Phew. It's 330am, and I just wrapped up some preparatory work for tomorrow's Thanksturkey feast. Since the oven would be in high demand tomorrow, I decided to do as many of the preparatory dishes today.

The full menu (all made from scratch!):

• Arugula salad with caramelized grapes, pears, and roasted shallot vinaigrette
• Candied sweet potatoes
• Scalloped yukon gold potatoes and yams
• Roasted turkey (duh) with gravy and stuffing
  
• Stir-fried baby carrots and snow peas
  
• Homemade cranberry sauce
• And at the last minute, I realized I had all the ingredients to make delicious homemade chocolate cookies (wow, I can't believe I finally have a fully-stocked kitchen!)

Tonight, I worked on the salad - had to use the oven to caramelize the grapes and roast the shallots. While doing that, I made the cranberry sauce (finding cranberries was hard - had to call around to 3 different places!) and the candied sweet potatoes. I'm letting the sweet potatoes (which are only partially steamed) soak in the candied sauce overnight before baking them.

The secret to great chocolate chip cookies is also making the dough the night before and letting the flavors sink into the dough - so that's getting ready, too.

The plan for tomorrow is to kick off the turkey at around noon. I'll do the stepped temperature down (start at 400, move down to 350, etc. etc.) - this will give me about half an hour after I put the turkey in to prep the stuffing (put the bread out today so it stales up by tomorrow, for you don't want mushy stuffing!) and be able to get the stuffing in there at 350. Hopefully I can also squeeze in both the potato dishes when I'm cooking the turkey at 350...

And as we eat dinner, I'll pop in the chocolate chip cookies for dessert!

I'm a bit nervous about this meal - this is the first one I've tried to do completely solo, and boy, is it a lot of work! But I'm having a great time, and I HOPE the meal comes out delicious for everybody tomorrow...

Pictures tomorrow :) Have a great night, and a wonderful Thanksturkey day!