I have never hosted a Thanksgiving, but I hope to do so someday. In preparation for that big day, I’m starting to take notes. When I looked back at the Thanksgivings of my youth to draw the comic strip for Saveur’s website that included the Spinach Madeleine recipe, the research yielded something that might help me going forward.
My mother not only found her original spinach recipe, but she also found a set of instructions about how to pull off such a big party. I always wondered how she did it, and now I have an inkling. Some of the advice is a bit dated, but much of it is very practical, just like my mother.
How do you plan for the holiday, and how did you learn to do so?
Here are the instructions:
In addition to being just plain old interesting, I bet that brings back some memories for you. What a nice find!
I love this! Being from a farm family, we had many of these typed “brochures” from Cooperative Extension. They still do great work, by the way, teaching about agriculture, food, and nutrition. Thought you might enjoy this post today, a riff on your Fly Sky High Kale Salad. Thanks so much for sharing with all of us! http://www.virgieandhats.com/?p=1112
MY mother had lists like this. She still makes copies of them and sends them to me. Having hosted a small Thanksgiving in our tiny NYC apartment, it’s no small feat. This list is very helpful… and wonderfully nostalgic.
thanks for sharing!
http://skinnedkneesinshortpants.blogspot.com
My mom has hosted Thanksgiving for both sides of the family (Dad’s on Thursday, hers on Friday) for as long as I can remember. When I was in jr. high, I think, Mom finally sat down and said, “Okay, I’m going to write everything down this year so I don’t have to try to remember it all next year.” And she planned everything–the cleaning, the food prep, the cooking–on 3-5 pages. We initialed the chores we were going to take responsibility for. After the holiday, she filed the pages away for the next year. We couldn’t find them the next year. For the next five or six years, there were always pages, but only twice, I think, did we find the previous years’. (Now there’s a file in the kitchen labeled THANKSGIVING with plans and recipes.) So, when I took on my first Thanksgiving party, I took a page out of her book and wrote out all the planning. It does take a lot of the anxiety away and lets you focus on producing good food instead of trying to think about what you may or may not be forgetting.