We’re planning our regular Thanksgiving dinner - but outside. Its likely to be cold though so we will need to figure out ways to keep the food warm (crockpots, instant pots, etc.) There will be 10 people and we will serve buffet style rather than a sit down meal so we can remain socially distant as we eat.
I’m looking forward to a full day of cooking and fun. After all, I’m retired but the rest of our family is either working, going to school from home, or both. We switched to pork roast for Thanksgiving a few years ago after everyone confessed that, while they all loved the sides, the Turkey was just OK. This will be an all day feast with:
Pumpkin scones with pumpkin spiced lattes in the morning
A Charcuterie board for lunch with Jamon Iberico de bellota, Spanish cheeses, olives, chorizzos, and a good bottle of Rioja.
Later in the day I’ll put out a cheese board. This year we’ll have an assortment of blue cheese from Rogue Creamery (Oregon) with, baguette, walnuts, honeycomb, pears, and a crisp Sauvignon Blanc.
Dinner is bone-in Berkshire pork roast, dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and a Pinot Noir.
Dessert is a dulce de leche apple galette with sparkling wine.
A few years ago, I found a great cookbook for traditional Thanksgiving foods–it’s Sam Sifton, Thanksgiving: How to Cook it Well. Sifton is a food editor at the NY Times. It has several options for cooking a turkey, including smoking and frying. There’s even a section on setting the table and serving the food. I bought a copy for my older daughter and son-in-law; this is the first Thanksgiving that they’ll spend without family.
Lazy Thanksgiving dinner for just the 2 of us. Ordered Family Meal from Bob Evans. DD sighed & said we need to watch our hearts with that one 
Supposedly it is enough for 4, so we’ll even have left-overs just like a “real” Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving dinners are actually easy, but I’m tired of being in charge of meals for the last 40 years, so even if not gourmet, this is a treat.
PIE
We will have 5 at our house. I bought an 11 pound turkey, but will also be doing a small marinated tri tip on the grill from our favorite market. I will make the normal sides and for dessert my Ds are making the pies. We eat around 3 pm so we will have a charcuterie at noon with champagne/wine to hold us over.
When we have Thanksgiving at my mom’s house we always play games during the day and we have prizes. My Ds are in charge of some games for us and I will get the prizes and wrap them for the winners.
@twoinanddone , after 40 years of trying to “protect” the pies until dessert time (I bake them the day ahead because I never have enough oven space) it dawned on me that breakfast pie was tastier and more appreciated than next-day pie.
My mother only made pies twice a year, for TG and Christmas, so she always felt it was necessary to make some practice pies the weekend before. Yum. Then she made more for thanksgiving. Yum again.
We usually ate pie for breakfast for a week.
My friend’s 4 year old son LOVED pumpkin pie. She figured it was as good a breakfast food as any other, so whenever they started selling them at Costco in the fall until they were done selling them, he had pumpkin pie every morning. Honestly, I wished my kids would have liked it. Easy.
There was a question on our local town FB page from someone that reminded me of this thread. She was saying that she was having a very small thankgiving this year and needed only a 5 pound turkey, but none of the stores had any. Did anyone know where she could find one?
The replies were pretty mostly respectful, but also funny
How fun to have pie for breakfast!
Think I am going to go with waffles since I recently acquired a waffle iron after asking about one on here. I went with the Presto flip model, and I did a trial run this morning - so good!!!
Love the sound of all the charcuterie and cheeses throughout the day @Rivet2000 That’s how we like to eat all day on New Year’s. Have you seen the charcuterie chalets?
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/charcuterie-chalets/
I have no doubt that were I try to attempt this it would wind up looking like one of those epic Pinterest fails that are captioned, “Nailed it!”
This thread has me thinking I will poll our immediate family (since that’s all it will be) on their favorite must have Thanksgiving dishes and if turkey isn’t on the list, well that is the kind of year it is-anything goes!
Here are my favorites:
Green chile corn souffle
Whole cranberry sauce
Ones I will try:
Roasted carrots with cardamom & ginger
Roasted sweet potatoes with a chile glaze
NYC Mercer Kitchen’s mac and cheese
2021 Goals: Pie for breakfast.
How is that any different than sweet rolls or sugary cereal? Once a month I’m buying pie for breakfast.
Breakfast is always the same. A scramble of 3 egg whites, 1/4 lb ground turkey and a boatload of veges (spinach, mushrooms, onions, squash, zucchini, etc.).
Since it’s just 3 of us this year, we’re ordering a smoked turkey, ribs and sides from our local BBQ. We’ll add some extras like yams/sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and salad.
We’re not big on desserts at our house, pies or otherwise, but we may have some non-fat frozen yogurt for a splurge. 
we have eggnog for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning (and yes I do put rum in mine).
What is Bob Evans?
I and my family love Thanksgiving food, so even though it will just be the 4 of us this year (no parents or siblings or aunts and uncles), I am going full out on the meal. Already bought a 15-lb turkey, will make stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green beans and cranberry. I’ll do a pumpkin pie with cinnamon whipped cream, plus a cranberry curd tart that I saw in Cook’s Illustrated. I like to cook so that makes it easier for me to get excited to go all out Also, I’m craving some sort of normalcy and tangible proof of all that I have to be grateful for. So what better way than to cook for the ones I love most, even if it will be different this year. Nothing makes me happier than a fridge full of food!
We’re usually the guests at our traditional big family get together, so I’m looking forward to making smaller servings of the family favorites. I got a boneless turkey breast instead of a whole bird, and the crockpot idea is appealing.
I guess we’re on board with pie for breakfast because we’re having an “Eat Dessert First” zoom with the kids sometime midday. Dinner will be around 6:00.
Are they holding parades this year?
Thanksgiving Lunner
Immediate family only (5).
We’re going up to our middle daughter’s apartment since she moved in at the beginning of Covid (to her new hospital rotation assignment). I am really not comfortable driving from SoCal to NorCal because of Covid, but she can’t come down. So:
No turkey dinner because her oven is small and I don’t want to cook a huge turkey. Her microwave doesn’t work and they can’t give her a delivery date.
Small baked ham
mashed potatoes/jar gravy from Heinz
Mrs. Cubbison’s stuffing
candied yams
roasted veggies with roasted garlic
Costco Pumpkin Pie
We will be baking Mandalorian cookies (modifying Angel cookie cutters)
Zooming with the rest of the family.
(interesting note: I saw huge turkeys at local Kroger’s/Ralph’s. I asked about a small turkey and they said they were out. They were going to order more because they thought the bigger turkeys would sell, so they are stuck with all of these turkeys taking up space.)
Bob Evans is an Ohio based family type chain restaurant. I’ll compare it to something like … Bill Knapps (another blast from the past) or a lesser Cracker Barrel ???
FYI for anyone looking for cheater mashed potatoes Bob Evans Original Mashed Potatoes found in your refrigerated section of the store (or the meat aisle) are quite worthwhile. I just add in some butter at the end.
Yes @abasket As I mentioned earlier, I got Bob Evans mashed potatoes from the grocery store for this Thanksgiving. My husband makes great mashed potatoes but since it’s just the two of us, we’re simplifying.
No dinners of any kind in our house this year, it is not worth cooking all this stuff for just the two of us. We will have a back deck drinks and snacks with kids (maybe). Impossible to serve a fancy meal on the deck, so informal daytime short visit will do.