Plan Your Thanksgiving Meal Part 2: How Long Does It Take To Make?

 This is the second of a three part post on preparing your Thanksgiving dinner ahead so things will run smoothly the day of.  

Once you have figured out WHAT you want to eat, the next step is to figure out how long each dish takes to make.  Not only do you need to consider the time to cook, but the time to prepare before or after cooking.  Do this for every dish you plan on making.

Example:  

Turkey:  4 hours (depends on weight) + 20 minutes to make the stuffing + 30 minutes to stuff for a total of 4 hours and 50 minutes

Mashed Potatoes:  15 minutes to peel potatoes + 30 minutes to cook + 15 minutes to mash/whip for a total of 1 hour

Green Bean Casserole:  10 minutes to prepare + 20 minutes to cook for a total of 30 minutes

Gravy:  20 minutes

Rolls: 15 minutes to prepare + 1 1/2 hours to rise + 15 minutes to bake for a total of 2 hours

Pies  Frozen Pumpkin:  1 hour to cook 

Pie:  Homemade Banana Cream:  10 minutes to prepare crust + 15 minutes to cook crust + 20 minutes to cook filling + 30 minutes to cook filling + 10 minutes to cut bananas and put pie together for a total of 1 hour and 25 minutes

Salad:  Buy a bag salad - 5 minutes

Once you have this information, you can schedule everything so they are done at the same time.  Our third and last post about preparing will be on scheduling.