Want to Make-Ahead Some of Your Thanksgiving? Start Here

I don't really mean for this post to sound like I'm telling you what to do for your own Thanksgiving. But it will give you and idea of how I'm managing to prepare a from-scratch, big dinner without a couple of super-overwhelming days in the kitchen.

As you already know, there is a lot of work that goes into putting together a large Thanksgiving dinner. I started my Thanksgiving prep Wednesday morning. I plan on making or doing one item on my task list each day until the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Then on that Wednesday I can start some of the actual cooking, and finish up all of the cooking by noon or 1 PM on Thursday. My son and daughter-in-law will arrive around 3 PM. So that will give me a couple of hours to clean up my cooking mess and have a brief break.

Most of what I do will be frozen. But as I get closer to the holiday, prep might include non-food work or foods that I can prep and refrigerate for 3 to 4 days. Here's my list, and each item will be done in the order on the list, one per day.

1. Make Homemade Cranberry Sauce: If you think you'll be wanting cranberry sauce again at Christmas or on New Year's, make a double batch., then freeze in 2 portions. You can always stir in a different add-in to the frozen, then thawed basic cranberry sauce the morning of the holiday to change things up. On Thanksgiving Day, stir in diced tangerine segments, on Christmas or New Years' stir in a pinch of dried cloves.
2. Make-Ahead Pie Pastry: Make a freezer-ready pie crust (either in a round to roll out to bake a pie, or rolled out and fitted into the pie plate that you plan on baking the pie in)
3. Sauté Diced Celery/Onions and Cube/Season Bread For Bread Stuffing: Freeze in two separate packages (veg in one, bread in other). Morning of, combine bread with the celery and onion and add stock. I should have enough bread in the freezer to do this on Friday. This will prevent a situation where I scramble to bake a new batch of bread just to make the stuffing ingredients.
4. Cook, Purée, and Add Spices to Winter Squash or Sweet Potatoes: I'll be combining all of the ingredients to make the casserole base, then freeze in the pan for baking. I'll thaw overnight in the fridge the night before baking.
5. Prepare and Freeze Casserole Toppings: I make a sweet potato (or butternut squash) casserole with praline topping and a green bean casserole with this homemade bread crumb and onion topping. Both toppings freeze beautifully. 
6. Make Seasoning Mix: I use a homemade mix of herbs and seasonings for a poultry rub. If this is simply dried herbs, salt, and pepper they can be combined and stored in a dark cupboard in a covered container. If there is anything fresh in the mix, like minced parsley, I freeze the blend. 
7. Combine Pumpkin Pie Filling Ingredients (With Exception to the Milk/Cream): I freeze this mixture. The day before baking the pie, I thaw it in the fridge overnight. I blend in the milk/cream on the day that I bake the pie.
8. Set the Dining Table and Get Out and Label the Serving Dishes
9. Clean and Dust Powder Room, Family Room, and Dining Room
10. Get Out Christmas Tree and Set up in Living Room
11. Make Mushroom Cream Soup: I make a cream of mushroom soup using alternative milk, butter, mushrooms, onion, flour, thyme, salt, and pepper. This is for the green bean casserole, so I can have some too.
12. Harvest and Wash Kale: I'll wrap and store this in the fridge until ready to make the salad.
13. Cut Raw Veggies for the Veggie and Olive Tray: I have a can of black olives in the pantry. Whatever carrots and celery is left from the rest of cooking will be cut into sticks for the tray. I'll store the cut veggies in a covered container in the fridge until Thursday morning.
14. Prep Remaining Ingredients Needed on Wednesday and Thursday: If I keep up with my schedule, this will be Tuesday. This is the day I do all of the little bits of prep-work to make cooking on Wednesday and Thursday go more smoothly. I will also clear out most of the kitchen fridge to make room for the various sides and ingredients that will need to thaw overnight.

Note: Any dishes containing liquids will likely need a good stir after thawing. Dry ingredients can be used, as is, once thawed.

Two weeks of advance prep-work might not be your cooking style. But I did want to share what I've found that does well and can be frozen. I use very few convenience foods, as I have to be careful what I consume as does my daughter-in-law. If I also made dinner rolls, I would add a day (Monday or Tuesday before Thanksgiving) to mix up a refrigerator dough. As it stands, I'll be making 2 cooked vegetable side dishes, 1 salad, 1 veggie tray, 1 or 2 meats, a pie or two, cranberry sauce, and gravy for  this Thanksgiving. I've had years where I made more.This year, I've decided I don't want to tire myself too much.

How about you? Do you make-ahead very much of your big holiday meals, or do you prefer to do all the work in one big cooking day? We each choose what works best for ourselves. There's no "right" way to do Thanksgiving.