Hello! Welcome to episode 93 of I’d Rather Stay In. This week, we’re sharing all of our tips and tricks to help you host the perfect Thanksgiving.
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Episode transcript
Megan
Welcome to I’d rather stay in with your house Megan Myers and Stephie Predmore. This week we’re chatting about all things Thanksgiving as we prepare for the big day. Stay tuned.
Stephie
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Hello,
Megan
good evening. Stephie oh boy,
Stephie
it is it is been a week already, hasn’t it?
Megan
It has I kind of keep forgetting what date is. I thought it was Wednesday for a while but
Stephie
yeah, I genuinely was hoping it was and it wasn’t. It’s Tuesday.
Megan
Yeah. Are you saying you did not want to record with me even after I missed last week?
Stephie
I still record but I was just hoping that it was we were further on in the week. Yeah, and I don’t know there’s something in the air. I just Everyone is struggling this week. So we are here we are. We have gotten through October we are into it. We are into Allison we’re into Thanksgiving. We are into Thanksgiving, but into November to just the season. is the season for better holidays. Then Halloween.
Megan
We were at Target the other day and the Halloween section was like a wasteland. But they had a bunch of Christmas stuff already out. And I was a cute chick. Well, they didn’t have like a ton to be honest. But I took a peek down a couple of rows and I got myself one of the little target birds.
Stephie
Oh, it’s so cute.
Megan
I want to talk about the little birds for a little while because they’re a thing. Did you know that these target birds are like a thing?
Stephie
I did not know that they were a thing until Susannah said something about them. I think it was Susannah was talking about them. And that’s when I learned about the target birds but they’re extremely cute.
Megan
I got a few people on tick tock had been buying like the fall birds the fall birds were definitely very cute. They had like there was one that was like dressed as like a bird watching outfit, which is very adorable. But so they’ve been making these birds for a few years now. And they seem to be like coming out. They come out with them like around every holiday, apparently. And it’s like a huge deal. Now for target. Like, people go crazy over these birds. I got the last one at our target. And it’s probably because it’s a little wonky. Like it’s hat is a little kind of weird. Like it needs a little a little TLC, which is fine. Like I don’t care. I was $5. But I went to look online, see if I could find out what the other ones for this year look like or just you know, see if I could buy them online. You can’t really buy them on the target website. But you can get them on eBay. Or Poshmark they’re already up to $15 for the winter ones that just came out.
Stephie
They’re like they’re like the cuter version of rae dunn.
Megan
Yeah, or kind of like, I mean, they’re kind of like Beanie Babies, I guess. I don’t know. Oh my gosh. I mean, they’re each they’re like Limited Edition. They have the year on them. So it’s very like, I guess if I wanted to make a profit I can sell mine but I like it. I’m not getting rid of my little bird.
Stephie
Very cute. I Yeah. If you like if you just Google like
Megan
they’re called like featherly friends and they all have hers. Yeah, they all have their own names. The one I have is named Gail.
Stephie
Oh my god that is so cute. I very cute. I I’m really I’m very into this. There is only like one on the website that is Yeah, apparently look here. You know what? You know what? We’re gonna order two of these with a little snowflake scarf for pickup at our local Tarjay if they haven’t apparently. What did you look for bird I Googled, well, I Googled target birds and then showed up, but there’s there are several of them. They’re very cute. There’s like one with a little like buffalo plaid shirt and like a little Santa hat. And there’s all these different ones and then most of them are definitely out of stock. But there is like one that is in stock at our target. And
Megan
oh, see now I’m getting different ones because like I couldn’t find them before but I see that that that’s not the one I had. That’s different one.
Stephie
I know that’s a different one. That’s why I’m I’m putting two in my cart
Megan
with it’s a cute little one that has like a jingle bell sweater.
Stephie
It is very cute.
Megan
I would have a little wreath Okay, now I just have to order all of the extremely cute
Stephie
so now we have you and I will both have the one with the little Pom Pom Hat and the little scarf on it.
Megan
These are adorable. I think they must have restocked after I had already after I had purchased mine because like it was before Halloween, so they probably actually put stuff out. But that’s understandable because they’re super freaking cute. And they’re not expensive
Stephie
though. $5 Like come on. Yeah, a little cute. $5 bird to be seasonal. Okay, guys, if you have not if you if you like me are only kind of just waking up to the target birds. Good luck. Good luck finding some at your local Tarjay because they’re also they’re so cheap that they’re hard to order online because you have it’ll only ship with $35 worth of stuff. So I guess you either have to order like seven birds or something else and throw a bird in your cart.
Megan
I mean, I mean
Stephie
what a hardship i can Blinken spend 35. I said target.
Megan
Right. And I think these are like way better than nutcrackers like I have a few that are kind of creepy. They are a little bit yeah, but these are super cute. They’re very cute. I like it. I fallen victim whatever
Stephie
I have to I will too. I will be picking up little pom pom outbursts that are at Target
Megan
also the lady at the cash register was so excited about my little bird I love it when they’re when they have in the cashiers are just like where did you get this? What part of the story is that? It was like it’s the last one. Sorry.
Stephie
I really enjoyed there’s like one the little vest and bow tie and like jaunty cap. Yes. I
Megan
love that one. It’s very cute. Very adorable. So the Santa hat one appears to be like carrying his own little Christmas tree behind his back.
Stephie
It’s extremely cute. I you know what I target. Target is just really targets Great.
Megan
Yes, they have some really cute other Christmasy stuff too. Actually, they had some advent calendar things that I liked that I There were like, crafty looking not like they you know, for a while they were doing like those wooden ones that were completely not functional at all. Yeah. Because you couldn’t fit anything inside the thing. And then also you couldn’t even open it very well. Yes, yes. They have some like hanging ones that are cute. So I do I like Christmas stuff. Although I’m not. I’m I’m still at a normal level of Christmas.
