What's your estimated thanksgiving week spend on travel, meals, black Friday, et.

[disneysteve]

I love how there's just as much traffic going in each direction. Nobody is ever happy where they are.

[disneysteve]

pay $25 for a Binax Now at CVS.

I was at the grocery store yesterday and home tests were $7.99 (single test kit) so evenif the Binax is a 2-pack, that's still expensive.

[QuarterMillionMan]

For turkey day, I went to Mexico from Los Angeles and it was smooth sailing on the I-5 south bound until San Clemente which is the southern most city in Orange County which was a parking lot. Then same parking lot into San Diego county in San Onofre, Camp Pendleton area, Oceanside, San Marcos, etc. What normally would take 2 hours was a 3.5 hour drive on turkey day. I thought the freeways would be empty with everyone at their destinations but I was wrong, lol. The drive back home in the evening was a little better taking 3 hours but still very heavy stop and go traffic on turkey day evening.

[kork13]

Part of DW's family is staying with us for the holiday, and I forgot the worst part about hosting a bunch of people: the dishes!!

We've got a total of 7 adults + 3 kids in the house at present, and starting on top of the dishes is a full-time job in itself. We have enough dishes & silverware to serve roughly 16 people at once.... But when they're living with you, that means doing 2-3 loads of dishes every day! And on Thanksgiving, with all of those moving parts? I got to where I literally tasked a SIL with keeping the flow of dishes under control. Gratefully, they all accepted my rule of "I cook, you wash" so after I finally got the last dish onto the table (and my entire kitchen was covered with the scattered remnants of fort dishes & prepped foods), I was able to finally lay down off my feet/back, and they got another load into the dishwasher & hand-washed the rest. My saviors.

Just another day of two of constant dirty dishes... Lol

[Snydley]

I don't waste my time. It was a lost cause during the peak of the pandemic; it's surely falling on deaf ears now. We know that we will see a huge spike in our patient volume between Thanksgiving and New Years. I'm actually grateful that my last shift of the year is scheduled for 12/3 because my wife is having surgery on 12/7. I probably won't return to work until January and hopefully the holiday spike will have settled down by then.

COVID cases are lower than what was expected in the Northeast right now (Mass wastewater levels of virus dropped notably about a month ago and have remained low- probably about 1 infected per ~150 people). It's looking like not only is infection history and vaccinations helping to stop transmission, the other viruses that are now widely in circulation prevent COVID-19. In other words, if you have RSV, Flu, etc. you won't catch SARS-CoV-2 while sick with them (immune system on high alert). Flu and RSV are surging, others as well.

I've been dropping mask use lately in social settings as the cases are under 1% where I am. Rapid testing is a great tool- I personally wouldn't mask in a room full of people who all had a negative rapid test that day. I got 12 boxes of tests for free via Walgreens (they billed to my insurance!).

[disneysteve]

Flu and RSV are surging, others as well.

We’re seeing a ton of flu. And I know the hospital is swamped with RSV cases. I was talking to a NICU nurse a couple of days ago and she said it’s been really bad.

[jenn_jenn]

Part of DW's family is staying with us for the holiday, and I forgot the worst part about hosting a bunch of people: the dishes!!

We've got a total of 7 adults + 3 kids in the house at present, and starting on top of the dishes is a full-time job in itself. We have enough dishes & silverware to serve roughly 16 people at once.... But when they're living with you, that means doing 2-3 loads of dishes every day! And on Thanksgiving, with all of those moving parts? I got to where I literally tasked a SIL with keeping the flow of dishes under control. Gratefully, they all accepted my rule of "I cook, you wash" so after I finally got the last dish onto the table (and my entire kitchen was covered with the scattered remnants of fort dishes & prepped foods), I was able to finally lay down off my feet/back, and they got another load into the dishwasher & hand-washed the rest. My saviors.

Just another day of two of constant dirty dishes... Lol

We had six adults and two kids. Paper plates were definitely relied upon for some meals because I knew I’d just feel overwhelmed with dishes! We’ve had family here for a week and everyone just left today. It has been an absolute blast but I am exhausted.

Also…I was so naive on what I’d guess we’d spend on wine. $700. We spent $700 on Thanksgiving wine. That’s what I get for letting my husband pick out wine unattended.

[scfr]

Everything was a roaring success. There's not a thing I would have changed except I probably wouldn't have bought the flavored sparkling water because I was the only one who drank any.

Spent $3 less on flowers than I was expecting, but ended up having to do a little extra driving to get all of my groceries, so probably came in right about as expected budgetwise.

