I’m salivating just thinking about the food in this post.  Last year I managed to photograph most of the dishes I made for Thanksgiving.  And quite frankly, I’m doing the same menu this year.

Start to finish it takes me about 7 hours.  I’ll start Wednesday night brining the turkey, making cornbread and making the pie.  Then on Thursday morning I’ll start in again.  Now I’m not the world’s most organized guy—except in the kitchen.  I kept track last year and I cleaned the kitchen 4 times during the day (and that doesn’t include doing the dishes after the feast).

We’ve got a small kitchen and it just works a whole lot better if, after each step, I clean up.  So in the morning I start with all my prep work.  I figure out how much celery and onions and bell pepper I’ll need for a couple of different dishes.  I clean and snap my fresh green beans and get them in the pot so I can blanch them.  I peel potatoes and get them in cold water.  I peel and chop yams so I can assemble the casserole they’ll be going into too.

So, everything’s set and I clean up, then start to assemble the various dishes.  First is the Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing.  I need to brown the sausage and sweat the onions, celery and jalapeno peppers. Then I get out my biggest TexasWare bowl, crumble the cornbread in it and add the other ingredients.  That’s one dish down.

Next is Cheap Bastids Mushroom Soupless Green Bean Casserole.  I blanch the green beans and sweat the onions, then build my roux for the mustard base sauce (absolutely NO cream of mushroom soup for me).  The beans go in a casserole dish with the sauce and a hefty topping of canned onion rings.

Then it’s on to the sweet potatoes—getting that dish prepped with the yams cut into about 1 inch cubes, several tablespoons of margarine, several tablespoons of brown sugar, chipotle and cinnamon.  The last about 10 minutes of baking I top them with miniature marshmallows.

If all this sounds old fashioned, it’s because it is.  That’s my idea of Thanksgiving dinner.  I’m not going to foo-foo it up.  I like flavors.

And of course last but not least is to prep the bird.  We make a full turkey breast rather than a whole turkey.  This year, rather than 5 of us there’s only going to be 3.  It’ll be a sad day for Carolyn but I know she’ll find plenty to be thankful for even though both her Mother (Mamma Stella) and brother passed on this summer. 

Now, the so-called “secret” of my success is that I use my propane grill as an oven (setting up indirect heat) and do the turkey breast there.  It works.  Then the oven in the kitchen can be dedicated to the 3 baked dishes and the traditional “Hernandez Family Stuffing Bread” that Carolyn will make this year.

The good news is that the turkey breast cooks on the grill in about 45-50 minutes.  I put it in a roasting pan on a rack with a couple of cups of broth in the bottom along with some aromatics.  Then I season the breast with a spiced margarine that I put both under the skin and on top of the skin. 

So that’s the plan.  We’ll be eating about 2 p.m. and taking a nap by 3:30 or so.  And being Cheap Bastid I added up the cost of the meal.  It’s a bit on the pricey side but at a total of around $30 it’s not too bad for a full Thanksgiving dinner.  The 2 most expensive items are the bird and the pie.  About $12-13 for the bird and about $6 for the pie (pecans are $9 a pound)—and I make a 2-layer pie; one layer of pumpkin and the other of pecan.  Decadant AND tasty.

Hope you like the pictures.  And if you’d like any of the recipes, send me a PM.  I’ll be glad to oblige.