Help put on Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday; to me, it's special because of the time I got to spend with family from near and far, and because I love to eat all the yummy food. Since I now live on another continent, that family is now all really far, but I think friends might make a great substitute. That's why I've invited you (well, maybe not you, this is a public webpage) to make and enjoy Thanksgiving dinner with me on November 27, 2025 at 5pm at my house.

I hope you're ready to get cooking!

Some preliminary notes on Thanksgiving dinner

I have written up some recipes from my mom on this page. This includes all the essentials, listed below.

For me, the essentials of Thanksgiving are:

• Turkey, roasted and stuffed 🦃
• Gravy 🥣
• Stuffing 🍞
• Cranberry sauce 🍒
• Mashed potatoes 🥔
• Apple pie 🍎🥧
• Pumpkin pie 🎃🥧

Some other classics that I don't care as much about include:

• Sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top 🍠🔥
• Baked green beans
• Baked mac and cheese 🧀🍲
• Broccoli-cheese casserole 🥦🧀
• Pecan pie 🥧

Things we (I) need to consider in planning Thanksgiving:

• Dietary needs of the guests. I don't eat gluten. Do we have any vegetarians, vegans, or people allergic to x, y, or z?
  We have two vegans, I don't eat gluten, and one person doesn't eat onions or carrots.
• Where/how does one obtain a whole turkey around here? 🦃🛒
  We found a turkey, but it was quite expensive! We decided to take the easy route and just buy turkey breast.
• We need a pan to bake the turkey in.
• How many people can we fit in my attic? 🏠👥
  More people than it will be feasible to cook for. We've settled at about 10-12 people.
• Where can we rent/borrow tables and chairs? 🪑🍽️
  We don't need to with the very reasonable amount of people we decided on.
• How should we deal with costs? 💰
• Who is cooking what? 👩‍🍳👨‍🍳

Please note, I had an LLM to add emojis to the lists. I thought emojis would make it more fun, and I'm not skilled enough emoji user to find them myself. I was surprised to see there isn't a green bean emoji—they've gotta do something about that! Please also note, I typed that em-dash myself. I think it's a nice member of the punctuation family.