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2024 Thanksgiving Menu and Meal Prep Timeline

* image These past few months have been busy for our family, especially since our oldest joined a local swim team. Between juggling our work schedules and balancing school with practices... we're all pretty wiped out. Although it's a lot of work, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. Preparing the holiday meal for our family fills my heart with joy, and I can't wait to get started. To make things easier for me, I don't deviate much from  our first Thanksgiving  as a family. The dishes I make are familiar ones, and the recipes for them live at my fingertips. Keeping the same menu year after year means I don't have to spend time researching recipes or planning a new one. Here are my tried-and-true Thanksgiving recipes, as well as my prep timeline for the big day!

Favorite Kitchen Tool

OXO Kitchen Tongs
(Photo courtesy of Amazon.com)

If someone were to ask me, or any member of my immediate family, for that matter, what my favorite kitchen tool was, I would immediately respond with, "tongs." As my parents gave me more and more freedom in the kitchen and indulged my desires to prepare the family dinner every once in a while, I would always find a way to use our tongs -- which were nothing like the OXO tongs pictured above -- during the preparation of the meal. Most of the time I cooked dinner for the family, I made breaded chicken breasts, either marinated in Italian dressing or orange juice, so the tongs came in quite handy for turning the chicken during cooking.


Of course, if you were to ask any member of my immediate family what my favorite kitchen tool was, they'd not only tell you "tongs," but they'd also go on to tell you the story of how I managed to use them while making Jell-O. This is a favorite family story and gets told at least once a year, usually around the holidays. In my own defense, I had attempted to make Jell-O Jigglers, and I couldn't get them off the tray no matter how hard I pressed into the Jell-O with our cookie cutters, and I thought the tongs would help. They didn't. Many years after the Jell-O incident, I was surprised with a lovely pair of OXO Good Grip 9" tongs in my Christmas stocking (thanks, Santa!), and, to this day, those tongs are one of my most cherished items in the kitchen.

So, what's your favorite kitchen tool or gadget? Is there a story behind your choice? I'd love to hear your answers!

Happy Monday!

Locking Tongs on Foodista

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Comments

Dee said…
I seriously have a couple of favorites but I too love Tongs. The ones I adore have silicon business end. They are wonderful in so many ways. I wonder what we did before all these awesome kitchen tools?
FOODalogue said…
Hands down...my favorite is the Magic Bullet. I use to scramble eggs, make vinaigrettes, pesto, etc.
V.Streit said…
Tongs serve many purposes. One is to turn foods and the other is to retrieve things on the top shelf of a cabinet.

I have no idea what my fave kitchen tool would be. Can my entire kitchen be one awesome tool? Is that cheating?
Foodalogue - The Magic Bullet? That's fantastic! I've always been meaning to try one of those things...
Dee - Thanks for commenting! Aren't tongs fantastic? I can't imagine cooking without them!
Veronica - Ha! I'm going to have to buy some longer tongs for me to able to use them to reach things on the top shelf!

How about you pick your top five favorite kitchen tools? :-)
V.Streit said…
Michelle: Hah today, I used a slotted spoon to reach some wooden bowls.

My top five:
1. Chef knife
2. Silpat
3. tongs
4. Mini Blender
5. Whisk

That was hard!
Veronica - You're using way too many utensils to reach stuff on the high shelves! Perhaps you should invest in a stepstool before something falls on your head!

Thanks for posting your top five! :-)
I love my Kitchenaid stand mixer. It was in storage for a number of years while we were living overseas and I regretted every day that I had not brought it with us! I was recently reunited with it and have been using it a ton.

I need some new tongs--I'll have to go get some of those OXOs!
Fuji - Thanks for commenting! I wish I had a stand mixer! I'm hoping one appears under my Christmas tree in December. Or my boyfriend gives me a reason to register for one. ;-)

I hope you love the OXO tongs as much as I do when you finally get yourself a pair!
Hana Choi said…
I adore my tongs too! Second to that would be my long, Asian cooking chopsticks ;)

Hope all is well!
chicky*bits - Hmm... I wonder if I'm ready to try cooking with the long chopsticks. I smell a challenge!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you're well, too!
Christelle said…
I have the same tool, and like you, I love them, they are indispensable in the kitchen! :)
Christelle - I don't know what I'd do without them!