Stephie
We were just hanging out with our friend Kathleen and our friend all day. This last one I guess was a couple of weeks ago now. And they’re both you know, we all know that Audi has a Christmas movie podcast. So she’s definitely not a normal level of Christmas. And neither is Kathleen and I think Megan was like whoa. In the Christmas they are but you know what I can I can be into it was for some little birds I need to go to Target anyway. So you know what? Here we are. So we’re launching ourself into the holidays. But before we get to Christmas, we have Thanksgiving, which we all know that we love you and I love because food. Food obviously, obviously the best. It’s the best and we have often hosted before. So we thought that we would do a little bit of an episode on our Thanksgiving cook keen and preparation and like hosting tips?
Megan
Yeah, I think it’s like one of the most. I mean, it’s the biggest food holiday of the year, obviously. But it’s also the time when anybody who is remotely into food at all people just come to you with like 1000s of questions, just questions about every single thing related to Thanksgiving. And we are here for you.
Stephie
Because I have hosted Thanksgiving. So we have hosted Thanksgiving. Basically, every year that we’ve lived in the house, and pre pandemic, we would do like a big Friendsgiving and have all of our restaurant friends that didn’t necessarily either have family to go visit or couldn’t make it home, or their families did like a noon like lunch, Thanksgiving, and they wanted to come hang with us afterwards. So we would have our house just filled with 12 1314 people at Thanksgiving, and with us making the majority of the food. So over the years have kind of refined a system. It involves lots of lists, surprise, surprise. So I know that our friend Susannah was asking, I think it was maybe last year. If we would she actually asked like next year, can you do an episode with all of your Thanksgiving tips? So Susannah, this one is for you. We aim to play sweet. So I think like one of the first things that’s kind of intimidating. If you are cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, no matter how many people are going to be there is actually determining how much food you’re going to need and what the hell you’re going to serve.
Megan
Yes, because like, that is the main thing if you have to, especially if you do Turkey, like you need to know how much Turkey you need to get, you need to know how many sides you need to make, which is for me, all of them. You need to know, you know, do you need one batch of rolls or two batches of roles? Do you need two pies? Do you need four pies? Like, again? You need all of them? In my opinion?
Stephie
Let us let’s just reiterate. But leftovers are not a bad thing. No. And
Megan
also, like I just really liked variety at Thanksgiving. So, you know, I tend to make all the things
Stephie
right. Like it’s interesting, because I’ll see people where they will have like a, like, three or four sides are like, I don’t understand. I don’t understand that. I wonder like, including like roles and stuff. And I don’t I don’t understand like, Are they okay? It’s just right for help.
Megan
Like I know, Americans are known for portion sizes being too big and we just eat too much food. And it’s very wasteful, which I do agree with. But Thanksgiving like we we like Thanksgiving leftovers we love Thanksgiving, that’s part of the joy of Thanksgiving is to have the leftovers, right? The idea
Stephie
is that like you’re not having to cook pretty much the rest of the weekend because you can survive on your leftovers. Also, if you are having guests, it’s great to send home leftovers with them, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. But I find that because we are the same, you and I. And so Alex is in the same boat, like even when it was just Alex and I planning our menu. Like he would be like well, we have to have this Oh, and we have to have this Oh, we also have to have this. I have learned over the years like there are certain so there are certain recipes you’re not going to be able to divide. If you’re making like pies if you’re making rolls, like you’re probably not going to be able to divide those very easily if unless you’re like a really, really experienced cook and even then baking recipes are a little iffy. But if you’re if you’re making something like green bean casserole that’s really easy to divide in half and make a smaller portion of green bean casserole so that everyone can have a little bit of green bean casserole. Everyone can have a little bit of mashed potatoes. Everyone can have a little bit of stuffing without having just at 6 13 by nine pans of each thing when you’re trying to feed six people
Megan
well so the main thing though is if you are having turkey and a lot of people don’t have turkey but the standard is Turkey. My husband loves to smoke a turkey that’s probably what we’re gonna do again this year. He does make good smoked turkey. It turned out really great last year so I hope he I hope he has the
Stephie
recipe standard is set Hi Bob yes bar real high with that Turkey last year.
Megan
So they the food people I guess recommend between like one and a quarter and one in three quarters pounds of turkey per person. And that includes the bones, right? Like it sounds like Remember, your bones meet. So that means that like, if you need to buy a turkey for 10 people that’s like a 14 pounds about ish. Turkey, which is actually like 12 to 14 pounds is generally what you are going to find in the store, they don’t typically sell ones that are smaller than that,
Stephie
yeah, 12 is about the smallest that you’re going to find. So if you’re making, if you’re cooking for a smaller number of people, you’ve got two options. You could just do a turkey breast, which is disgusting. And so I don’t think or you can go ahead get the smallest jerky you can find which is probably going to be somewhere around 12 pounds. And you’re going to have leftovers. But the great thing is that Turkey freezes really well. So does free is very well if you’re not into eating turkey sandwiches for the next week, which I could happily do. Just freeze it. And then you can use it to make honestly any recipe that uses cooked like rotisserie chicken, you can use that Turkey in it. So you can make pies, you can make soups, casseroles, anything like that, it’s going to be great to go in that. And then you can always turn the carcass into turkey stock and use that anywhere that you would use chicken stock.
Megan
Yeah. And the other reason you could do you should do that is aside from it being extra delicious, that you’re going to have all those vegetable scraps from your stuffing from any like salad or mashed potatoes. And I can go right into the suit the stock too. So yeah, you’re already doing all the work anyway, you might as well get extra food out of it.
