store them.

♥ Prep that green garden salad a day ahead. Ziploc plastic bags are great for this! All those great veggies can be cut and ready to go at a moments notice. Heck you can do this while watching TV.

♥ You can prep veggies up to 2 days in advance- store in plastic containers in fridge.

♥ You can make things like mashed potatoes and home made rolls a day ahead of time. Heat them up either in the microwave or in the oven for a few minutes. How many of us have burnt the rolls because we were busy attending to "other items" ? Seriously, bake them in advance when you aren't stressing about your guests being comfortable and the food all making it to the finish line (the dinner table) at the same time.

♥ While the turkey is in the oven, give the floor the last quick sweep or mop (depending upon how messy of a cook you are you may have to do both) before the guests arrive.

Easy Clean Up after the meal

♥ Those same plastic containers work great for soaking flatware and serving utensils. No stuck on food particles for you this year! Put a few drops of dish washing liquid and fill with hot water and there you are!

♥ Rinse the dinner dishes and stack them on a cookie/baking sheet. Keeping them in stacks makes for easy loading of the dishwasher or hand washing.

♥ Do this same thing for the used glassware. Use a paper towel to wipe off lipstick marks.

♥ Those plastic containers are great for storing those leftovers. Be sure to get them tucked into those containers as soon as dinner is over to prevent salmonella.

♥ Soak as many dishes as possible. You may find that you will need to run the dishwasher 2 or even 3 times to get through everything. That's okay, that's why you rinsed and stacked the dishes- having them organized like that makes them quick and easy to load in the dishwasher.

♥ Now grab yourself a glass of wine and get in there with your family and friends and enjoy the evening!

Something that I do for myself

I copied this in whole from my "scrapbooking" blog because as I see it, it's about dishes and pottery and it should have been posted here instead of there, enjoy the read!

I see it as being rather funny how so many of women friends save their China for that "special occasion". I have many friends who either have it and don't use it or they use it only once a year for Christmas dinner. Maybe this is an American thing- being that I don't have all that many British friends and the ones I do have, well they think I'm a nutter with all of my pottery (and that's okay so do my American girlfriends -and I still adore them all).

My thing is this...make YOU a priority. You're someone special aren't you? The next time you make yourself some tea and lunch- serve it up on that lovely china you that you've been saving for that "special occassion".

Cooking Clubs

With the desire to get to know our neighbors better, Our Neighborhood started a cooking club. Although I was unable to attend the first 2 get togethers (first due to a prior engagement and 2nd due to being sick) I am a charter member. I can't begin to tell you all how much fun having something like this going on in your neighborhood. Pick a theme, I chose "salads" for mine and go from there. Sure it can be challenging for people to think outside of the box when it comes to salads but I think that we had a terrific show of "different" dishes. Salads are not just limited to "lettuce", there is so much more out there. That's what the cooking club is all about, trying new to you dishes without the expense of buying all of the ingredients. I dare say that all of the salads were delicious! From appetizers, to sides and main courses to desserts! As the recipes trickle in from the cooking club members I am compiling them. I will post them here look under "recipes" when you are looking for something "different" to try.

Autumn cooking

To me, Autumn means progressively shorter days, the fall foliage turning brilliant shade of crimson red, flame orange and deep gold and of course it's also sweater weather! Autumn also means time for cooking comfort foods such as homemade macaroni and cheese, chili, chicken pie, and of course there's hearty beef stew (my favorite recipe is Parker's beef stew- it's one of Ina Garten's recipes) and cottage pie. Lets not forget dessert! Apple pie has to be one of my most favorite things to eat in the Autumn, the scent of apples and cinnamon swirling around in the air just sings happiness! Pumpkin pie and Pecan Pie (my dear friend René makes the BEST Pecan pie). Lets also think about the cakes...Gingerbread cake, Spice cake, coffee cake and of course carrot cake! Where do we begin to pick out our favorites? One of my childhood favorites was Acorn squash stuffed with...what else, stuffing! Yes, the stuff you would put into a turkey. You put the stuffing in when it was about ½ to ¾ of the way done, stuffing doesn't take as long to cook as the squash does. I remember thinking that this was the end all be all of enjoying Autumn veggies. You could also fill it with a meat filling made in the same manner as you would meat loaf or a Florentine meat filling for manicotti (I use ground chicken or turkey). Heck, you can do this same thing with zucchini, mushrooms, bell peppers...the list is endless!

