rechelle's lifelyrics

For the first time, I’m making TWO turkeys for Thanksgiving – a few weeks apart. Our church potluck this month was an opportunity to share our favorite recipes that we traditionally do for our families on Thanksgiving day. Well, I learned that fresh turkeys aren’t available until mid-November, so I had to resort to purchasing a frozen turkey last week. It’s turning out to be an added bonus, because now I can take all of the drippings from the turkey I roasted over the weekend to make my gravy for Thanksgiving day ahead of time! This is a big deal, because doing the gravy after the bird is roasted, just before setting everything out on the table, normally adds quite a bit of stress to the afternoon for me.

I can’t even remember the first time I graduated from being the guest, and contributing a side dish, to the one who made the turkey and gravy. I remember in 1996 or 1997, I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner party for Ray’s family (about 30 people), but I think Ray’s mom may have brought the turkey. I do remember, after we moved up here to Oregon in 2011, making my special herbed turkey for our family and our brand-new son-in-law, who never liked turkey before. It was a thrill to see his surprise at enjoying the bird, especially after he was so nervous about not having ham for our special dinner!

In 2015, I finally wrote out a recipe for how I prepare my turkey, and started keeping notes about successes and failures of my Thanksgiving dinner preparations. (Go to my page, “Rechelle’s Recipes For Family Gathering,” and scroll down to view or print my Herbed Turkey recipe). I have a section of my recipe binder (see “Better Than A Recipe Box“) for my go-to recipes, menus & guest lists, and Thanksgiving dinner preparation notes. It is so nice to have this resource that coaches me on how to be more efficient each year, so that I can really enjoy the special day with my family and friends. I’ve learned how to spread out the workload over several days, and streamline my process for low stress in the kitchen.

A few years ago, Ray found a brine recipe that worked really well, so we added that to the necessary preparations on the day before roasting our bird. We made a video of our turkey preparation that year (in 2021), and it’s been a great coach for me every year since then! The video, Turkey Preparation From Brining to Roasting, doesn’t have the brine recipe, so I’ll share a picture of what I use from my recipe binder, in case you’d like to try it. It has various notes on the page from our preparation experiences through the years: