Thanksgiving tips..because if you have a picky mother in law you need all the help you can get!

Thanksgiving is almost here, though after wondering down the isles of the grocery store you'd think it was Christmas next week. I'm super excited about Thanksgiving...and stressed. Even though I've done it almost every year for the past 5-6 years, I always get nervous. I'm notorious for not having my turkey done on time. I always plan for it to be done at a certain point but then I realize its not ready and have to sweat it out in the kitchen constantly checking it, because now all the sides I've so carefully planned to be done at the same time, are done and at risk of becoming cold. How to solve this problem? Put the turkey in an hour or two even, before I'm technically supposed to so that if it needs more time, I'll still be golden and no one will ever know.

Then I'm been trying to make the simplest yet most delicious meal possible. I make my stuffing from scratch, but its an easy recipe that everyone loves. Then I thought about doing slow cooker mashed potatoes, but the recipe I found that was simple I can no longer find, and all the other recipes call for cooking them in a big pot prior and I'm sorry but that defeats the purpose to me. The purpose of the slow cooker is to do it for me. I understand I still have to peel and everything, but not cook them in a huge pot, mash them, throw 8 other ingredients in there with it and then have it cook more..um no. I think I'll stick to the traditional way, although my tip for this is: You can peel your potatoes and put them in a pot of cold water (the pot you will cook them in saves dishes) and then drain out the water and put in fresh water when your ready to cook them. This will prevent them from turning brown and can be done UP TO 24 hours prior. So the night before when you have time to peel, or in the morning before anything else is ready to be prepared.

My next tip that I found was using the slow cooker as your bread warmer. Set slow cooker to lowest setting and place rolls inside. Rolls will stay warm without drying up for UP TO 1 hour. So if your rolls come out of the oven and you still have 30 minutes left before dinner, pop them in your slow cooker till dinner is ready and don't worry about cold rolls, or rubbery ones from the microwave (I think I'll use this tip!)

So there are my tips for now. I'm hoping to stumble across a few others before the big day, but either way I just have to remind myself that I've done it before, its not that hard, and always accept help when offered!!