Is it too soon to talk turkey?

So, I've been receiving emails from stores and restaurants describing/advertising their pick-up Thanksgiving meals. Most are just the common T-day foods. One in particular came from a local restaurant and their menu looked good and more interesting. We sent an e-gift card to our son and daughter-in-law from this restaurant a couple of years ago, and now we're on their email list. Anyway, it's very expensive ($57 per person, not including dessert), but it did get me thinking about what I want to serve our 6 at our little Thanksgiving meal.

For the mains

When you have just 6 people, a whole turkey sounds like far more turkey leftovers than we would want. I've done bone-in turkey breasts before, and those are a good size for a smaller group. They're not as budget-friendly (priced per pound) as the whole bird. But it's an option.

Last year we did a whole chicken, roasted as I would a whole turkey, and a smoked pork loin. I have both whole chickens and a pork loin in the freezer. So if I went the same route as last year, I wouldn't have to buy the main meat. 

The restaurant I mentioned above is providing roasted turkey breast, sliced turkey leg confit, and honey glazed ham as their mains in the package.

For the sides

I think I want variety in texture as well as flavor. And I don't want too many starchy foods. So, I think I'll have purple mashed potatoes (from our garden's purple potatoes, everyone loves the color surprise), roasted sweet potato chunks, and bread, celery and sage stuffing. I have everything for those dishes except sweet potatoes. For vegetable dishes, I have canned green beans, dried mushrooms, and onions on hand. I could make a green bean casserole in a homemade mushroom soup binder and topped with homemade onion and bread crumb topping. I do our green bean casserole this way every year, due to my dairy intolerance. I would like to do a salad. I don't know if we will have anything to make a salad from on hand. So I will have to buy ingredients for a salad. I will make a gravy with the chicken drippings and homemade chicken stock. I may just skip any sort of cranberry sauce, and instead serve home-canned chutney alongside both the chicken and smoked pork. And I'd like to have olives. We all love olives and I haven't been buying any lately due to price increases. I'll get some for Thanksgiving.

The package with the restaurant includes a four cheese mac and cheese, vanilla yam puree, garlic mashed potatoes, brioche truffle stuffing, roasted seasoned green beans, country gravy, and orange cranberry sauce.

For dessert

I will bake an apple pie, using frozen apple chunks and homemade pie pastry, and a pumpkin pie, using our pureed pumpkin, soy milk, sugar, eggs, spices and homemade pie pastry. I will need to pick up whipping cream for the pies.

The restaurant does not include dessert with the package, but offers an add-on of $16 for either an apple or pumpkin pie.

For beverages

I can ask our son and daughter-in-law to bring some sparkling cider and/or mineral water for our cold beverages, and I'll serve coffee and tea with the dessert.

So, it looks like I will need to buy sweet potatoes, salad ingredients, olives, and whipping cream for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Have you given thought to your Thanksgiving meal for this year? Is turkey a must for your group? Are you hosting or guesting this year?

Sayings My Parents and Grandparents Used to Help Teach Financial Responsibility

I was thinking about all of the little sayings my parents and grandparents had to teach us how to be good stewards of our family's resources. Many of these lessons I carry with me today. How many of these did your parents or grandparents used to say? What other little sayings did they have? 

Here are the top 10 that I remember from my childhood:

"Put a sweater on if you're cold."  Save energy. Be prudent with resources.

"Clean your plate."  This extended to using every bit in a tube of toothpaste, scraping out the mayonnaise jar, using that last square of TP stuck onto the cardboard tube. The lesson was to don't be wasteful.

"Let me show you how we can fix this." From worn shoes and torn jeans, to pilled sweaters, we repaired (or took to a repair shop) our worn or torn clothing. Shoe repair shops used to be common. Of course, the types of shoes people used to wear daily often had leather soles, which can be replaced, in contrast to sneaker rubber soles. When I was first allowed to wear blue jeans to school (7th grade), I fell in my practically brand new jeans and tore the knee. My mom took me to the nearby 5 and dime (yes, there was still a 5 and dime back in my town in the 70s, although everything cost way more than 5 or 10 cents). We looked at the sewing notions on the wall and found a large patch of an orange. It wasn't how I really wanted my jeans to look, but I had to compromise. A large orange on the right knee of my jeans was better than not being able to wear my jeans to school. It was my mother who showed my sister and I how to shave pills off sweaters using a ladies non-electric razor. We extended the attractiveness of many sweaters by shaving off pills.

"Go in or go out. Don't just stand there with the door open." I still use this one with my own family members. It's closely related to "decide what you want from the fridge before you open the door." All about saving energy. No need to heat or cool the outdoors.

"A stitch in time saves nine." I didn't understand this one for a long time. It was finally explained to me that if we repair something early enough, we won't have a big repair later. Very true about clothing repairs. That hem that is falling down on a favorite skirt? Fix the hem now and you won't have a big repair later. Ditto on torn seams or small holes in knits.

"Money doesn't grow on trees"  or "I'm not made of money." We heard both of these often from my father. Our provisions are finite. Don't waste what we have and don't ask for what we don't really need.

"Money won't buy happiness," which is closely related to "no one ever promised life would be fair." And also "there's always someone who has it worse." Be grateful for what you have, find joy in the simple, and appreciate every good thing.

"Save it for a rainy day." Put something aside for hard times to come.

"Your eyes are bigger than your stomach." Don't take more than you need or can use, in food or other things.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Sometimes you can do more of the same, then have success. But other times, you need a new angle of attack. Either way, you have a chance at success if you keep trying. Whereas you will surely fail if you give up.

I hope some of these brought back fond memories for you.