A Thanksgiving Dinner Outdoors

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As a cook, I see Thanksgiving as one of the most exciting holidays of the year — an annual excuse to spend days or weeks planning, cooking, and eating a feast with friends and family. But as an introvert who loves small, intimate dinner parties, I also find Thanksgiving exhausting and emotionally overwhelming, especially when I’m the host.

Are you an introvert too? If your holiday planning includes wondering if you can sneak some earplugs into the kitchen once it’s packed with screaming relatives, or thinking about how long you can hide in the bathroom this time before it starts to look weird, this survival guide is for you.

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Never babysit a skillet of hot, sputtering bacon again — the oven is your friend on Saturday morning. With this method, you can cook a whole package of bacon at once, and you don’t even have to flip it as it cooks. Go on, pour yourself a cup of coffee and let yourself wake up without grease splatters down your robe. This video will show you how.

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I thought I knew pumpkin pie — I mean, you can’t really beat the classic — and then Ruth Reichl comes along and drops this bombshell on me, and now I feel like I’ve been lying to myself about the gloriousness of my pies for years. I would be disheartened if I weren’t so dang excited to bake more pie this Thanksgiving. Enough teasing — here’s what Ruth Reichl has to say on the subject of pumpkin pie.

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Is it possible to throw a full Thanksgiving dinner for a big crowd when you’re on a tight budget? Absolutely! In fact, we believe that the traditional Thanksgiving meal is one of the easiest ways to share a generous, bountiful meal while also watching your pennies.

Here’s how to host Thanksgiving for 10 without breaking your budget, but without compromising on generosity and deliciousness all around the table.

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Shopping the holiday sales is a sure-fire way to save money on groceries. It’s also an opportunity to save money on “seasonal” items you use year-round. Some of these may be ingredients that just get marked down for the winter holidays — like baking supplies, holiday beverage supplies, and cold-weather foods at rock-bottom prices — and others may be items that are really hard to find any other time of year.

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Many of you know Dana Velden from her long-running Weekend Meditation column here on the site. Dana started the column in 2008, and while she recently retired it to move on to other projects — notably, her new book, the calming, lyrical collection Finding Yourself in the Kitchen — we turn to her today for some much-needed holiday perspective.

I asked Dana to run us through the five most common emotions as we approach November’s biggest day. As always, she not only identifies the pain and pleasure points, but gives us real-world strategies to soothe and celebrate them.

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Orange and earthy sweet potatoes are one of fall’s true gems. Baked, mashed, roasted, fried, or grilled, there’s no wrong way to eat them. The sweet potato can (and does) do it all — morning, noon, and night.

Here are 20 recipes that prove you can eat sweet potatoes for breakfast — hello, sweet potato pancakes — all the way through supper — gnocchi with greens and yams proves that point. And don’t forget dessert: Chai sweet potato cupcakes are calling!

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The Kitchn’s teamed up with Tasting Table, Jetsetter, Saveur, Fine Cooking and Scoutmob to send someone on a food-lovers dream trip to Austin, Texas! CLICK HERE to enter for a chance to win! Trust us: you need this.

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I’m not usually much of a dessert person, but for some reason, I’ll never turn down a slice of pumpkin pie. It’s probably because I love buttery crust and custard, and lucky for me, pumpkin pie has both. I decided to up the ante this year and throw an oatmeal streusel topping on top of the pie. You only have Thanksgiving dinner once a year, so why not?

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