Josh Gomez

This year I decided to take on the dinner from a different angle. Cooking. What a piece of cake.

I was really surprised how easy it was to cook a Thanksgiving meal. Of course I didn’t try anything fancy, since my primary goal was just to avoid failure. Recipes are easy to find online, but the real help came from my family. Like any project, visualizing your outcome is a good place to start.

My sister gave me some good advice by telling me to sketch a drawing of what will be going on the plate. First, you want to make sure everything is going to fit nicely. Second, you should make the food look pretty. I actually decided to add corn as a side, not to eat, but only to add some more color.

When it came to the bird, everything seemed straight-forward. Wash it down, tie it up and rub it down. The only gray area was deciding whether or not to cover it up. Some recipes said you should have a roasting pan with a lid, others said to use foil, and some people used turkey bags, and some didn’t mention anything about covering the turkey. All I had was foil, so that’s what I used. A tight seal around the roasting pan works fine.

Timing is probably the most difficult thing. Immediately after the bird came out (3.5 hours later), the green bean casserole and mashed potatoes went in to bake for 30 minutes. On the stove top I made the turkey gravy, using the drippings from the roasting pan, and warmed some canned corn. Towards the end of the baking, we slid some biscuits in the oven and prepared the stuffing. It was a miracle that everything was ready all at once.

Everything turned out wonderful and must have been pretty good, since everyone had two plates. Maybe next year I will give a shot at baking my own desserts? I was also thinking about trying a grilled or deep-fried turkey. One thing is for sure, it was so much fun that I might be in the kitchen during every Thanksgiving.