It’s Almost Christmas

Making your first Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner can be quite intimidating. Will you be able to make it as well as Mom always did? Will your Turkey be dry? How will you make sure everything gets done at the same time? These questions will likely be haunting your mind going in, but fret not. With the right resources and the right planning, you can make a great holiday dinner the first time around.

The first thing to do is plan your dinner menu. Although you can always go with what mom cooked, you might want to try a few new items. Your local library is sure to have lots of holiday cookbooks and magazines. You can find inspiration on the newstand or in you local paper too. If that isn’t enough check out Martha Stewart and Rachel Ray’s holiday tips online. The internet is the largest recipe collection ever, with recipes that even a beginning cook can master.

By planning your meal well in advance, you will have a clear idea of how you need to schedule your time the week before the holiday and on the day itself. Recipe timing is important but family and friends will understand if you make a few mistakes. I remember my sister’s first Thanksgiving dinner–she forgot the vegetables until after the pumpkin pie was eaten. Just remember to start cooking the turkey well before the time you plan to serve the meal.

Turkey is a favorite tradition around many Thanksgiving tables, while ham is more likely to be the centerpiece of a Christmas dinner. But you don’t have to be bound by tradition, you can anything you like for your holiday meal except TV dinners.

If you decide on taukey, be sure to visit the Butterball website. The site has just about everything you need to know about planning and executing a great holiday turkey dinner. It features a number of menu ideas that will help you get started. There, you can find ideas ranging from traditional Thanksgiving recipes for dinner, to unique Turkey recipes and other fare. The choice is yours, but having a Thanksgiving menu in advance will help the rest of the day go smoothly.

Once you have a menu, the issue for many first time Thanksgiving cooks is the turkey itself. The fear is usually a dry bird, undercooked bird, or flavorless bird; still others fear not getting everything ready on time. When it comes to the bird, it will stay hot a long time, so make it the first priority. The Turkey can sit even while everything else is being cooked. Secondly, try the butterball website yet again for your turkey instruction. Their recipes and cooking instructions are flawless. If that fails, try FoodTV.com for more information on Thanksgiving Turkey cooking.

There’s no one source like Butterball for planning a Christmas dinner, but there are plenty of places online that will help you plan a traditional Christmas ham dinner or something totally different like pasta or seafood. The choice is up to you. Just Google “Christmas dinner” or “Christmas pasta” or “Christmas Eve seafood” and you will find lots of recipes. You can also explore how different cultures celebrate Christmas–again just Google “x christmas dinner” where x is the culture (for example, French, Swedish, or Chinese).

You may want to make a traditional main course, but experiment with dessert. Your library will have lots of cookbooks about the cuisine of other countries.

Remember too that there are lots of Christmas Eve traditions that are fun to try. My family loves to have bacon sandwiches and American fries on Christmas Eve. Other folks like French onion soup, or Italian pasta.

A Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner does not have to be an overwhelming experience for the first timer. As you have seen, the biggest key to the entire experience is to plan everything out. Make sure you know what recipes you are going to need and have the right ingrediants on hand well in advance of the day. Visualize what your menu will look like and how you will serve each item. If you do these things, you will be well on your way to a great first time holiday dinner.

Recommended book from Amazon: Saving Dinner for the Holidays: Menus, Recipes, Shopping Lists, and Timelines for Spectacular, Stress-free Holidays and Family Celebrations