Save Money, Time and Stress This Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner can be a difficult meal to plan, since it's traditionally a pretty complicated affair with many more side dishes, more guests and more formality than usual family dinners. Dishes sometimes don't make it to the table, much needed ingredients are left off the shopping list, and sometimes the mashed potatoes end up going stone cold while the turkey finishes roasting. When it comes to hosting Thanksgiving dinner, there's lots of room for error, but menu planning can be a great help in making sure everything goes smoothly.

Making a written plan for you Thanksgiving feast will save you time, stress and money. You'll save so much time, by planning in multi-tasking and knowing when you can work ahead. And though menu planning can't guarantee perfectly cooked food, it will relieve a lot of stress and avoid a lot of mishaps because you'll be less likely to forget things, and will feel more relaxed when you've got a timeline to go by. By working and planning ahead, you'll also save unplanned trips to the store using unneeded gas and buying forgotten items, or more expensive pre-made items.

The first step in menu planning for a big meal is to list out everything you plan to serve. Try to remember everything you'll want to serve, right down to your special fruit cocktail, and don't forget to list any special accompaniments such as butter, and garnishes, like walnuts to sprinkle on the sweet potatoes. With every item and any notations you might need, such as the entire time the recipe will take, start to finish, what cookbook (with page number) you'll find it on, and how you'll store and serve it. You'll use all this information to fill in your time line at the end.

Make your grocery list by thinking through each item on the master list one at a time. As you check your pantry, add every ingredient to the list that you'll need to purchase. Things like butter, flour, sugar, and stock should always have extras listed, since you'll go through a lot of all of those. Double check this list against your dishes and pantry, and you'll be sure you won't have to be battling your way through a grocery store when you should be home enjoying your family and cooking time.

In order to fill in your time line you should set a time for dinner to begin and work backward from that time with each recipe. For instance, you might know that the turkey will take six hours from start to finish. It's a good idea to allow a little extra time for each recipe in case of interruptions or delays, so if dinner is supposed to be at 4:00pm, you can start your turkey as early as 9:00 or 9:30am. A turkey can generally rest for up to an hour after coming out of the oven and still be good and warm when it is served. If there are delays, it just won't rest as long before dinner is served at four.

As you fill in your time line, you'll see that even though you might start the turkey at 9:00 and have it in the oven by 10:30, after that, you'll have to make little effort while the turkey is roasting. The same goes for baking rolls or bread, since after the initial half hour of prep, the dough must rise for an hour before you have do any more with it. Take advantage of these pockets of time by planning simpler dishes or other prep that can be finished and forgotten. For example, you can whip up the fruit cocktail, put it in its serving dish and forget it in the fridge until dinner. Of course, you won't forget to put in on the table, because it's right there on the master serving list. Or you can peel the potatoes and have them in cold water waiting to boil.

Other ways you can work ahead include using slow cookers to keep certain dishes warm. Mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, bread pudding... all of these dishes will keep very nicely in a slow cooker until dinner time. You can also make some dishes up to a few weeks in advance and keep them in the freezer. Quick breads like pumpkin bread and banana bread freeze really well after they're baked, and cookie dough can easily be mixed up and portioned, then frozen and ready to bake while the turkey roasts. It's good to take advantage of recipes that can bake together at similar temperatures, such as roasting the sweet potatoes in the oven with the turkey, or baking apple crisp and pumpkin pie at the same time.

You can even mix up some ingredients ahead of time, and save yourself the trouble of measuring them on the big day. Pie crust and crisp topping can be prepared in advance and stored in the fridge, as can the dry ingredients of many dishes, such as rolls or cornbread.

As you can see, by making a master serving list, a detailed shopping list, and a timeline detailing how you'll multitask, you can simplify preparing your Thanksgiving meal and enjoy both the preparation and the hosting so much more than in other years. These methods make any big meal simpler, and solve the problems of forgotten ingredients, forgotten dishes, and dishes all being ready at the wrong times, and getting cold while waiting. I hope you'll try it this year, and see how fun it can be to make a big meal using a menu plan.