Nine months pregnant and hyperemetic, here, so it was Carnival of Convenience Food at our house.

What worked:

Costco aluminum chafing pans, $6.99 for 15, I think- no pans to wash!

Costco pre-seasoned half turkey on bed of stuffing. Very moist and tasty. Good flavour on the stuffing.

Costco mashed sweet potatoes- Not too sweet, family demolished the whole thing, really good.

Steamables fresh microwave in the bag white potatoe. Par cooked in the microwave, dumped in a pan of butter, 450F for 20 minutes, fantastastic roasties.

Costco Pumpkin Pie- Nuff said.

Wegmans $7 meat and cheese trays. Great for when you don't want to have pounds of expensive brie making you fat for the next two weeks.

Wegmans apple pie- much nicer than Costco apple pie.


Fail:
Wegmans Green beans in basting sauce- nasty flavored soybean base, will not buy again.

Wegmans fresh homestyle gravy- one dimensional flavor. The gravy packed with the costco turkey was much better.

Costco Au Gratin Brussel Sprouts- More like creamed cabbage, pretty bad aftertaste.

Alton browns brined turkey was delicious

Brussels sprouts with turkey bacon... Was better last year with pancetta

Yorkshire puddings in mini muffin tins. Decent but would have been better in regular size muffin tins.

Sufigaynot are totally overrated and pumpkin pie is way better

The secret to baked Brie. Fig jam and sprinkle brown sugar on top.

Draydels are highly entertaining for small children ad bought the adults probably an hour of adult conversation while the kids played.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Burned the garlic and shallots for my green beans. Just awful.

And we had 3 times the amount of food that we needed. Such a waste.

Why is it a waste? One of the best parts of a Thanksgiving is all the left overs!

I don't get it either. You failed if you don't have leftovers.

Learned what mincemeat pie was this year. I'd never had it before. Amazing. I will be making/ordering this in the future.

Did you do them with gravy?

Did latkes instead of mashed potatoes. Fantastic. Surprisingly latkes were not as heavy.

^^*from*

My DC2 is recovering for surgery, so we ordered in most of the meal this year. Disappointed in the Whole Foods turkey and pumpkin pie. Pie is awful. Gravy and stuffing were good, though. I made mashed potatoes, mashed butternut squash, and steamed broccoli. My potatoes and squash kicked ass and saved the meal.

^^^
Too bad we don't live further north, it could have been the puck for the post-meal pickup hockey game!

Gravy. Ugh. I should have made giblet gravy instead of using the turkey drippings. Through a comedy of errors, someone went to wash their hands in the sink while the drippings were sitting in a pan, fortunately no soap made it in the pan, but a bit of water did. We thought it could be rescued so added some corn starch to thicken it. Um, it was definitely too much cornstarch. By the time dinner was over, you could turn that gravy bowl upside down and it wouldn't budge. It was like a gravy mold.

Anonymous wrote:Burned the garlic and shallots for my green beans. Just awful.

And we had 3 times the amount of food that we needed. Such a waste.

Why is it a waste? One of the best parts of a Thanksgiving is all the left overs!

We ordered dinner for the first time from the Ritz Carlton and it was amazing! Everything was cooked, hot, and packaged well. We are going to do the same for Christmas.

Burned the garlic and shallots for my green beans. Just awful.

And we had 3 times the amount of food that we needed. Such a waste.

The pecans I bought in the baking aisle were stale. I only needed a small amount for the stuffing and they were already chopped, so I thought it would make things easier. I checked the date and it was good for another year. But instead there was an off taste to the stuffing, which was otherwise really good.
I loved the spicy sweet potatoes that I roasted and would definitely use this recipe again:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Sweet-and-Spicy-Sweet-Potatoes/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=spicy%20sweet%20potatoes&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe%20Search%20Results

So--what worked this year? What didn't? What did you learn for future holiday meals?

Please, new experiences only (good or bad). If it's something you've been doing for years, this thread would go on for years.

And keep it food-related. Take your family issues to the family and relationships thread, or to Carolyn Hax.