Cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner is a LOT, especially if you're doing it yourself. So here are a few Thanksgiving hacks to save time . . .
1. Don't peel your potatoes. Boil them with the skin on. Then put them straight into an ice bath. The skins will slide right off. (Here's a video.)
2. Don't make a whole turkey. A turkey breast is faster and easier to make. One feeds up to four people, and two feeds up to eight. So that's a good one if you're not having a ton of people over.
3. Preheat your roasting pans. Leave them in the oven while you're preheating it, and things will cook faster. It's especially good for roasting vegetables.
4. Make gravy in a blender. Instead of stirring and simmering, you can thicken it and get all the lumps out with a blender. Just google "gravy blender recipe."
5. Use store-bought ingredients to your advantage. For example, most people expect green bean casserole to be made with cream of mushroom soup. So making the sauce from scratch probably isn't worth it. And do your guests actually WANT homemade cranberry sauce? Or would they be happier with a can of the jelly stuff?