I wound up using more electricity than I normally would, not only because of the all the extra cooking and open window during meals, but also because my mom asked me to turn on the "heat blower" feature of our electric fireplace so she could enjoy the extra warmth when sitting near it. That's a feature I never use because I think it's a very inefficient way to heat our house. But it was for Mom and an "ambience" thing so I did it to make her feel happy and cozy in my house. Speaking of warmth, this was the first time she visited our new house in the cold weather and she LOVES our heated toilet seats. lol

In addition to loving the food, they really enjoyed the entertainment (movie, TV show, playlist). And the awesome thing about those was that they didn't cost me a dime. I just had to know their preferences and do some advance searching/planning/loading.

I agree with all of the comments about dishes - even for our small group, ugh! The good thing is that I haven't had to do any cooking since, because I have so many leftovers.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Speaking of leftovers it's day 7 of leftovers for me. I started last week Sunday. I'm half way through a 16 pounder and about had enough already and might dump the remainder and wave the white towel. It is so wasteful but I cannot refreeze that which was frozen to begin with.

[kork13]

Speaking of leftovers it's day 7 of leftovers for me. I started last week Sunday. I'm half way through a 16 pounder and about had enough already and might dump the remainder and wave the white towel. It is so wasteful but I cannot refreeze that which was frozen to begin with.

You certainly CAN freeze cooked turkey, even if it was frozen when raw. Freezing cooked meats generally can lead to some minor dryness & textural degradation... But it's totally fine, especially if the intent is to repurpose it (chopped up small, like into soup or otherwise). I would absolutely freeze it before wasting any meaningful amount of meat.

Which brings me to the suggestion -- dice up what you have & turn it into soup, turkey pot pie, casserole, or any number of other recipes to repurpose your leftover turkey. Options abound. If you're just eating hunks of turkey day after day, I don't blame you for getting tired of it. So change it up & find a new way to enjoy it!

[QuarterMillionMan]

Good idea Kork maybe I'll make soup. I've been eating chunks of it drowned in gravy being it's so dry. I went through 2 jars of Hunts beef gravy and I just made more gravy using 3 packets of powdered turkey gravy but I added Kitchen Bouquet for a darker color. The light colored turkey gravy just doesn't look hardy enough for me and I like it brown and almost like chocolate.

[crazyliblady]

Good idea Kork maybe I'll make soup. I've been eating chunks of it drowned in gravy being it's so dry. I went through 2 jars of Hunts beef gravy and I just made more gravy using 3 packets of powdered turkey gravy but I added Kitchen Bouquet for a darker color. The light colored turkey gravy just doesn't look hardy enough for me and I like it brown and almost like chocolate.

You don't have to buy gravy. Just use whatever broth or drippings are available from your meat. If you need only a small amount of gravy for 1 or 2 people, use about a cup to cup and a half of broth/drippings. Slowly heat it up on the stove in a small saucepan. Then, make a slurry with 1 tbsp of arrowroot and 1 tbsp of cool water. Mix the two together and slowly pour them into the meat juices. Stir. It will start to slowly thicken. This whole process takes less than 10 minutes.

I will be making chicken soup tomorrow. (I made chicken on Thursday.) I did the prep work of chopping onion, celery, and carrots today. I am also making cranberry sauce.

[Like2Plan]

Like Kork mentioned, we do turkey pot pie for left overs (when we cook at home). It is a great way to use Turkey and leftover carrots and celery. We make gravy from drippings like crazyliblady (although we use a flour and butter rue for thinking agent). I add corn because my family likes it.

We also use left over ham to make split pea soup.

I like one day of left overs, which is kind of cool- you don’t have to figure out what to make and lots of delicious left over accompaniments. But, after that I like to make the leftovers into something else.

Also, as Kork mentioned - you can freeze the cooked turkey. (You shouldn’t refreeze the thawed Turkey if it has not been cooked, though).

I probably would not keep eating leftovers for 7 days. My maximum is 2 days. Ideally, I like to freeze stuff on the day of cooking. (And, we put labels in everything in the freezer)

[Like2Plan]

Here are some references from USDA:

Thanksgiving Leftovers for Safe Keeping, Weekend Grazing

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2018/11/23/thanksgiving-leftovers-safe-keeping-weekend-grazing

Leftovers: Let’s Keep the Best Part of Thanksgiving Safe

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2021/11/22/leftovers-lets-keep-best-part-thanksgiving-safe

Leftovers: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/11/24/leftovers-gift-keeps-giving

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Me too! I eat leftovers for 2 days and that's it. Rest if frozen. I also turn into turkey pot pie. My kiddos also like leftover ham into Ham and Cheese quiche. turkey dumping soup. look up leftover receipes. tons of stuff to use