Thanksgiving Dinner in 4 Hours

It's Thanksgiving Weekend here in Canada, and Kevin and I celebrated with a break in our very busy schedules by roasting up a chicken along with all the good side dishes you could want. Like I said tho, very busy (I was in the lab all day today, and all morning yesterday and Saturday, but such is grad school), so I blocked off one afternoon to do an entire Thanks giving dinner for the two of us.

Here's how:

Shopping list:

-1 whole (fresh not frozen) chicken
-1 acorn squash
-2 large potatoes
-2 sweet potatoes
-1 bunch of celery
-1 onion
-1 pack fresh cranberries
-5 mushrooms
-2 boxes of stove top stuffing
-1 packet of instant turkey gravy
-1 can cranberry sauce
-2 heads of garlic
-1 bunch of asparagus
-pack of fresh baked dinner rolls
-1 bottle of red wine
-1 pecan pie
-1 tub of hagen das

Timeline:

2:00 Preheat oven to 350', cut acorn squash in half and scoop out seeds/pulp

2:20 Bake squash face down, mean while cut the tops of one head of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, wrap in tin foil and put in oven

 2:50 Take Squash out, flip over, put 1tbsp brown sugar and 1tbsp butter into each half, put back into oven

3:00 Remove garlic from oven, spoon cloves out into bowl and mash with fork, add 1/2 softened butter, and chicken seasoning herbs, mash together (this is your chicken rub).

 

 

 3:10 Spoon the rub into space between chicken skin and breast, and rub liberally over outside of chicken. Place half an onion and some cloves of garlic into the chicken body cavity. Put four celery stalks on the bottom of your roasting pan, and some more garlic cloves. Add 1 cup of water and sit chicken on top of the celery.

 3:20 Remove squash from oven, and turn oven up to 375'. Once squash has cooled, scoop out from shell into bowl (along with buttery goodness from center of squash) and mash together with a fork.

 3:30 Put your chicken into the oven, cover with a tin foil tent.

 3:50 Peel your potatoes

 At this point things got busy, and I forgot to take any more picture of the process.


4:10 Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Chop your potatoes into medium sized chunks.
4:20 Add potatoes to boiling water.
4:30 check on your chicken, add more liquid if needed.
4:35 Chop one half onion, remainder of celery and mushrooms
4:50 Drain potatoes, add 1/3 cup of butter, 1/2 cup milk, 2tbsp minced garlic and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, mash together, transfer into serving pan, and garnish top with Parmesan cheese
5:10 remove chicken from oven, pour juices into a sauce pan for gravy
5:20 Spread asparagus onto to baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, garlic and parmesan, put asparagus and potatoes in the oven
5:30 Saute celery, onions and mushrooms in a large pot until soft, on second burner, heat chicken juices and adding enough water to bring volume up to 1 cup, stir in gravy packet when boiling
5:40 add cranberries and 2 cups water, cover (they will splatter when they burst), remove asparagus and potatoes from oven
5:50 stir in stove top stuffing, remove from heat and let sit covered for 5 minutes, fluff with fork and serve
6:00 Serve everything to the table, sit down and enjoy

So there you have it, an entire thanksgiving dinner in 4 hours, in one tiny apartment kitchen. You could adapt the timeline to accommodate a turkey (if it's a smaller one), but the chicken done this way was great (especially for just the two of us). After dinner we packed up lunches for the next three days each, because really the best part about a turkey dinner is the leftovers.

What did you cook up this weekend? Happy Thanksgiving Canada!