Stephie
Yeah. And sometimes what we’ll do is just at the end of the meal, I’ll throw the whole like, I’ll you know, take whatever meat I want off of the you know, the carcass, and then I’ll just throw everything into my biggest slow cooker. You know, all of those good, you know, juices from where it was roasting all of it right in there. And I let it just rock overnight. I turn it on, and I’ll just let it cook all night. And then when I wake up in the morning, my turkey stock is done. It’s literally the easiest thing that you can do, guys. And I also like to do like, I know that some families have very specific traditional recipes that they have to have, and they refuse to try anything new. But our family like we like to try some new things. So we have a few there’s a few recipes that don’t change, like, we always make my husband’s like his grandmother’s handmade noodles, that does not change. That recipe is a bajillion years old. We make them every year, they’re delicious. But then we’ll do like maybe a different kind of vegetable recipe. Maybe it’s a new Brussel sprout recipe or a different salad, or something like that, just to kind of change it up a little bit. So you’re not eating literally the same menu every single year.
Megan
Yeah, I mean, unless you’re like super into that. I know a lot of times when we have Thanksgiving with our families, which actually has not been for a long time since we moved to Texas, but it’s always been the same meal every time. And I think even at Christmas, it’s been the same meal every Christmas for like 10 years. But I’m like you I like to change things up. I like to try new things. There’s a few things like my kids really like mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. I really like stuffing but I’m like the only person in my family like stuffing. So I’ll like make a small amount of it. And then I always make the same pumpkin pie every year to because I that’s just my favorite pumpkin pie. It’s my friend, Ma’s recipe and it’s solid. It’s really good. It’s super easy. I love it.
Stephie
Yeah, I make the same pecan pie every year. It’s the one that my mom always made. It’s the one that we’ve eaten my whole life. It’s my favorite. So yeah, there’s like certain recipes that we have that are super steeped in nostalgia. And then there’s other ones were like because you know, we often will not do turkey but we’ll do beef tenderloin and so I will often change up our beef tenderloin recipe that we use and you know, just kind of see what we’re feeling like but I do always like you know, figure Okay, where can we change things up? What are we going to do? We’re gonna do a different cranberry sauce. Are we going to do cranberry chutney this year? cranberry salad. There’s lots of different ways that you can try something new without totally freaking your family out. Oh my god.
Megan
So I was actually looking up some calculators on how to determine how much food you need for all the other sides and stuff too. And I actually came across this article from Whole Foods Market. That’s super helpful. And it turns out that I wrote it.
Stephie
Oh, meta.
Megan
Thank you Whole Foods Market for leaving this content up for me to find. It’s hilarious to me that an article I wrote in 2014. It’s still up there.
Stephie
I forgot you wrote it.
Megan
I mean, I wrote a lot of things for them. And so I definitely would not have remembered that I wrote this particular thing. But it recommends two appetizers, which like we do cheese board. So that kind of covers the appetizer gamut there. A green salad. And then like if you’re having 10 people, like we talked about before, there’s they recommend two starchy sides. So that would be like mashed potatoes or stuffing two vegetable sides. So I would consider green bean casserole. Vegetable side. Yeah, my opinion. It’s mostly vegetables. Two desserts, and then six bottles of wine.
Stephie
A bottle of wine per person almost.
Megan
It’s like half a bottle per person, basically. Yeah.
Stephie
That’s amazing. Yeah, we that I always find that when we’re like planning our Thanksgiving menu. Like the biggest problem is that we love all the starchy stuff. And so sometimes like when I’m sedately, especially when I’m sitting down with Alex, and like coming up with a menu, he’ll be like, potato, other, we’ll do potatoes, we’ll do noodles. And we’ll do rolls. And we’ll do this. And we’ll do this. And we’ll do this and like, they’re all like, Okay, we do need to eat something green, it doesn’t have to be like, you know, like, it can be green bean casserole, because there is green stuff in it. But let’s at least try let’s let’s try to have something green.
Megan
Right? Like, you don’t have to make a kale salad if you don’t like a kale salad, but like, maybe mix it up a little bit.
Stephie
You really are gonna go into a coma. It’s okay, so you’ve set your menu, you figured out what you’re going to do. I have a number of lists, as I mentioned, that helped me prep. And so I thought I would just tell you guys what my lists are and how I keep myself organized. So when we’re sitting down, we’re deciding what our menu is, I’ll jot down everything that we’ve decided. And then I’ll kind of rewrite it in order. So you know what our appetizers are going to be, you know, salad, meat, sides, dessert, whatever. From there, I go through all of my recipes, and I see what groceries am I going to need. And when you’re cooking this much food, definitely think about like, do I need to buy more flour, do I need to buy more butter? Do I need to buy a bunch of chicken stock like, don’t forget the staples that you might have in your kitchen. Because odds are good that you’re going to run low on those things at some point. So I will usually just go ahead and buy a thing of flour, a bunch of butter, several cartons of chicken stock, just to get me through the through the like cooking the meal, in addition to all of the specific things like the turkey, or the potatoes, or the brussel sprouts, or whatever they are. So I write down everything that each recipe is going to need. And then before I go to the store, I actually rewrite the grocery list in order of how I’m going to go through the store. So I put all of the produce together, all of the canned goods together all of the baking stuff together all the dairy, because, again, you’re buying a whole lot of stuff. And even though I can go to the store normally with kind of a haphazard grocery list. I cannot when I’m buying an embarrassing amount of food, I have to have it like kind of organized otherwise I miss stuff and you will literally walk 10,000 steps just in the grocery store going back and forth at times asked me how do I know. And then the other thing that I do is I make a whole prep schedule for the meal. So I figure out what can I prep ahead of time when I’m Am I going to make that stuff Am I gonna make it start prepping Tuesday night or Wednesday during the day? What needs to be made the day of, and then I work backwards. So I say, Okay, if our goal is to sit down to eat at 7pm, then I know, okay, my casserole is going to take an hour to bake. And so I have to put that in the oven no later than six o’clock. And I have to make sure that my if my turkey is going to take x number of hours to roast, I need to put that in at noon. Like I kind of work backwards so that I can I know when everything needs to be trying to go in the oven or be starting on the stove or go in the slow cooker. And that really kind of helps me stay on track so that I don’t get to 645 and realize that I have not prepped half of the things and we’re supposed to be eating in 15 minutes, and I have hungry guests in my living room. So that’s kind of that’s kind of the the way that I go about it. I’m sure there are other ways to do it. But for me, keeping a lot of lists, and especially that sort of like itemized timetable is really, really helpful, just so that I can stay organized and know exactly what needs to happen and when it needs to happen.
