Every year, in the build-up to Thanksgiving, I swear that this is the year I’m going to host my own dinner. I love meals like this—the planning, the prep, the table loaded with so much food there’s hardly room for plates. The complete overkill. Plus, I’ve been in New York for a decade now, and I’ve never seen the Macy’s parade in person. (Though I have gone to watch them blow up the balloons the night before, and that should count for something.)

But as the holiday gets closer, the thought of spending it without my family becomes less and less appealing, and every year, without fail, I wind up at my aunt’s table with twenty other lunatics, stuffing ourselves silly. It’s probably for the best, anyway—if I were in charge, I’d still be menu-planning and shopping the day before, and we probably wouldn’t eat until midnight. And so, to aid my fellow time-management-challenged home cooks, here’s a little bit of last-minute inspiration from our archives.
(more…)