Bestselling Author Delilah Devlin
HomeMeet Delilah
BookshelfBlogExtrasEditorial ServicesContactDelilah's Collections

Blog



Saturday Puzzle-Contest: Thanksgiving Prep!
Saturday, November 9th, 2024

I unplugged completely yesterday. I had to make a trip in the morning to the cancer center an hour away for a shot to boost my white cell count. I still felt sick as a dog, so the winding roads to get to Hot Springs just about killed me. When I got home, I went straight to bed and pretty much stayed there all day. I didn’t turn on my computer even once.

I’m still not feeling great, but I’ll try to get a few high priority tasks out of the way before I take a pain pill and sleep away the day. The pain is from the chemo, not the cancer. My feet are cramped with charley horses constantly. My legs have painful spasms. I have a headache, a slight fever… I could go on and on. And I think I just did. 🙂

My daughter decorated for Christmas early the last couple of days, so I did sit for a little while watching as she hustled around, setting up all her treasures. We have numerous trees, nutcrackers, gnomes, townscapes, etc. We like our Christmas decorations and try to stretch the season as much as we can. My dd and oldest granddaughter then watched a Hallmark Christmas movie. I tried to stick it with them but ended up heading back to bed a third of the way in. Hopefully, I’ll start feeling better soon. My next treatment is the Monday of Thanksgiving week. I’ll be completely miserable for the holiday.

Anyway, enough of the health (unhealth?) update. We have some Saturday fun to begin!

Saturday Puzzle-Contest — Thanksgiving Prep!

Now that the Christmas decorations are up, my daughter is turning her attention to the Thanksgiving feast. She has a very detailed plan, which includes her shopping list, the times she has to put certain foods on to cook, recipes for the dishes, etc. She even has a shelf in the pantry that she’s cleared to hold her ingredients. Her Uber-plan works. For the past three Thanksgivings, her meal has been superb.

For you U.S.-residents, do you go all-out for Thanksgiving? For a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card, tell me about your Thanksgiving preparations. And if you’re not in the U.S., do you have a similar feast?

17 comments to “Saturday Puzzle-Contest: Thanksgiving Prep!”

  1. Debra Guyette
    Comment
    1
    · November 9th, 2024 at 8:35 am · Link

    I do go all out for Thanksgiving. I am so sorry you are going through this. My daughter has been through so much. She is an amputee and had to have more of her leg removed due to infection. She had HPV and went through Chemo twice. Now she has leukemia, the kind treated by meds, not the bad kind. I wish we had a device like Dr McCoy had on Star Trek.



  2. Elizabeth Andrews
    Comment
    2
    · November 9th, 2024 at 8:37 am · Link

    Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Our menu mostly stays the same each year, turkey for my hubs and two sons, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn pudding, sage & onion bread stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce with ginger and walnuts or pecans, and some kind of dinner rolls. The only real variable is dessert, which will be a spiced pumpkin cheesecake this year, I haven’t tried the recipe before, so we’ll see how it turns out. 🙂

    Next weekend, I’ll start prep by making my first batch of gravy to freeze (I always send a lot of leftovers home with the boys, and having gravy in the freezer in quart containers is never a bad thing, lol), and the next weekend, I’ll start baking the bread for the stuffing. I always take off the day before Thanksgiving to do the real prep for dinner, and in the evenings after work Mon-Tue, I’ll be doing more prep, probably the second batch of gravy. After the dinner dishes are done Thursday, I won’t cook for a week. lol



  3. Eileen McCall
    Comment
    3
    · November 9th, 2024 at 8:51 am · Link

    I always used to go all out. But the past few years we have been invited to our daughter’s house. I often bring only a dish or two. Easier, but not the same.



  4. Theresa Privette
    Comment
    4
    · November 9th, 2024 at 9:40 am · Link

    I love Thanksgiving as long as I am not cooking. I prefer doing lots of side dishes and some desserts.