Megan
Yeah, I think the working backwards thing is really important, especially when it comes to the turkey on on both the front end and the back end of the turkey. No pun intended there. But dirty when you make a turkey, it has to rest after you cook it. You can’t just like take it out of the oven and start carving it like it has to they recommend it resting for like 30 minutes or something like that. Because Turkey is so large, and you want all the juices to redistribute. And so you don’t have a dry ass Turkey like no one needs that. Especially if you spent the entire day working on this meal. Yep. But on the other end. You most people buy their turkeys frozen. Mm hmm. You have to thaw that sucker. Yeah, advance. It takes a couple of days and your
Stephie
brine it, then yeah, that’s gonna take at least 24 hours sometimes longer. Yep.
Megan
brining takes takes at least 24 hours. So you have to have it thought by Wednesday morning. Yep. So that means you have to like put it in your refrigerator like Sunday. Yep. So like people, you have to think about that. And that means you have to think about how much room do I have in my refrigerator. I tend to not have a lot of room in my refrigerator because I buy a ton of stuff. So we just have like things crammed in there at all times. So I have to think about what are we going to eat that’s already in the fridge so we can make room for a turkey that has to thaw and then has to brine somewhere. You have to figure out like we brine ours in a cooler. Yep. Because it’s the only thing big enough to put it in. Yeah,
Stephie
we get a five gallon bucket.
Megan
Yes, that’s basically the same thing.
Stephie
Same idea. And I will also say like there’s a ton of benefit to living in the Midwest in the winter. But one of the benefits of living in the Midwest in the winter is that if you host Thanksgiving, you have a what we call the walkout cooler. That is the goddamn outdoors or it’s your garage or it’s your shed. Like you can totally make use of that space like don’t we literally will just set things on our back patio, not like stuff that’s going to go like terribly wrong but like any of your vegetables, drinks, all of that kind of stuff free up space in your in your refrigerator, use whatever cool outdoor space you have.
Megan
Yeah, that’s why I like Thanksgiving. Gotta hope for snow. If you live in a snowy area, you just pop that stuff right out there and we fine It’s perfect.
Unknown Speaker
It’s perfectly chilled wine.
Stephie
The other thing the other thing that I will say too is that like when you’re making your like prep schedule. The other thing that I like to write down when I am writing down what I’m going to make is I will jot down look at all my recipes and I will jot down if if I’m if there’s stuff that has to go in the oven, I write down, the temperature it bakes at and how long it needs to cook. And again, like there are certain things where you really do need to stick to the the time and temperature that’s listed in the recipe. So if you’re making yeast rolls, pies, anything like that You really do need to stick to you know, if it says 350 degrees for 30 minutes, you need to stick to 350 degree oven. But there’s stuff like, again, we’ll use our green bean casserole example. You can kind of cook green bean casserole at pretty much any temperature. Like if if the recipe says to cook it at 375, you can get away with cooking it for a little bit longer at 350, or a little bit shorter of a time at 400 If you have other things that have to cook at those temperatures. So if you’re trying to cook multiple things at once in your oven, like kind of take a look at what do I have some flexibility with. And also like what doesn’t have to be pulled out of the oven right before we eat. So a lot of times I’ll put green bean casserole in, and then I’ll pull that out, cover it and let it loose kind of rest on the back of the stove while I bake my yeast rolls because I want my yeast rolls to be the last thing to pull out of the oven. So they’re super hot. So the butter gets nice and melted. Because no one likes like a cold roll. That’s, that’s no fun. So like, kind of think about that kind of stuff. And like just know, even though the recipe might say like bake it 375 You may have some flexibility there. And don’t get too stressed out if you think like I think I’m going to have to cook it at 400 or 350 or something like that.
Megan
Yeah, and I think the one thing to remember too, is that well, a couple things. But if you’re cooking something that needs to be maybe normally a little bit lower temperature, make sure you cover it in the oven. Yeah. Especially if it’s something like green bean casserole where it has that like crunchy topping. You don’t want that to burn. Yep. And then the other thing is that your microwave is a really good warming oven.
Unknown Speaker
Yes.
Megan
Don’t forget about your microwave. Don’t sleep on the microwave. Like if you need to pull stuff out and make room but keep stuff warm. Pop it in the microwave, you don’t need to dirt. Just the heat from your dishes will make it warm enough to keep it nice and nice and warm for you.
Stephie
Yeah, sure. Well, or like if you have a toaster oven. Same idea. Yeah. Um, so speaking of things that you can make ahead, we love a mega head recipe.
