Thanksgiving Part 1: The Preparation.

Because it's my first year in New York, and my first year in my own apartment, I had this crazy idea to host my parents, my brother, and my aunt and uncle from New Jersey for Thanksgiving this year. In my tiny apartment. My parents and brother will actually be staying in my apartment, and my aunt and uncle will drive in for the day. Fun!

Unfortunately, my brother, who is the real gourmet chef in the family, was asked to work on Friday and won't be able to come up now until Friday evening after work. So I'm all alone with my Martha Stewart recipes for the big meal! My mom is a decent cook, but she's not one for following directions. I think the phrase we heard a lot in her kitchen growing up was, "Good enough!" This will be an adventure.

To make things even more exciting, I have some sort of cold/flu that hit me over the weekend, bad enough to make me miss work on Monday. So I lost some valuable prep time this weekend.

Here's how it went:

Sunday, 10 a.m. Loads and loads of grocery shopping. Luckily, my crappy little market had everything I needed. I'm still shocked that one tiny little bottle of vanilla extract cost $6.99 in Manhattan, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore. I didn't have time to check other stores, so I just carted everything home in my old-lady-shopping-cart. And then I practically cried when I had to carry everything up to my fourth-floor walk-up.

Monday, 2 p.m. Drag myself off deathbed to move the 8.5 and 7.5 pound turkey breasts to the fridge to thaw. I decided to do turkey breasts because they're smaller and will cooker a little faster. Besides, I don't like dark meat anyway... For the five of us for dinner tomorrow, we really only need one, but I'm going to make a second while we're at, freeze the meat, and use it for soups, etc. this winter. Plus, I feel safer making a turkey breast "on my own" when my mom will be here to supervise.

Wednesday, 8:30 a.m. Drag myself out of bed to frantically clean my apartment before my parents arrive at 10:30. Play loud Christmas music to annoy the old hag that lives below me. Feed the naughty kitties. More cleaning.

Wednesday, 9:38 a.m. Take a break. Cleaning is hard!

Wednesday, 10:15 a.m. Not quite done cleaning... AND my parents arrive! Hugging ensues and the kitties snuggle their grandparents tentatively.

Wednesday, 10:30 a.m. My mom wants to get down to business. We're chopping and sautéing the vegetables for the dressing, the green bean casserole, and the wild rice. We mix up a shrimp-herb dip, a blue cheese-walnut spread, and prepare the filling for the goat cheese stuffed mushrooms for our appetizers. Dad's job is to keep the darling, curious kitties out of the kitchen. They've been known to jump up on a cutting board in the past and knock chef knives crashing to the floor... nearly missing my feet... so Dad made sure to keep them busy with a laser pointer while we were cooking away!

Wednesday, around noon. I completely botch the sauce for the green bean casserole, and we have to throw it away. I'm not too sure of my ability to make the roux for the sauce correctly, so we scratch that idea, and just mix some cream of mushroom soup in with beans and call it a day. We store the green bean dish wrapped in foil in the fridge, ready to bake in the oven on Thursday.

Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. We create Martha Stewart's herb butter, rub down the turkeys, prepare the pans with quartered carrots, celery, and onions, and pop our first turkey breast in the oven - only one will fit in my tiny oven at a time! We have about 3 hours to kill until it's done. We're doing one today and one tomorrow.

Wednesday, 2:00 p.m. Everyone's tired and ready for lunch. We head to Agata & Valentina's on 79th and 1st Ave. to pick up lunch and our apple pie and bread for tomorrow. The supermarket is a complete mess. There's a line all the way around the entire store à la Trader Joe's Union Square at rush hour.

Wednesday, 5:30 p.m. Turkey's all done, perfectly golden brown on the outside and smells delicious. We pop it in the fresh covered in foil and are all done for the evening.

We head off to the New York Athletic Club, where we rented a room just for Wednesday night/Thursday morning to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone's tired after a full day of prep work and running errands!