Jackson's Food: Blog Post # 2- "Second Family Thanksgiving"

Blog Post # 2- "Second Family Thanksgiving"

Over the last 10 years or so, my family has slowly dispersed across the country, and I went from surely teenager, to living on my own in Calgary and beyond. Being in my mid-twenties has of course brought on the usual responsibilities- paying for rent, doing well at school and at work, and of course, feeding myself. Thanksgiving dinner has always been one of my favorites- turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pie- what isn’t too like? This year, I decided to take my matureness to a new level, to make a thanksgiving feast that even the celebrity chefs on the Food Network would be proud of.

It turned out that a lot of my friends were in the same boat and they wanted to try their hand at making the coveted Thanksgiving meal as well. It quickly went from 2 people (myself and my best friend) doing the planning and cooking, with everyone else hanging out, watching movies, or just showing up to stuff their faces; to 8 people all wanting to help plan each dish and spend the day in the kitchen.

It became apparent to me that planning was going to be key with this many people all going at once, so I decided to make a Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) board and add everyone’s name to it. That way, they could all contribute recipes, and we can all be on the same page (not that there is anything inherently wrong with making four different types of potatoes, I just wanted to ensure a little variety in our meal). I have found that Pinterest is a fantastic way to compile ideas for any group event or project- you can choose to search something on Pinterest itself and find hundreds of results that could provide some inspiration to your group, but you can also pin something to the board that you find elsewhere on the Internet. But as I said, it’s a great website for inspiration or compilation- if actual ideas are going to be use, it’s a good thing to check the source out and doing a little digging so that you know exactly what you are getting into. In the case of cooking, generally the recipes were easy to trace and because the point is really to be copied, I didn’t have to worry too much about stealing anyone’s intellectual property.

Time was also going to be a factor, not only on the day of, but also leading up to it. We wanted the day to go off without a hitch, but also minimize stress and have fun. Of course, the actual day hasn’t actually happened yet, so I may be eating my words (along with the turkey)- but I am pretty confident that we have planned well enough in advance for our kitchen adventures.

One thing that we decided to do was make as many things in advance as possible. This obviously meant timing making perishable foods with school and work, but there were a few things we were able to do ahead of time. One of these things was the day-of munchies. These are things that we can leave out during the day to pick at while we’re cooking. One of my day-of munchies was cookies (okay, so we aren’t the healthiest bunch ever, but nobody said Thanksgiving had to be healthy). I found this awesome recipe for pumpkin cookies that only requires two ingredients- and I don’t think could get much easier.

Here is the recipe, with photos from when I made it:

Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:

1 Box of Cake mix (recipe calls for Spice Cake. I did not have this on hand, so I used Golden Cake, and then added in cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and allspice.)

1 Can of Pumpkin puree (about 15 oz)

Step 1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Step 2) Stir together the cake mix and the pumpkin puree. Do not add in the other cake ingredients (the eggs, oil, and water). I made this mistake the first time and ended up making cookies AND a cake. People at my job were very pleased.