Megan
Love it. I just made pie crust today.
Stephie
Yes. So tell tell the audience about how your what that means.
Megan
So if you are a homemade pie crust person, which I have recently been converted as I’m no longer scared of it. You’re welcome. I had to make a lot of pie for work a few months ago and so I had to get over it basically. And they told me she could do it lots of pies. And so pie crust is something that you have to chill anyway. And you can freeze it, it freezes really well. You just make up the crust, don’t roll it out or anything. Just pop it into the freezer the way it is and then you know the day before you’re ready to use it, take it out, put it in the fridge so it thaws but it’s still cold because you want it to be cold when you’re gonna roll it out. But you can also like make your whole pie you can you can make a whole pie and you can either bake it and freeze it or you can not make it and freeze it depending on what kind of pie it is like apple pie you could freeze unbaked and then pop it in the oven later. You can freeze a baked pecan pie. You can freeze you can freeze so many pies I have not ever frozen a pumpkin pie but I have heard that you can also do that yourself like obviously you can because you can buy pre made pumpkin pies but I’ve never done it myself. But that just makes it really easy because that first of all, if you make it ahead of time and it doesn’t turn out the way you want it you’re not you haven’t like ruined Thanksgiving dessert, right? You’re not fucked, right? And then but if it does turn out then you have another dish done and you know people are anxious for dessert they want that dessert so you can get that done. You can make cookie dough ahead of time. You get that done like you will have everything ready to go. You won’t have to worry about it. I like to make the pie like the day before. Instead of freezing it just because I like it to be like fresher. Yeah. And also I’m not really making anything else the day before I might be doing prepping the day before or like getting you know last minute whatever it is I need at the store braving all the crazy people that are there. You can What I also do the day before or even a couple days before is make cranberry sauce because you
Stephie
could make cranberry sauce like a month in advance because that stuff Freeze.
Megan
Yeah, it freezes so well. And also like, if you are a camera person, you can, can it. Very technical term camera person, if you’re a camera person, like cranberry sauce is, is super easy like it’s not going to take a lot of time anyway, you can do it like while you’re making dinner for something else, you can just it takes like half an hour, maybe. So make cranberry sauce, it keeps in the fridge keeps in the freezer, even just in the fridge, it lasts a really long time. So
Stephie
yeah. I also like to so when I make green bean casserole, I do like a homemade version. I don’t I don’t do the like whatever recipes on the back of the French’s fried onion can whatever. Although I do put the French fried onions on top. But I mean, you have to eat the fried onions, you have to have the fried onions on top. But I will so I’ll prep it except and like I’ll stop before you put the fried onions on top. And then I’ll just cover it with foil and pop it in the fridge. And I’ll do all of that the day before. And then I’ll just bake it for like another an extra 10 to 15 minutes or so before I put the fried onions on top the last 10 or 15 minutes. So that’s something that I love to prep ahead. If I do, for example, if you’re going to have brussel sprouts, you can prep your brussel sprouts the day before. So sometimes I’ve done like a shredded brussel sprouts salad, and I’ll shred the brussel sprouts, I’ll make the dressing, I’ll prep whatever else is going to go in there. And then that way, the day of I can just like toss it all together. You could if you’re gonna roast brussel sprouts, you could have a quarter of them. And then just stick them in like a airtight container or zip top bag or something like that and pop those in the fridge. There’s lots of vegetables actually that you can chop and stick in the fridge like carrots, onions, celery, gross. Anything like that, potatoes are a little harder because they will brown they will oxidize. So depending on what you’re going to do with the potatoes, you could like peel them or slice them or quarter them or whatever. And then cover them in water and put that in the fridge. But I usually just wait and do the potatoes the day of. So there’s lots of different things. Even if you’re not making the whole dish beforehand. There’s things that you can prep so that on the day of you’re just sort of throwing things together and then popping them in the oven or putting them on the stove. Also, don’t sleep on that slow cooker. There’s lots of stuff you can do in your slow cooker like cream corn. There’s there’s like hella side dishes you can do in your slow cooker.
Megan
Yeah, we did mashed potatoes in the slow cooker last year. Yeah, there’s so many things you can make in the match. If you have this opener,
Stephie
if you have a airfryer Megan I know is gonna roll her eyes at this. But if you can do, like you can air fry brussel sprouts, you can roast vegetables in there. So if you’re kind of sitting there wondering how you’re going to rotate everything through your oven, think about if there or even fit everything on your stove. Think about if there’s something that you could use your slow cooker airfryer Instant Pot any of those devices for because there probably is.
Megan
Yeah. So the only thing to keep in mind is that if you are using your airfryer is that because it cooks somewhat faster than other methods, you will have to time it out. Like Stephie was saying. So just keep that in mind when you are making your prep schedule that you write down like how you’re gonna cook it.
Stephie
Yep. So there were the day of and in our notes I wrote Do you have tips so you don’t kill your goddamn family.
Megan
So you didn’t include one other thing in here in the in the beginning of this day of because Edie is very small yet and so it’s not necessarily an issue but one thing that I like to do for the day of Thanksgiving is to make a nice breakfast so like I will make overnight cinnamon rolls. And that way they’re like fed and happy and not necessarily asking me 20,000 times we’re in we’re going to be eating Thanksgiving dinner because they have have had a good breakfast. So that’s like the start of it.
