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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!

Notice Anything Different?

Taste As You Go Logo - Designed by Michelle Judd

Over the past few months, I've been slowly rolling out changes to my blog, beginning back in November with a new logo, a new design, and a new layout. If you've been keeping up via RSS reader, you may not have noticed these changes, so it's time to give you all a tour of the new (and improved) Taste As You Go!

Are you ready?



Taste As You Go Header Screenshot - Image by Taste As You Go / Michelle Judd

Gone is the logo made from a collage of various pictures of me... eating. In its place is a much more straightforward logo, created simply by typing out of the name of the blog in a fun new font and tacking on a spoon... a tasting spoon. And the colors? I chose orange and green to invoke the color of vegetables -- carrots and peas. Appropriate for a food blog, right?

To the right of the logo are more prominent navigation links:

Taste As You Go Freelance Work Page Screenshot

Curious to see whether my writing or my photos appear in places other than on Taste As You Go? The Freelance Work page indexes the work I've done to date so my work is easy to find.

Taste As You Go Recipe Index Screenshot

The updated Recipe Index is organized in a similar manner. Main categories of recipes appear first, with Sweets, Fruit, Vegetables, and More Resources (i.e. cooking technique or dietary concerns) broken down even further.

Taste As You Go Restaurant Reviews Screenshot

As for the Restaurant Reviews page, you can now search by city or by cuisine. A lot of work to build, but worth every frustrating broken HTML error. I'll put in the effort if it means a more positive user experience!

Taste As You Go Restaurant Review Map Feature

Speaking of Restaurant Reviews, I've updated every single review I've written to include a link to a Google map pinpointing its exact location. A seemingly minor change with major impact. Now it's extremely easy to click over to the map and plan out how you're going to get to the restaurant!

Taste As You Facebook Page Screenshot

I didn't just stop with the changes made to the blog. On January 1st, I finally launched the official Taste As You Go Facebook Page, and the support has been tremendous so far! I was hesitant to create a Facebook Page for the blog because I didn't think I'd have the time to make it an interesting space, but I realized that the Page allows me to interact with readers who would rather leave comments about my blog posts on Facebook than leave them on the posts themselves. If you haven't become a fan yet, you should!

So, that's what I've been working on "behind the scenes" over the past few months. If you have any suggestions as to how I could make Taste As You Go even better, let me know!

Thanks for taking the tour!