Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. After reading the impassioned arguments of Brunch is Hell: How to save the world by throwing a dinner party, For about the past 10 years, I’ve been hosting a friendsgiving and cooking mostly everything on my own (the past couple years I’ve had some help and a good opportunity to practice delegation). It’s challenging, especially the last couple hours when several different things are in the oven and on the stove at the same time. The most important thing is to make a plan that you can refer to amidst the chaos.
2025 Spread
One of my favorite organization tools is mermaid.js. It allows you to create various diagrams such as flow charts and gantt charts using code. This makes it really easy to edit because you can focus on the content and not have to worry about spacing, making sure arrows are straight, or selecting groups of objects to move down in order to make room for something in the middle. It also means that you can describe your process to ChatGPT or other AI tool of choice and it’ll give you a pretty good start that you can just copy and paste into a markdown document.
To demonstrate both the power of mermaid.js and how you can prepare a potluck-less Friendsgiving, I’ve diagrammed my process below and also included some reference recipes for the various dishes.
If you can find a refrigerated (not frozen), air-chilled turkey, go for that one. Antibiotic-free doesn’t mean anything, at least in the US, federal law requires all poultry to be antibiotic-free. Fancy heirloom turkeys are nice, but not $12/lb nice. If you hosting a Friendsgiving earlier in November, don’t wait until the last minute thinking you can find a refrigerated turkey unless you’ve already identified and confirmed a source. They are definitely harder to find and the speed-thawing process for frozen turkey is painful.
Watch this video before smoking your turkey. Aaron Franklin is truly a scholar in the world of smoked foods.
I adapted the smoked mac and cheese recipe from here. I very rarely have leftovers.
For everything else, I mostly just winged it. Apply heat to the ingredients, and mix in some reasonable spices.
Importantly, I smoked my turkey which I believe is the superior cooking method. A major stressor in Thanksgiving is that usually when the turkey is in the oven, nothing else can go in. Moving the turkey to an alternative cooking space (second oven, smoker, sous vide) makes things a lot easier.
I hope this is helpful! Feel free to adapt this diagram for your plan and let me know how it goes!
