All I need for Thanksgiving is a pumpkin pie | Living with Gleigh

Well, Thanksgiving is upon us. I don’t have a large family or extended family, so I only cook for my two teenage daughters, my husband, my mom and me. Every year I contemplate the value of cooking a big Thanksgiving meal for five people, four of whom I plan and cook for five days a week already.

There have been years in the past when I’ve had company. But I usually am the hostess of those events and have to plan everything anyway. At the beginning of November I start whining and pouting and suggesting we go out to eat on Thanksgiving, because I really don’t want to be the sole person responsible for the meal.

My husband always throws in his “helpful” comments like, “Maybe you can cook on Friday instead of Thursday,” like there is some sort of rush hour for my kitchen on Thursday. No matter what day of Thanksgiving weekend I cook, I still have to plan it and cook it.

I really was contemplating going out this year, but we still have to pay for it. With five of us eating out it would probably come to the same amount as a whole Thanksgiving dinner with lots of leftovers.

So I decided I would cook. The kids said they’d help; it’s time they learned a few things in the kitchen anyway. When I sat down to plan and write a shopping list, I was determined I would make the simplest Thanksgiving meal I could get away with.

Potatoes, lots of potatoes. Isn’t that the main staple at a Thanksgiving meal? You have one dish of mashed potatoes and one dish of yams with little marshmallows on them. That’s really just carb loading and you only need to carb load if you’re going to run a marathon the following day. If you’ve seen me and my family you know we aren’t going to be running any marathons. So I can eliminate the potatoes.

I don’t trust the stability of stuffing inside a raw bird, so I usually just make dressing. Maybe since stuffing a bird is traditional, it’s pointless to just make dressing. Besides dressing is just another carb, so it can go too.

Then there are the cranberries. I enjoy making my own cranberry sauce, but I’m really the only one who eats it. So I won’t make my own cranberry sauce this year. My family likes the canned, jellied ones, so that’s pretty simple. They do have a lot of sugar in them, though. I think I’ll scratch those off the list.

I like to sauté fresh green beans in olive oil, garlic and salt instead of the traditional Thanksgiving fare where you smother them in mushroom soup and cover them in crispy fried onions. In fact, I have frozen green beans in the freezer, I can just use those. But my family specifically requested the smothered green beans. I’ll just take that off the list since we can’t agree.

Now for the turkey. If you spend enough money at some stores, you can get a turkey free or at least greatly discounted. But now that I’m not buying carbs, green beans or cranberries, I doubt I can spend enough to even get a discount on the turkey. I guess we won’t be having turkey for Thanksgiving dinner either.

Hmm? What’s left? Pie? Costco makes some great pies and Thanksgiving wouldn’t be complete without pie. An apple pie is $10.00. That’s kind of pricy, but pumpkin pies are only $6.00. So we don’t need apple pie. I’ll just go buy a couple pumpkin pies. We can carb load on those and get our vegetable serving at the same time. I’ll pick up some whip cream, too – gotta make sure we get enough dairy.

Pumpkin pie is all we need for Thanksgiving. Planning sure is a lot of work.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is committed to writing about the humor amidst the chaos of a family. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com.