Stephie
That’s a great tip. I last year I think I did like an overnight breakfast casserole. And then like I just kind of kept it out all day. Not all day, but I kept it out like morning so that whenever people were hungry for breakfast, they could eat it but then if they also wanted to snack on it for lunch and do like kind of a brunch situation. Yeah, that I definitely Forget about that because that is that is a tip that my family always used when I was growing up to is a big breakfast. Oh, any Oh yeah. Any overnight breakfast casserole or like Megan said overnight cinnamon rolls, anything like that is going to be a really solid thing to do. Because again, you’re not like dirtying up a bunch of dishes making pancakes or waffles or something like you’re gonna write if you do that, don’t do
Megan
it. Right. Yes. And then I take my family into the living room to watch either the parade, or if it’s my older son who has not woken up until noon, the dog show. Like there’s there are things happening on Thanksgiving that are entertaining for them to do that don’t involve get in my way in the kitchen.
Stephie
Yes, keep them out of your kitchen. That’s like the biggest thing. I don’t you know, most meals when I’m cooking dinner, even if I if we’re like having friends over for dinner, I don’t mind people hanging out in my kitchen. While we’re cooking. Thanksgiving, I can’t handle it. There’s like too much going on. When people are in my kitchen. I’m like, get the fuck out of my kitchen. So that’s also where that cheese board that Megan mentioned earlier is going to come in handy. Because you can set that thing out at any point in the afternoon, really, and just have a whole bunch of snacks, a whole snack board. And that way, you know, set it in your dining room set in your living room if you don’t have animals who are going to get into it, whatever. And they can munch on that. And they’re not coming in like like Megan said, Let’s den are gonna be ready. Like go eat some snacks go away.
Megan
So any questions go? Well, I mean, they might anyway, but I think that’s like the one benefit of having a closed kitchen. I know everyone has moved to open floor plans in the past, you know, 1015, maybe even 20 years. That was like a huge, huge thing. The last two houses I lived in had open floor plans. And you guys moved to this house that has a closed kitchen still has like a doorway. It doesn’t have a door. But like it is so much nicer to prepare meals in a kitchen that’s just not open to the whole rest of the freakin house. Yeah, I know, whatever is great for entertaining, blah, blah, blah. But like, Thanksgiving is the big show. Yeah, I need people out of my way. I hate having people in my kitchen.
Stephie
Yes, all the time. If you’re going to come in my kitchen, you better be doing something useful, like getting ice for the water glasses or like, like dude, like be doing something useful, but preferably like come in, get whatever you need, and then get the fuck out again. I also like to set out like the dishes and the silverware that I’m going to need the night before. And that includes serving dishes, not just like plates and silverware and stuff. Set that out the night before or early like in the morning or after breakfast, so that when you get ready to set your table, that’s a whole lot easier. That also is something that you can relegate off to the kids, if you’ve already set out what you need, and make them set the table. It just, it keeps you able to do the thing that you need to do without having to then dig all of the dishes out. Or have someone else digging all the dishes out while you’re in the middle of trying to put your yeast rolls in the oven and they’re asking you where something is and you’re like, I’m gonna kill you. Yeah, Emily.
Megan
I think one other good thing that you could do sort of Neverland solely related to not killing your family. But with those dishes like put the dishes make sure that the dishwasher is empty so you can put the dishes in as you go as you’re cooking. Yes, because I don’t know about you, but I cannot stand when I go into the kitchen after my husband has been cooking dinner and there’s just stuff everywhere. There’s trash. I’m like three different countertops. There’s dishes all over the place. There’s like a spoon here a spatula, there’s just stuff all over the place. Yeah, it drives me insane. So I try to clean up as I go when I’m making things because I like I’m going to need more counterspace so if you are taking care of it as you go it’s a lot easier if you happen to have a partner who is willing to help you with the clean up all the better. But also they need to clean up and then I’ll get out of your way.
Stephie
Yes. The other thing and this I put this under sort of like day of tips. So you don’t kill your goddamn family but it just sort of as a general tip. Also like if you’re going to serve drinks. I like doing batch drinks. So I like to put like a mulled cider in the slow cooker. And then just keep it on warm and I’ll put up mugs and people can grab a cup of cider whenever they want. Punches are great anything like that. Then I am famous for making my guests bring the actual boosts. So when people are like, What can I bring, like, especially if you don’t know exactly what time they’re going to be there, or anything like that if you have friends that are like maybe a little bit flaky and you’re not sure if they’re actually going to show up like you don’t want to give them like the mashed potatoes, because if something happens that are not there, then oh my god, now you don’t have mashed potatoes. So I like to say, Bring the booze, Bring, bring beer, bring wine, bringing whatever booze you want. And then I don’t have to think about it.
Megan
Yeah, that’s so much easier, too. Because like, I enjoy wine, I don’t really know enough about wine. Like, I’ve been to tastings, you guys, I just, it just goes through it through my head, I don’t know. And same thing with beer, like there are certain beers that I know that I like. But that doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to want to drink a bourbon barrel aged stout ethics giving, like, that’s super heavy, it’s probably not a good thing to serve. So everyone brings the thing that they want to drink, you don’t have to worry about like pleasing everybody, or having like the right thing to go with a thing. Because you know, some people are very particular about what they’re having with their Turkey solves the problem. And if you don’t drink, then you definitely don’t have to worry about it. I always feel very uncomfortable. If I know that people that are hosting are not drinkers and like you just kind of expect them to provide alcohol for you, which is kind of weird.
Stephie
Yeah. I also, that’s also why I like to do something like a hot cider. Because then you can just drink it as is. And then I’ll also put out like, I’ll get a small thing of like bourbon or rum or like brandy or something like that, that you can add to it and spike it if you want. So that’s where that like, punches or ciders or anything like that is going to be good, because there’s also the ability to make it non alcoholic, and then let your guests add whatever amount of alcohol and whichever alcohol they want to
Megan
choose just as long. Yeah, hopefully we are not going to recreate the fruited wine party that we had in June. So
Stephie
that was pretty good. Don’t you be hating on the fruited wine?
