5:37 PM (Jennie via Eva’s fingers) Dinner has been eaten. Even though Eva forgot the hot cups like an idiot. An adorable idiot. Dinner was delicious. We had 18 for dinner, and now the dessert people are starting to arrive. I am whipping cream. Which is why Eva is typing. And in a moment we will eat pie. I would keep writing but I have to go to the photo booth. Only a few of us burnt ourselves. Jennie out.

Now Eva is here to recap a “cups” tutorial which turned into an epic battle. A cups-off, if you will, but only if you will. Traci decided, as she usually does in a group of more than herself, that we all needed to play the camp cups game with her. She taught. We learned-ish. And then as the cookie crumbles, she was challenged at her own game. There’s video here. Now I have to go. The ladle just fell in the cider. Eva out.

3:29 PM (Corelyn) Dinner is in one minute! We are, miraculously, on schedule! Things are being warmed and put out with serving spoons. Guests are being told to grab drinks and a seat at the table. Someone just shouted “There’s turkey all over the floor!” and I am afraid to find out why. It was hectic for a couple of hours, but now it’s time to sit down and tuck in. Happy Thanksgiving!!

2:57 PM (Jennie) Hey guys! After we left you, we got ready and started to make. (I just ran around for four minutes, after realizing what time it was and that things had to come out of the oven.)

Our stuffing is out, our Brussels are out, and things are beginning to warm. Dinner is in about 27 minutes, and then we’ll be sitting down to our big table of twenty people. We hope that you have been having a lovely Thanksgiving and that you’re full of turkey!!

11:17 AM (Jennie) You guys, Corelyn is getting ready, and “Dance with Somebody” just came on Songza. What a wonderful day! I facetimed with my family and got a tour of all the food they’re making while I was tenting the turkey. Corelyn and I finished a crossword, and the text messages are coming from friends getting ready to make their way over to the house. In a minute I’ll be getting ready, and then at 11:30 we’re starting to get the real cooking underway…

10:42 AM (Corelyn) We just covered the turkey in tin foil, so it won’t get too brown too early. Jennie is face-timing with her family, and I just polished off my third cup of coffee. Contemplating making more. Things are peaceful. For now.

9:39 AM (Jennie) Corelyn was gracious enough to let me make her listen to City High’s rendition of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and Natalie Merchant’s “Go Where I Send Thee” so now we’re listening to Songza’s Thanksgiving “Cooking & Dancing” station. (By the way, thanks to Lisa B. for introducing us to such a glorious thing!) Next up is a bit of relaxing before we start the next round of cooking. Corelyn is printing the Toronto Metro crossword, coffee cups are full. It’s a good day.

9:26 AM (Corelyn) Jennie is making us listen to Christmas music. Somehow in 5 years of friendship and 5 Thanksgivings together, I have never noticed that she does this. Personally, I prefer to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to turn on the Christmas jams, but earlier this morning she hoisted a turkey in the air so I could rub butter on its underside, so I can let this slide.

9:02 AM (Corelyn) We put the turkey in the oven 15 minutes ago. She was slathered in butter and almost too big for the roasting pan. It was glorious. Now, we are enjoying our coffee and savory breakfast muffins while Jennie searches online for parade coverage.

Also, you might notice things look a bit different around here! We are so thrilled to be launching a newly redesigned website today! Special thanks to Jeff who put in so much work making this new design become a reality, and thanks to Mary Costa for taking some new lovely photos of us!

Folks. Thanksgiving is TOMORROW. You don’t need me to tell you how excited we are. We’ve obviously been talking about this for weeks. Which means that it is finally time to reveal the winners, losers, and lessons learned from our old vs. new Thanksgiving recipe roundup.

All month we’ve been testing our standard Thanksgiving recipes against newer options. First up, we compared our go-to green veggie side – Spice Roasted Brussels Sprouts – to a Roasted Root Vegetable dish that jumped off the pages of Real Simple magazine so that we just had to try it.

Then we took a closer look at our traditional Thanksgiving morning breakfast dish. We’ve been making the Pioneer Woman’s Prune Cake since 2010, but this year we tried out a new Savory Breakfast Muffin option.

And last week, we took on what is arguably the most important dish at a Thanksgiving dinner. Stuffing. Our Cornbread Sausage Stuffing went head to head with one inspired by Martha Stewart’s Sausage Pear Stuffing (also made with cornbread to remain gluten free for our guests).

And the winner is…

For our vegetable side, the old won out over the new. We will be sticking with our tried and true method of roasting Brussels sprouts, although we couldn’t resist asking one of our guests to bring their own version of those roasted root vegetables!

As for breakfast, the prune cake put up a good fight, but these savory muffins could not be beat. We’ll still make that prune cake from time to time, but we can not wait to have these muffins tomorrow morning while the turkey starts to roast!

