/ck/ - Food & Cooking

Can we talk about our Thanksgiving meal plans? I'm in a rut and need some help with mine.

What's already planned:
1. roast turkey and pan gravy
2. mashed potatoes
3. sourdough rolls
4. green beans in a lemony vinaigrette
5. cranberry relish (being contributed by a family member)
6. stuffing (something with green chilis, being contributed by family)
6. pecan pie (and a second desert being contibuted by family)
7. Will be picking 3-4 different wines to serve once the menu is completely planned.

I need to come up with at least one more vegetable dish but am stuck. Also, most recent years I have made a dish of curried roasted carrots with lentils to please a vegetarian family member who won't be attending this year, so I'd like to do something different this time around - I was thinking about making a savory pie with squash and pumpkin filling, but thinking that might be just one starch-and-fat dish on the list so I need your advice /ck/ - what else do you like to serve at Thanksgiving that's on the lighter side?

Growing up, my family was the stereotypical Boomer shit show. Divorced parents, new step parents in the picture, whiny spoiled kids, half-senile grandparents, embarrassing aunts and uncles. So every year on Thanksgiving it was terrible. We would all go to my mom's where her and whoever her boyfriend that week was would argue, everyone brought premade food they bought from the store or a carry out fried chicken place. My aunt would be drunk and stoned off her ass making fun of people, and I would sit silently in the corner and loathe my family.


So now that I live on my own and have a halfway decent apartment, I informed them that we're having Thanksgiving at my place this year and it isn't going to be a shitfest, which also means that nobody is leaving early to go Black Friday shopping. I also told them that nobody is bringing any fucking premade or store bought food, which unfortunately means that I am doing 90% of the cooking.

I want some of the food to be traditional Thanksgiving fare, but I would like ideas on neat spins on the classics that I could do. For sure I am baking a turkey with stuffing and some roasted yams, and a pumpkin pie and maybe some homemade ice cream. Probably a pecan pie as well. But I need ideas on what to do with some of the other traditional things that aren't quite so boring (ham, fall vegetables, shit like that)


>tl;dr
What are some interesting things I can do to my Thanksgiving dinner to spice it up a bit and make it feel both traditional and exciting

>inb4 gr8 blog post m8