It’s the calm before the storm. The quiet right before the frenzy of Thanksgiving cooking begins here in our house.

And it is the start of the holiday season that will last until New Years Day.

For those of us who love to cook; It’s game time!

We love the madness, the energy and the chaos of the three of us; my two daughters and me, bumping elbows in the kitchen, swapping measuring cups and trying to figure out metric conversions or fractions, (my eldest is a math genius, thank goodness, or we could never double a recipe in our house!).

It is the Monday before Thanksgiving and I will begin to set the wheels in motion tonight.
First step is to take butter out of the freezer to soften for use in the morning. I gather up all the bread that I have been saving over the past few months and put that out to thaw, also.

I make a general roundup up of gadgets and gear necessary for preparing this meal. I have lists, menus, and recipes in neat piles in the kitchen and tomorrow morning I will start the preparing the stock which will flavor our dinner.

Although not a meat eater myself, I make an exception for this one holiday and prepare a turkey for my family. I have a local, organic, free-range, farm raised chicken and turkey to start the stock which will not only be used for Thanksgiving but for soup and turkey pot pie which will inevitably follow.

I make the pie dough and put it in the fridge for use on Thursday. The cheesecakes I always make the day before.

We start with appetizers on Tuesday. Yep. With all the activity we just kind of pick on appetizers while working in the kitchen for 2 whole days before the big meal.

No one seems to mind and there is often a stream of friends in and out who join us in the pre-festivity, festivities!

Mimosas are a must and with enough fresh juice you can drink them all day long!

I chose this photo out of the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book because it truly illustrates the mood right now. We are giddy in our little world of food and love; happy like a cupcake!