Megan
I mean, we added a lot of Prosecco to it. And then it was like hitting me hard. Like the food and wine. I don’t know what’s in that stuff. But it wasn’t alcohol.
Stephie
Guys, it was it was blueberry wine from Aldi. And like by itself, it was extremely jammy. But if you like, cut it with Prosecco, it was delightful, but also went down and maybe a little too easy. Yeah, it was, Okay. One, there was one Thanksgiving where we like got done with a meal. And like our friend bought a bunch of wine. And you know, we had some beers and stuff like that as me like, this was before we had a child, by the way. But we, at some point, somebody pulled like, a bottle of vodka out of there, like coat pocket, and then we just passed it around. And all we’re just taking pulls off the bottle of vodka. This was this might have that might have been the same Thanksgiving where our stoner friend like wandered into my kitchen while I was cooking and asked if he could have an apple and I was like, Oh, well, I’m gonna put out snacks soon. He’s like, Oh, no, I’m gonna smoke out of that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Here we go. Here’s an apple. Go smoke out of the apple in the backyard, please. Thank you. So we have some interesting friends. But you know, that’s what happens when your husband works in a restaurant.
Megan
It’s fine. I will say the only downside of having everyone bring their own alcohol is that then they leave it there a lot of the time. Or just in general, people are trying to be good hosts or post guests. Guests. Whoa, wow. Really hard. Yes, sir. Trying to be good guests. And they bring a bottle of wine. People always bring wine to my house when we’re entertaining. And they always bring red wine. And we don’t like red wine. Like we’ll drink it. Sometimes it has to be very particular red wine for us to like it. There are a couple of them that we like. But people would always bring us red wine. And then we would just always have red wine at our house for the next party, I guess. And then three more people would bring another bottle of red wine or like, okay, that’s fine. It’s fine. What is we’d have a lot of red wine. I guess we could meet sangria.
Stephie
Yeah, I’m gonna have so much sangria. So then you get to the end of the meal and you have all these leftovers and all of these guests. How are you sending home leftovers with them? Personally so whenever we get, like Chinese food or Thai food or Whatever. A lot, you know, a lot of times they’ll come in those, like, the plastic takeout containers. Save those because they’re great. They’re perfect for sending home Thanksgiving leftovers with people.
Megan
Yes, I would highly recommend a hard sided plastic container over Ziploc bags totally been in the ziplock bag situation before and it kind of works but like,
Stephie
Yeah, or like, you know, put stuff on like a paper plate. And then oh, yeah, like it doesn’t
Megan
put foil, or like plastic wrap, it doesn’t stick to itself and doesn’t
Stephie
work. And so I like those like plastic containers, a, they came with your food, they were free. But also, like they’re a perfect size, especially like, if you have friends who are single, and you they don’t need a bunch of leftovers, like, they basically just want like a little bit of a few things. Like there’s enough room there like wide and shallow. So you can put several things in there kind of nestled next to each other. So they kind of have like a whole plate that then they can take home and eat later that night or the next day. They just work really well. So we always save those containers and then I usually end up using those to send home leftovers. My in laws have just also just purchased like, carry out like takeout containers like even just Styrofoam ones before for sending home Thanksgiving leftovers. So there’s a lot of different options. But I highly recommend finding some sort of takeout container either ones that you already have, or buying some cheap ones. Because yeah, they’re way easier than the precarious paper plate, or weird ziplock bag situation.
Megan
Chances are you probably already have some in your kitchen you might have like, you know that whenever Buddy was really into meal prepping, you might have like those divided meal prep containers. Or like you and I both have like 1000 Deli containers. And then, you know, a lot of people will have like, the deli meat containers. Yeah, from the grocery store. I’ll just take kicking around for like, you know, we’re from the Midwest, you don’t throw that stuff away. So you probably have some, you might be bougie and have like nice Pyrex, who knows, but um, you have a container you can bring to your friend’s house, they’re not going to be like, Oh my God, you’re bringing a container to Thanksgiving. Even if they like things even if they like Thanksgiving leftovers, they probably don’t want all of them.
Stephie
Right? Exactly. They’re like that’s just that’s fine. Like my
Megan
husband loves Turkey. But like it is a challenge for him to eat all of the turkey leftovers himself. So like we got to spread some of that around. Yes.
Stephie
Absolutely. Yeah, you really do. Um, so that’s I mean, that’s that’s kind of what I’ve got.
Megan
I feel like I mean we’ve been talking for a while we we like Thanksgiving we got things to say about it. I mean
Stephie
every time we do a food episode this is what happened yes.
Megan
I think you know, it starting now is really good idea just to take stock of like your pantry see what you have this is a good time you’re probably going to be making Christmas cookies soon or other holiday delightful things and you’re going to need more cinnamon you’re going to definitely need like you said flour you probably going to need sugar brown sugar, you might need to stock up on butter you know there’s this whole supply chain thing going on who knows what’s going to happen by the time of Thanksgiving like if you can get some of your ingredients now go ahead butter freezes really well. You know your your flour and sugar if you don’t open them they’re going to be fine till Thanksgiving, your spices if you haven’t replaced them in a while. You might want to check those out. Yeah, make sure even if you even if you think you have replaced them or cleaning them out, double check again. Store the confirmation I moved across the country and I still had spices that I would like how long ago did I buy this? uh it’s it’s like hard in the container so I think it’s I think it needs to go so yeah, like it’s it’s just a good time to figure out what you need. Maybe you need a little target bird to liven up your holiday Saturday have an update on
Stephie
the target birds Megan
Megan
Excellent. So I like there’s a live update. Life update.
