Window cleaner can be a game-changer for your housekeeping routine. Along with cleaning everything from your windows to your shower tile, this bright blue household staple is slightly less abrasive than most other multi-purpose sprays — making it great for use on more fragile surfaces.
Sorry, Cyber Monday, but it appears your reign was brief. These days, online shopping deals are launching earlier and earlier, and now Cyber Monday has to share billing with an entire week of deals, starting the Monday before Thanksgiving. That includes Amazon, of course, which actually launched early Black Friday deals on November 1. (Christmas isn’t the only thing that comes earlier and earlier these days.) Now that Black Friday week is officially here, they’re rolling out even more deals, every day.
See below for our favorite picks. We’ll keep updating as more are made available.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and basically everything between Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to be about spending money — even the best of sales requires a little bit of cash on hand. But there’s a saving grace hidden among the spend, spend, spend mentality, and it’s the thing that will keep you sane as you rush from store to store looking for the cheapest stand mixer and the best deal on an Instant Pot: free food.
Plenty of places offer gift card deals — buy $25 or $50 in gift cards and get a little more to spend on yourself (BurgerFi, Carraba’s Italian Grill, Bonefish Grill, The Cheesecake Factory), but there are better deals to be had, especially if you weren’t already planning to gift restaurant gift cards (but if you were, definitely look for deals).
Growing up, nearly all Thanksgiving dinners were spent at my grandma’s house, and in classic potluck style; everyone brought the sides and desserts so her only duty in the kitchen was the turkey and gravy. For me, this meant a morning making several dishes we could easily pack up and that would handle the drive to our holiday dinner.
This year I’m drawing on all those helpful tips I’ve picked up throughout the years as I ready to prep some of these delicious dishes. No matter what your schedule or how far you’re traveling, these five make-ahead Thanksgiving sides are sure to wow the crowd around the table.
We asked Marge to tackle one of Kitchn’s most divisive questions we’ve ever received: Is it OK to ask your friend for money for Thanksgiving?
Dear Marge,
A friend just invited me to his home for Thanksgiving dinner — and asked me to pay $50 upfront. I understand that hosting can be expensive, and I wouldn’t mind being asked to bring a dish, but asking guests for cash seems incredibly rude. Am I crazy to be a bit miffed? Has anyone else experienced this? If so, how do you handle it?
Should I tell my friend that this is not the norm?
– Pay to Play
Just like this past April, the CDC is once again warning consumers to stay away from romaine lettuce due to an E.coli outbreak. “Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick,” the CDC explains in their announcement on Tuesday.
“How long does it take to microwave a 25lb turkey?” Carlota Andrés messaged to the family WhatsApp. Her famous father, chef, and humanitarian José Andrés, responded, aghast, in a mixture of English and Spanish that encompasses a horror perhaps not able to be contained in just one language. In fact, the younger Andrés was simply enacting the same prank that other young adults around the country have been all week.
I first saw the viral “microwaving a turkey” meme on Instagram, where my friend had posted a screenshot of her hilarious conversation with her mom. (If you aren’t aware of the trend, people are texting their moms asking how long it would take to cook a 25-pound turkey in the microwave in hopes of getting a funny response, then posting a photo of the conversation on social media.)
To be honest, I was less concerned about the fact that she was planning on microwaving her turkey and more upset that I thought I hadn’t been invited to her (fake) Friendsgiving. But after seeing a few more very similar posts, I quickly realized I had fallen prey to a meme.
I assumed it was all a joke. You can’t actually cook a turkey in the microwave, right? But although people were playing a joke on their moms, the actual act of microwaving a turkey can be done successfully. According to the USDA, it’s one of the many ways you can cook your Thanksgiving bird. Here’s how long it would actually take.
Kitchn’s Delicious Links column highlights recipes we’re excited about from the bloggers we love. Follow along every weekday as we post our favorites.
Growing up in the Midwest gave me a few habits that set me apart from my coastal peers, including a firm conviction that “Ope!” is a real word, a tendency to begin and/or end every sentence with “sorry,” and an intense and unshakable love of casseroles. I can’t imagine how anyone gets through winter, or large family get-togethers, without a big dish of Kentucky hot brown or an enormous tuna-noodle casserole with crushed potato chips on top.
Dear Marge,
I’m planning my annual Friendsgiving, and I don’t want to repeat my hosting crisis from last year — but I’m not sure what I can do to prevent it.
I love to entertain, even in my small place. I plan my menu really carefully and try to make the table look beautiful. Last year, I invited as many friends as I could fit (12!), and scrounged to make the seating work around my regular table plus a borrowed folding table.
When one of my friends showed up at the door with her brand-new “boyfriend,” (I acknowledge the condescension implicit in the quotation marks but read on!) I sort of stammered hello as I scrambled to figure out how to squeeze another seat at the already-crowded table. Not only that, I didn’t have another whole place setting. So much for my carefully planned tablescape — I used an old chipped dinner plate and gave him a regular water glass for his wine. Also, I had made exactly 12 individual chocolate budinos, and spent half the meal trying to figure out how I would serve them to 13 people.
I think it was rude of my friend to just show up with her new guy. She has long since broken up with him (it turned out to be a three-week fling), but how do I prevent this from happening again? And if it does happen, what do I do? It seriously ruined a night that I was really looking forward to.
— Unexpected Anxiety