  5. Deb Brown
    Comment
    5
    · November 9th, 2024 at 9:48 am · Link

    We either are at someone’s house friends or family. It’s just the two of us so we don’t due anything at home now. Not sure what will be doing this year yet.



  6. cindy bartolotta
    Comment
    6
    · November 9th, 2024 at 11:01 am · Link

    My dad was a cook in the army. The more food he could cook, the happier he was. He started prepping 3 days in advance of Thanksgiving. The turkey was the largest he could find. I grew up having leftovers for a week. NOT a bad thing. Mom, dad and my bro are gone. My sis has a partner and we talk everyday. She has her own physical issues. She is a double amputee, blind and on dialysis, but does what she can.
    I am by myself. I usually have 4 things: a turkey breast (no dealing with the whole turkey), sweet potatoes made with mandarin oranges and pineapples in the brown sugar butter glaze, stuffing (my dad’s ingredients) made with the usual stuff, but added with pepperoni, apples and raisins, and cranberry sauce–with ‘wiggly’ one.



  7. AMY FENDLEY
    Comment
    7
    · November 9th, 2024 at 11:51 am · Link

    I have been the Thanksgiving Queen for quite a few years. We never have it on the actual day. Being a blended family, the “real” mom gets the actual day. So I fix a Ham, Chicken dressing, and sides. I have been informed last night that this is my last year holding it. My husband said that it is time for the kids to take over. I will still probably make the ham and the dressing, but it will be at oldests house from now on.



  8. Linda Rhoden
    Comment
    8
    · November 9th, 2024 at 12:05 pm · Link

    I just do the usual Thanksgiving dinner
    Nothing special



  9. Beth
    Comment
    9
    · November 9th, 2024 at 12:24 pm · Link

    We usually do up a meal that will last us all weekend at least. Big reason for that is we have been doing a craft show that weekend (all 3 days) for the last 27 years. If we make a big enough meal on Thanksgiving then we don’t really have to do much more than warm things up after a long day working at the craft show. This year, with us living in a new location, we may change things up a little since two of us are going to have to do the hotel thing for the whole weekend now instead of just going home every night.



  10. Colleen C.
    Comment
    10
    · November 9th, 2024 at 12:35 pm · Link

    Just a family dinner with all of our favorites.



  11. Mary Preston
    Comment
    11
    · November 9th, 2024 at 4:39 pm · Link

    No Thanksgiving here. We tend to feast at Christmas more than likely.



  12. Anna Sweringen
    Comment
    12
    · November 9th, 2024 at 6:06 pm · Link

    My sister does all the cooking. : D



  13. Jennifer Beyer
    Comment
    13
    · November 9th, 2024 at 7:42 pm · Link

    I love cooking Thanksgiving dinner! I usually make way too much but I love leftovers so it’s okay. I run my oven, stove and smoker!



  14. Pansy Petal
    Comment
    14
    · November 9th, 2024 at 8:17 pm · Link

    I no longer go all out the Thanksgiving. For me, it is usually just another day. BUT, my brother and his wife do and this year I have decided to surprise them and show up for dinner. They put on a wonderful spread and I love spending time with them. I can’t wait. Good thoughts and positive energy. HUGS



  15. Diane Sallans
    Comment
    15
    · November 10th, 2024 at 8:22 pm · Link

    We used to have a big family Thanksgiving in prior years but unless I choose to travel I’ll have a quiet day probably with a bit of family FaceTime.



  16. Tara Leavitt
    Comment
    16
    · November 10th, 2024 at 9:38 pm · Link

    We usually go to a family member for Thanksgiving but this year there have been some issues with a few family members so we are not invited so we will be doing our own Thanksgiving with our little family here at home and my niece and her gf. Nothing special but my middle daughter loves to cook so she will be doing the cooking and I think we are having Tritip instead of the usual Turkey.



  17. BN
    Comment
    17
    · November 12th, 2024 at 4:39 pm · Link

    bake turkey



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.