Stephie
I got an email and it was like only one of like they’re so hot that I even though I set two for pickup only one of them was available but because that one was not available. They were like we’re sorry to have disappointed you. You can order the other one the second one for free, free delivery. Like free shipping. Without the $35 minimum, and so, for some reason your address was already in my target profile. ordered something to your house at some point, I don’t know. Sure. And so I just clicked. Yep, let’s do that. So now your bird is hopefully knock on wood being shipped directly to your house for free.
Megan
Love it. That’s actually that’s really good customer service target was great well done,
Stephie
because I was like, Oh man, now we’re just gonna have one bird I’m gonna have to tell Megan that we’re gonna have to like fight for the bird or she’s not going to get this cute bird and then it was like, No, you can have it shipped for free and I was like yes, yes, I will do that. Thank you.
Megan
I mean, I would have just ended up ordering like a bunch of other things at Target. I mean, this website you know, I figured
Stephie
that you probably wouldn’t have been like, fucking stuffy but you know it was still
Megan
no longer friends it’s all over this podcast
Unknown Speaker
is over
Stephie
you know we got so excited about the little cute little burbs. So
Megan
anyway, love the little burbs little burbs?
What’s bringing us joy?
Stephie
So what’s bringing us joy this week? Megan?
Megan
Oh, well, I have a couple things. So I got a letter today addressed to Mrs. Robert Myers, which I don’t appreciate, but it’s not the thing that’s bringing her is not the thing that’s bringing me joy. It’s 2021 Guys, like, let’s not do that anymore. Um, I my own person. But my older son is on the high honor roll for the first quarter way to go. But it’s very nice letter that they send out because it’s like, explaining like how how nice it is. And they know like how the parents are a crucial part of success at school. And I was like, That’s right, because we’re the ones who make him do his homework. So it’s like a little reward for us to feel nice. And then the other thing not to leave my other son out is that he he is classroom. They have a program, I guess with scholastic at his school, and everyone got to pick out a book like to have. Oh, and he picked out Bridge to Terabithia.
Stephie
Oh, well, it’s bringing you joy now until you’re like,
Megan
until he gets to the end. Yeah.
Stephie
Or whatever. Like, I actually it was like, so traumatic. I blocked it out. Like I know, like, sad, but I can’t remember what happens. Because I think I was just so sad. I blocked it out.
Megan
Well, I’m not gonna say anything. Because I don’t want to make you sad. But uh, he was like, showing he like, picked it up. And I saw it and I was like, Oh, you got that at school? He’s like, Yeah, he explained. The thing is like, I was like, that was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. I’m so glad you could say that was he only just sort of reading it. So we’ll see how he likes it. But I’m excited. I don’t know. I hopefully it’s not problematic. Like, I know a bunch of the books that I read when I was a kid like, actually pretty problematic. Now looking back, but I feel like maybe this one’s still good.
Stephie
I remember reading caddie Woodlawn when I was in kindergarten, which by the way, that’s like a fourth or fifth grade reading level book. I read it in kindergarten. It’s fine. I was afraid. And I’m like, Huh. I think about
Megan
I did not read that book. So
Stephie
it was a lot of, well, I read it. I read it. Like as a kid, like a little kid. And then I reread it in class. Like we read it in class. When I was in like fourth or fifth grade. There’s a lot of scalping. And we’re like fear of
Unknown Speaker
being scalped by Yeah, Doc. Yeah, the best.
Megan
It’s like Little House on the Prairie where Laura’s like, I would really like to have an Indian baby for my very own. And you’re like,
Stephie
yeah, maybe not
Megan
good times.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
Megan
I feel like there’s probably college classes now that are like looking back on all of these old novels and be like, here’s the problem. I would definitely take that college class.
Stephie
Here’s the problem with all of the Newbery Award winning books.
Megan
God help. I hope not all of them. I hope not this one. I remember it being wholesome and not racist. So I mean, that’s, I hope I am
Stephie
that right general memory of it. So I feel like that’s probably the case.
Megan
Yeah, but both of those things are making me pretty happy today. So what’s bringing you joy?
Stephie
I when we were in North Carolina, I bought a sweater with fruit on it. And it makes me happy.
Megan
I do like that sweater a lot. It’s a very cute sweater. It’s got it’s very very cute.
Stephie
Little pineapples and strawberry Trees and pears and lemons on it and cherries. It’s adorable. And even though I discovered after I got home and wore it that it is a hand wash only sweater. I will allow it because it’s very cute and also soft.
Megan
I will make and get around that. Yes, fine.
Stephie
Well, I will make the exception for like most of my sweaters I’m like, but that one is pretty cute. Oh wow. It
Megan
is a very cute sweater. It reminded me of a sweater that Jodie Wilson has that she wears every so often I believe has oranges on it. Yes. And she started wearing it. Whenever it was that she got it and it was like I don’t want a sweater with fruit on it.
Stephie
Yeah, we were at the shop and I like turned the corner and I was like screwed sweater. I fruit sweater. Yeah, there we go. Let’s let’s bring it this what’s making me happy?
Next week’s episode
Megan
Excellent, excellent, good things all around. Well, we bought ourselves a lot of guests for ourselves when we were in North Carolina. Sure shit did. But next week, we’re gonna have some recommendations for what you should give to other people.
Stephie
Sure. Oh, cuz we like to buy things for ourselves. We also like to buy things for other people makes us that’s one of the things that makes us happy. So in the meantime, leave us a review on Apple podcasts and listen to us on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media at IRSIpodcast or send us an email at idratherstayinpodcast@gmail.com We’d love to hear from you.
Megan
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai