The first year I hosted Thanksgiving, I made broth with the turkey bones, so I could make turkey soup over the winter. I chose the Turkey Orzo Soup with Kale and Chickpeas (paywalled) because it was referenced in the method I followed for the stock. It is delicious and I look forward to it every year. The last couple of years I’ve served it with the Ligurian Focaccia, fresh out of the oven, and it makes for an extremely cozy meal.

This comes together in a flash because so much of the prep is done ahead of time, at least if your past self prepped and froze the stock and turkey meat. What I like about this soup is that you get a lovely, savory turkey flavor, and with each bite you can get a nice mix of chickpeas, orzo, turkey, and/or kale. It’s hearty but also light.

The only change I make to it is to add more kale, typically double. I find that the size of a bundle of kale can vary a lot, but for the grocery store tuscan kale I had this year, I weighed it out and was a little more than half the bundle. Oh, and I put in more spices than called for, probably closer to a teaspoon of each.

There are two things that make this special. One is the homemade stock, and the other is that it’s turkey soup, which I only make once a year. So if this post made you sad that you don’t have turkey stock in your freezer, I think this would be a great soup if you made it with homemade chicken stock.

These Chile-Cheese Cookies from Bon Appetit are so good. The chile gives them some zestiness and the cheese adds a savory note. The shortbread texture is perfect.

You do need a food processor for this recipe, because there’s really no liquid. You’re just processing until the cheese and butter break down enough to form a dough. It’ll take a little while, just persevere, it will get there.

I recommend that you form these into two or more logs as it’ll be much easier to handle. I did find it a little tricky as they’re so dry; rolling into a log sort of worked but I had better luck patting it into shape and then gently rolling to try and even it out into something vaguely round. There were some cracks going through them that I was a little worried about, but chilling seemed to take care of that. (Mine chilled for a couple of days.)

One other note. I couldn’t get much of the sugar and pepper (I used Aleppo pepper) to stick until I brushed a bit of water on. So, I recommend doing that as it didn’t seem to hurt the final product.

I didn’t count how many I got, but this recipe made a lot, certainly more than 24. They didn’t spread, so you can crowd your baking sheets a bit. I did find it was hard to tell when they were done, and a few of them got a little caramelized on the bottom, but were still delicious.

This was our sixth year hosting Thanksgiving, and as with the past several years this one was a Friendsgiving. This year we had 8 people in total, which is a little bigger than average but completely manageable.

Rather than stressing too much about making enough sides, I have a core menu of what I make and then I ask guests to bring a side, a dessert, and any wine they want to have. That tends to work out well and ensures a pretty good spread. Here’s what I made this year.

Roast Turkey and Gravy with Herbes de Provence and Lemon from Cook’s Illustrated, with a pasture-raised turkey from Open Book Farm. I sort of made this last year as well, but I had a larger turkey and followed a different technique to cook it in pieces. This year I had a smaller bird so I made this as written. Don’t let the dry brine method freak you out. While it is a little weird to have an uncovered turkey in the fridge for a couple of days, nothing bad happens to it or to the other food in your fridge.

There are a few things I like about this recipe. First, it introduced me to dry brining. It is way easier than doing a wet brine (particularly if you’re using a brining bag, which I was.) Less fuss, because you don’t have to constantly rotate the turkey in the brine. Less chance of the brine bag springing a leak and creating a biohazard zone in your fridge. And equally great results. I am a dry-brine convert now.

Second, I like to add a lot of herbs to my turkey and this one has a lovely mix of fresh parsley and dried herbs de provence, which just make things feel fancy. (If you don’t like herbe de provence, any dried herb blend you do like would work here.) This year I used Spicewalla Herbs de Provence, but I’ve also used and liked the Penzey’s blend.

Third, I appreciate that the gravy recipe carries that herbal flavor through. I do make a couple of changes to it, though. I make it ahead of time (stopping right before you add the herb paste) and use chicken stock instead of water. (I make my own with a carcass from a roasted chicken that I save in the freezer, it’s super easy to make stock in an electric pressure cooker. I don’t worry about adding any veggies or even seasoning it, I do that whenever I use it.) I skipped adding the drippings this year; I did it last year and didn’t really feel like it added quite enough flavor for the added hassle. So when the recipe calls for drippings, I used a mix of butter and olive oil.

Rustic Bread Stuffing with Cranberries and Walnuts from Cook’s Illustrated. Stuffing, made outside of the bird, is a must for me. I like mine made out of the bird, with no protein. I’ve made this one every year, with all different kinds of bread. In my opinion, it’s best with a whole-wheat bread of some kind. It’s difficult to gauge how much bread to buy, but I’ve found that a (slightly crowded) half-sheet pan is perfect for us. This year I used a rustic loaf from Panorama Bakery which crisped up beautifully in the oven. I have tinkered with this recipe a bit, adding more cranberries and walnuts. And one year I replaced the onions with caramelized onions, which I thought was pretty tasty.

Kale Salad with Pecan Vinaigrette from Bon Appetit. Another one I’ve made before. This is a great way to add something green to the table, and it adds a nice contrast to the rest of the plate. It’s also easy to make ahead and stores well. We assembled this just before dinner this year, but it actually gets better the longer it sits with the dressing, so you could easily put this together during some down time earlier in the day.

I made some very simple, no recipe roasted butternut and acorn squash with frizzled pepitas and rosemary. I cut the neck of the butternut into thin half moons, and cut the acorn squash into ruffly crescents (you can leave the skin on) and roasted them on sheet pans with salt and pepper. Then I stacked them neatly into a small serving dish. While they were reheating, I frizzled some roasted, salted pepitas and fresh rosemary in a little bit of olive oil, and then sprinkled it over. (Yes, I stole that idea directly from the Sweet Potato Salad with Warm Pepita Dressing.) In the past I’ve made the Twice-Roasted Squash with Vanilla, Maple, and Chile from Bon Appetit, which folks have also enjoyed.

Simple Cranberry-Orange Sauce from Just Add Sauce. This is a straightforward cooked cranberry sauce that I really like. The orange adds a nice dimension to it and it’s easy to scale up or down depending on how many guests you’re having.

For the last couple of years I’ve also been experimenting with trying to get a salsa verde with autumnal herbs on the table but they never turn out quite right. At this point I think I’m going to give up on that since there are plenty of other flavors.

Our dessert contribution was from my husband, who made the Pecan Pie from the Smitten Kitchen blog, which is an incredible pie. (He also helped with some of the prep on Wednesday and was in charge of all random grocery runs, of which there were two this year.)

Here’s a look at the spread, along with the other sides our guests brought (minus the roasted broccoli with breadcrumbs, which was still in the oven). Everything was delicious and we had a wonderful time. I did make myself some notes for next year, and I’ve already spied a new stuffing recipe I might try, but overall this was a great menu that I would happily make again.

There are a lot of good winter squash + pasta dishes out there, but the Winter Squash and Kale Pasta with Pecan Bread Crumbs from Bon Appetit is one of my favorites, though I do make a few adjustments to it.

Overall this comes together pretty easily. The only trick of timing is that you need pasta water to help wilt the kale, but then the pasta is sitting for about 5 minutes before you put everything together. Not a huge deal, but in my opinion this part of the instructions sort of gives it away as a restaurant recipe adapted for the home cook. You could easily just use tap water and add some salt. Since you don’t really make a sauce for this, you don’t need the starch from the pasta water quite as much as you might in other recipes.

In terms of the changes I made, some were driven by the comments, where folks noted this made a lot more servings than anticipated. To make two generous servings, I use about 1.5 pounds of squash, a whole bundle of lacinato kale, and about 6 ounces of pasta. And I make about 1/4 recipe of the pecan and panko topping, otherwise we tend to have a lot left over.

For pasta, I use some kind of shape instead of spaghetti. It’s much easier to get a relatively even distribution of squash and kale that way. You can use whatever shape you like. This time we had handmade kale rotini that we got at the farmer’s market, which made for a very pretty dinner.

Any kind of winter squash will work here, so use your favorite. I often make this with delicata, but it’s good with acorn squash and butternut squash, too. You can always choose based on which type of squash is about the right size.

The flavors here are fairly subtle, so don’t skimp on seasoning your squash and salting your pasta. And don’t worry about measuring out the exact amount of lemon zest for the topping, just get a bunch in there. I also make sure to use a lot of parmesan cheese at the end, and never skip the lemon juice.