Our stuffing contest ended in a draw! No, we’re not planning to make two kinds of stuffing (though it wouldn’t be unheard of in my household). Since both of these recipes have similar elements – cornbread, pears or apples, rosemary, sage, and some type of sausage – we’re going to adapt our original cornbread stuffing recipe to make it a little more exciting this year. We loved the touch of cinnamon cooked pears and the addition of dried fruit. So we will be making our usual stuffing recipe with the addition of cinnamon pears, and dried figs!

That wraps it up folks! Are you as excited as we are? What do you think of our choices this year?

The only thing Corelyn and I do better than panic is plan. When it came time to plan the Thanksgiving of 2008, we were young, broke, and neither of us had ever roasted a chicken on our own, much less a turkey. Panic ensued, so planning took over.

I did a dry-run with a roast chicken and made us get up at six am to start roasting. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was a deep sign of friendship – Corelyn most likely will never get up at six again. Corelyn held the turkey while I shoved apples and onions into its cavity and she explained what aromatics were. She bravely cut the onions because my eyes were watering so much. There was no oven schedule.

It was a wild time back then, but in the past five years we have vastly improved upon our system of planning, plotting, scheduling, and Thanksgiving is becoming a science.

This is a picture of this year’s oven schedule. It keeps us in line as the day goes on and we forget what we’re supposed to be doing, and when we’re supposed to be doing it. It gets us to dinner with mostly heated side dishes, delicious gravy, and room to spare for watching the parade and doing a crossword puzzle.

We start talking about Thanksgiving…in May. Right around the time of Memorial Day, we start planning – where we’re going to host, if we’re going to give brining another chance (usually the answer is no.) Then, come September, Corelyn and I get planning in earnest. We look at turkeys we’ve made in the past, we revisit our recipes, and we start to soft sound ideas of our very obliging friends.

We really start to get antsy in October, and a few days before Halloween, we send an Evite to our friends and start rounding out our menu with dishes from our guests. Then, with three weeks until Thanksgiving, we place the order for our 28 pound turkey.

If all of this makes us sound crazy to you, or if the idea of putting this much planning into Thanksgiving gives you stress, relax. We do all of this planning because Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday of the year. We plan so we don’t panic, and we plan so much and so early so we can squeeze as much joy out of the holiday as possible.

We’ve come a long way since 2008, and we’re still adding new traditions. This year will be our first year buying 90% of our Thanksgiving vegetables at the local Farmers’ Market, and we plan to do so every year from now on. To mark the occasion, we asked Jeff to tag along on Sunday and photograph us (and Eva, who met us for the adventure!)  We felt like Thanksgiving enthusiast celebrities.

Tomorrow, be sure to visit the blog to find out just what we’re planning on making – the results are in, and we think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised!

What do you do on Thanksgiving? Do you host, or head somewhere for the holiday?

I recently started getting a CSA delivered at my job from the South Central Farmers’ Cooperative and have been trying to be proactive and cognizant enough to devise my weekly meal planning about what I items I receive in my box.  I have received several butternut squashes in recent weeks and wanted to use my ever-growing cache.  I recently picked up some of Udi’s new French Baguettes that I wanted to try and was well suited for use in this recipe. This recipe on Bon Appetit’s website was a great combination of what I got in my box and what I had in my kitchen.

For my purposes I halved the recipe and while there are many moving parts to this recipe, all of the steps can be done when other parts are resting or roasting.  The most onerous and time consuming step of this recipe is peeling the butternut squash which was hard on my peeler and at times my patience.  I peeled the squashes raw, but you could roast it whole if you are so inclined and have the time.  The skin will peel off easier as it does with beets after you roast them.

This ultimately turned out to be a hearty dish with a full flavor, though in my opinion could have used more cheese, but that is always my opinion.  This dish would make a great vegetarian option at a holiday meal and overall holds up well and can be eaten for leftovers for days if you decide to do the full recipe!

What are your favorite butternut squash and kale recipes?

Today marks just one week until our favorite holiday of the year – Thanksgiving! And Thanksgiving just wouldn’t be the same without a delicious stuffing recipe. A few years back, we started making gluten free cornbread stuffing so that Melissa wouldn’t miss out on the deliciousness that is one of the best parts of Thanksgiving – and we’ve never looked back. This stuffing comes together quickly, has veggies, toasted cornbread AND could be a meal of it’s own with cornbread.

Our recipe for this delicious stuffing is here. Although it might not seem as traditional as some, it’s become the standard for us, and we’ve grown to love the rosemary, sage, and crunchy apple throughout this dish.

We’re not sure if mixing it up (like Tuesday’s curry and cinnamon recipe) would work well for our crowd. But we did love the addition of pear, and the texture of the fennel, so it might be time to combine a couple recipes into a brand new stuffing recipe that will supersede the glory that our first recipe has found over the past several years.

Which one looks better to you? Help us decide what we should make next week for our dinner of twenty!