Pulling Off a Last-Minute Thanksgiving

Greetings from Sayulita, Mexico, where I’ve traded in my turkey baster for a yoga mat and my apron for a bathing suit. It’s the first year in a dozen or more that I am not cooking, hosting or fretting over Thanksgiving dinner, and I gotta say, I’m giving thanks for the much-needed break.

In this final leg of Thanksgiving prep and countdown, there’s always someone in the crowd who has just woken up and smelled the coffee, that the Big Feast is less than two days away and the fridge is bereft of feast fixins.

In this mobile device-paced, anytime-anything-anywhere world, it would seem we’d have a better handle on slowing down and making room for time at the table with the people we love. But the opposite seems to be true: Technology, which is supposed to make our lives easier and more manageable, fails to make them simpler, as in helping to make way for the simpler, slower things in life.  We’re so distracted by headlines and e-mail alerts that supper –– even of the Thanksgiving variety — gets a back seat.

It means more of us are putting off  holiday feast planning and prep until it feels too late. And I’m here to tell ya, procrastinators, to whom this post is dedicated, that it’s not too late. You’ve still got time to pull off a scrumptious affair, and you need not burst a blood vessel to make it happen.

First thing’s first: Don’t be hard on yourself. We’ve got limited time with which to work and the last thing you need is to add self-loathing to the stress kitty pile.

About the turkey: At this point in the game, it’s too late to worry about defrosting a bird, so let it go and be okay with Plan B. If poultry is a critical to the Thanksgivingness of your experience, buy a whole chicken instead.

Time in oven: A five-pounder will take about 2 hours (less if you remove the breast skin) at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then 375 for the remaining time.

Same thing applies to stuffing, with a little bit more wiggle room. See, stuffing requires stale bread, which you can stale on purpose by cubing and drying out in a 200-degree oven, a trick that works until the night before.

But if you haven’t gotten to “stale-ing” your cubes by Thanksgiving morning, let it go and move on to the things you can make in no time.

Such as… sweet potatoes — roasted, then mashed with garlic, chiles, seasoned with salt, a smidge of honey and lime. Garnish: chopped walnuts or pecans. I can’t tell you what this would all taste like with marshmallows on top. My advice: Another thing to let go.

Time in oven: 1 hour, plus a few minutes to mash and season.

…Or delicata squash, sliced into rings, lathered with olive oil  and roasted at 400 degrees, for about 25 minutes. Even quicker  than the ole sweet potato and a nice change of pace.  Yes, the skin is edible (and delicious) when roasted.

Don’t let the time crunch be a factor from making your own cranberry sauce, versus running to the store like a banshee and buying a can of jelly.  Real crans take just 30 minutes to whip up; you can stir the pot while watching the evening news.  You’re welcome in advance.

Time on stove top: 30 minutes. Seriously.

With a bunch of stuff loading up the oven, for your green veg, consider something that you can put together on top of the stove.  Think quick-cooking greens like spinach, which wilt in an instant and need just olive oil, garlic and salt to get ready, and if you’re feeling festive, add some raisins or dried crans to the mix.

Prep and cooking time: 12 minutes.

Dessert: Pie is heavenly, but it means making dough, which requires more time and energy than you have at this point.  Cut yourself some slack and make a crisp instead, the next best thing in my opinion.  With fall classics such as apples or pears (or a combo of both, which is lovely), a crisp is a more time-effective, straightforward option, requiring just a few minutes to pull together a brown sugar-butter topping that needs about 15 minutes in the fridge to chill.

A few tips:
5 medium apples (a mix of tart and sweet is good), peeled, cored and sliced or 4-5 ripe-ish pears (which can be an issue at the last minutes), also peeled, cored and sliced

1 tablespoon of flour mixed in with the fruit
1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar to macerate the fruit
A pinch of salt
A smidge of cinnamon

Grease a pie plate. Topping is a mix of:
6 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, softened
3/4 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

“Cut” butter into the other ingredients until well blended. Refrigerate and drop on top of fruit.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.