Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because it is such a food-centric holiday. I couldn’t wait to sample some of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes so I decided to do a little preview dinner.

A couple of hours before dinner, I made a quick cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce is one of the easiest things in the world to make. It practically cooks itself so there is absolutely no excuse for eating canned cranberry sauce. I also don’t think there is any reason to go crazy with additions. Orange zest, wine, spices and dried fruit all sound great, but I prefer to keep my cranberry sauce as simple as possible. For one bag of cranberries, bring to a simmer 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar (I usually use a tiny bit less sugar because I like it on the tart side.) When the sugar has dissolved, add the cranberries. Simmer the cranberries for about 10 minutes and then remove from heat and chill thoroughly. That’s it! My favorite part of this process is watching the cranberries pop as they cook. That popping sound alone makes my mouth water for the winter holidays. If you have leftover cranberry sauce, do what my mom does and swirl it into plain Greek yogurt!

Another important component of any Thanksgiving dinner is winter squash. I had two beautiful Sweet Dumpling squash leftover from last week’s CSA box. Sweet Dumpling squash are cream-colored with green stripes and look sort of like Delicata squash, but they are short and round rather than elongated. They are very cute, and one makes a perfect single serving. I cut each squash in half, scooped out the seeds and roasted them in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes (cut side down first, then I flipped them over once during cooking.) Before serving, I drizzled them with a rosemary-brown butter sauce, but they didn’t need it. They were sweet and delicious on their own.

Finally, what Thanksgiving meal would be complete without stuffing? Some may proclaim that turkey is the most critical part of the meal but, for me, the real point to Thanksgiving is the stuffing. No Atkins diet around here! In my family, we always make our stuffing as a separate dish outside of the bird to ensure lots of crispy topping (and to avoid potentially contaminating the stuffing with undercooked bird juice.) I didn’t really have a recipe but, as it turns out, stuffing is one of those things that you don’t really need a super-strict recipe for. A mixture of bread, savory herbs and veggies and plenty of butter could never turn out horrible. That said, there are a couple of keys to making a good stuffing. It is important to taste the stuffing before baking to make sure it is seasoned properly. Seasoning is always a little tricky with something that gets baked because you can’t add more once it is assembled. Also, you want to get the liquid to bread ratio right so that your stuffing is neither too dry nor too wet. For 6 ounces of dry bread cubes (about 1/2 of a large loaf of French bread,) I used 1 cup of stock and 1 egg. Those amounts produced a stuffing with a nice balance of moist interior and crispy exterior. I forgot to make gravy, but it was not missed. I really wanted eat the whole pan myself but, unfortunately, Robert really loves stuffing as well so I had to share!