So go out there and cook up something fantastic tonight using the bounty of veggies from the Autumn harvest!

For those who like to bake...

I've always enjoyed baking cakes. Since the start I've loved using shaped cake pans and this one over at Williams-Sonoma is just darling! For those who have children of an age who enjoy the Build a Bear experience (my 13 year old still loves it) this is right up there!

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
~Alice May Brock

I saw this quote about food and HAD to share it!

Dinnerware formal and non-formal

I love my dinnerware! For my everyday I have Fiestaware. For my formal I have Noritake Greenbrier. I'm rather bummed right now because I recently found out that Nortiake had discontinued my pattern last AUGUST! Then again this was not the china pattern that I had picked out. So I've made the best of it for years, all the while wishing that I had mustered up the courage to have taken it back and traded it in for the pattern that I really wanted "Old Country Roses". That pattern is a classic and will never be discontinued.

Last summer I was at a friend's home attending a going away dinner for a mutual friend. The lady who hosted the event had set her table in the most charming manner- at every place setting there was a different china pattern. I loved it! I knew right there that THAT was what I wanted to do. Now that I've seen another senior spouse do this in her home, I knew that I too could pull off this look. NO more stuffy formal place settings for me! Our new formal dinner ware will be warm and inviting, I like to call it "country charming". Everyone commented on the different dinnerware patterns that Ginny had set out and how they loved it. With that in mind I'm now going to seek single place settings of different patterns. What a great way to go about achieving a unique look.

Mikasa Wine glasses

Every month the mission Support Group commanders get togther and have a little party, the selection is totally random. How do you know when it's YOUR turn to host a party? You get this cute pink flamingo stuck in your yard, LOL! So February is the month for us to host a party. The rule is that they have to have a theme...our theme is "Wine and Cheesecake tasting". I wanted to do something that was a bit different...everyone's heard of wine and cheese tasting...but what about cheesecake? I've got the 6 different cheesecakes down, now to get some more wine glasses (preferably ones that macth the ones we have).

Soooooooo anyway my quest for more wine glasses ends up with me driving all over the place for something decent looking. I saw some nice ones by Mikasa at Herbergers (that's our fancy department store in Rapid City) and they were nice but I didn't want to pay $50 for a set of 4, especially when I need at least 16 glasses. An idea that Lucien had was to buy plastic ones, ones we can toss into the recycle bin later on when we were done with them, the only ones I saw were $25 for a set of 4- for plastic? get out!

Smack me in the head but I didn't see anything at Target that I liked, and I roll my eyes at myself because I even tried Wal-Mart. For something half ways decent looking the best price was $17.99 for a set of 4- at Wal-Mart, that's still more than I really wanted to spend. So as a last resort I went to the Ellsworth AFB BX (base exchange- it's like a Target department store for military families). I see wine glasses that I like at a very reasonable price $4.99 for a set of 4 and they look like they will match our Williamsburg Winery stemware. But wait, right next to all of that is that very same set of Mikasa wine glasses that I saw earlier at Herberger's, the price tag on these were $29.99 but wait! There's another tag on the shelf partially covering the $29.99 tag and it says $12.47, woohoo! SOoooooo, I take a box over to the nearest price scanner to make sure of this low price and get this...it scans in at $6.27! I ran and got a cart and loaded myself up with some great looking stem ware at a fraction of the retail price! So for about $25 I was able to get $200 worth of Mikasa stemware. Here's a picture of what they look like...

But wait...then I spy the champagne glasses, they too are marked way down...yes at $6.27 for a set of 4. One quick phone call and I got the go ahead on getting them. So I spent a total of $50 and got $400 worth of Mikasa Stemware!