The Weekend Homemaker

This weekend, I am dedicating all of my cooking to preparing for Thanksgiving dinner! I am only cooking for three, but I love holiday cooking and am making a huge meal to ensure that I will have leftovers to last me for weeks!

Holidays are also one of the few times of year when I eat meat so I really look forward to the turkey (and turkey sandwiches and turkey soup). While 90% of my meals are vegetation or vegan, I am not against eating meat per se; I am disturbed and disgusted by current commercial farming techniques. The inhuman treatment of animals, artificial manipulation of the food supply and environmental degradation of lands used for farming have led me to reduce my meat consumption significantly over the past 20 years. At the same time, I feel comfortable occasionally eating meat that has been ethically raised. And so, I went out this morning and picked up my very expensive, local, free range (hopefully happy) turkey. And then, I prepared all of the "day before" dishes that I could.

I boiled the brine for the turkey (I haven't done a brine before, but it smells so good). The turkey will sit in the brine over night.

I made the dough for the dinner rolls and put it in the fridge for a slow rise. I will bake the rolls after the turkey comes out of the oven.

I prepared creamed pearl onions and cranberry sauce.

The cranberry sauce is ready to go and chilling in the fridge.

And the creamed onions just need to be baked before eating (hopefully they last that long, I could hardly stop myself from eating these as they cooked - yum!).

So far, so good!