Thanksgiving is less than 30 days away. In my world, that means planning the menu now, and sharing it with my sous chef (my brother).

Serious negotiations will commence about what we can and cannot accomplish given our busy schedules and travel plans.

Two things are a given: we will have pumpkin pie and we will have cranberry orange compote.

So I’m sharing links to two recipes that will be on our Thanksgiving table, in case you’re new to the blog. If you’ve been reading all along, maybe you’ll remember these.

Pumpkin Pie

The first is pumpkin pie, and I did a little experiment to determine if roasting a pumpkin was better than using canned pumpkin for our pie. You can see the results here:

Fresh v. Canned: Pumpkin Pie

Which is better? Read the post to find out, but here’s a hint: it depends…

A word about the sugared sage garnish: brush a sprig of fresh sage leaves with a beaten egg white and roll in granulated sugar. Set aside to dry. Really, it’s that easy.

Cranberry Orange Compote

For years (who am I kidding… still …) the canned jellied cranberry sauce landed on our table at Thanksgiving. As long as my dad sits at the head of the table, it always will.

But that doesn’t mean I have to eat it. Instead, I make a wonderfully tart and decidedly grown-up cranberry compote with a healthy dose of ruby port and Grand Marnier.

Now you can too:

Cranberry Orange Compote

Now that we have these two in the “yes” column, all we need to do is decide which sides will accompany our citrus & herb turkey.

For the past few years, we’ve been using a modified dry brine recipe from Rick Rodgers we found in Bon Appetit years ago.

Mom’s corn bread dressing is a given, but I’ve never written a recipe for it. Truth is, we’re still working on it. Every year we think we’re getting closer, but it never is as good as Mom’s was.

But we will try again this year, like we always do.

Happy Thanksgiving planning to you.