Ep. 04: Thanksgiving in a Tiny Kitchen

Here’s our rolling island, on the move. It usually sits flush against the left wall when we’re not rolling it over to the outlet to use the microwave. The stainless steel top is great for resting hot pans right on the surface when we run out of burner space on the stove or take things out of the oven. This one isn’t sold anymore, but here’s a similar, smaller version.

This is what our cooking plan looked like this year (yes, I did recreate it after deleting it). It’s not cute or fancy, but it keeps us organized.

We order our turkeys every year from DiPaola Turkey Farms. They’re at our farmer’s market every week and will deliver the turkeys there the weekend before Thanksgiving.

This is our brand-new roasting pan. We’re very happy with how sturdy it is (given that we were working with tin foil disposable ones up to this point).  It was on sale for $20 when we bought it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but it’s still a deal at full price. If we had a much bigger turkey, it might not have worked, but for our 12-pound version this year, it was perfect.

Our table doesn’t actually look like this when we eat, but each year we set it up like this before we start cooking to feel good about ourselves. Design Instagram is a lie.

Sorry, Mom. I’m behind on setting up these show notes, so I didn’t have enough time/light to photograph the chair. It will have to show up in another episode.

And in case our drawer divider content was very thrilling, here’s a link to the one we bought. It’s definitely a little expensive, but when you only have two kitchen drawers, it’s nice to corral everything into its given space.

In case anyone is interested, here are our favorite Thanksgiving recipes, from this year and previous years (in literally no particular order):

• Bacon butter, which we put on the turkey while we roast it
• Super easy gravy with not too many extra ingredients
• Cranberry apple sangria, which was a hit at our seven-person event last year
• Homemade cranberry sauce, which is unfortunately not in the shape of a can
• Roasted sweet potatoes, which we added this year and will be doing again
• A Brussels sprout shallot dip, which we’ve made for parties. We cut the Brussels sprouts chunkier than recommended, and it became more of a casserole.
• Sourdough rolls (Donnie loves fermenting and just got a sourdough starter, so he made them from scratch this year.)
• We have two pies every year—rhubarb apple and peach raspberry—regardless of how many people are coming
• The brine is Donnie’s dad’s recipe: 1/2 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of sugar, and enough water to cover the turkey
• We try to copy Jordan’s mom’s mashed potatoes every year: a lot of peeled potatoes, basically 8 ounces of cream cheese, some milk, some butter, and an indecent amount of Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. They’ll never be as good as the original, though.