Turkey on the Table: Making the Holiday Stress-Free

Planning a big holiday meal can be the most stressful and time-consuming parts of the season. The actual meal doesn’t take much time to eat. But planning, shopping, and coordinating Thanksgiving Day takes skills worthy of a caterer. You have to account for dietary restrictions, who wants to bring what and pull it off all at once. Doing holiday meal shopping is an exhausting, multi-trip event for most people. Getting everything organized for the holidays is fun, but it’s a lot to deal with. From losing your shopping list to trying to find your great-grandmother’s pie crust recipe, it’s easy to feel frazzled. 

Luckily, technology is here to help. But what if emailing recipes to family members is as far as you’ve gotten? It’s okay! Most people still use phone calls to coordinate holiday details. If that works for you, then do it. But there’s an easier way to coordinate holiday meals. Many apps, with the ability to make your holiday plans seamless and frustration-free, are available. 

A great option for your holiday adventures is Anylist. Do you want to create a shopping list? Maybe you want to share that list with family and friends. That way, you know who is baking and cooking each item. If someone is shopping for you, Anylist allows you to update the list in real-time. That way, you can add to the list as you flip through cookbooks and get new ideas! 

Anylist is still convenient if you’re the one handling all the shopping. What if you need to get recipes from your great-uncle because he’s the only one who knows how to make great-grandma’s casserole? Anylist lets you do it easily. No need to rely on clunky information-sharing methods, or trying to transcribe it accurately over the phone! Anylist’s app works on Android and Apple devices. If you hate looking at a tiny phone screen, it works on your PC or Mac computer. You can share recipes with family and friends, add ingredients to your shopping list, and keep your holiday planning in one place. You can customize your list, plan meals, and keep things organized with handy folders. 

If you’re looking for ideas and how-to videos, other apps have better options. Butterball’s Cookbook Plus app lets you plunge in headfirst. This app is great if you don’t know what to make for dinner during the busy holiday season. If you don’t like traditional holiday favorites or want to do something besides usual side dishes, this app works! 

Butterball Cookbook Plus has a vast catalog of recipes. You can filter their library by product. This is great for post-Thanksgiving leftovers, too. If you want to use all the cans of cranberry sauce in your pantry, search with a cranberry filter. You can also filter their library by category. Maybe you know what side dishes to make, but you want fresh ideas for desserts. You can do that too! 

You may not be interested in sharing your secret recipes with family members, though. And you’d rather keep your shopping lists on pen and paper. If that’s true, the Butterball Cookbook Plus app can still work for you. With all the convenience of YouTube videos with none of the endless searching, it’s perfect. If you wish you could watch someone make a dish, before you start wasting ingredients, this app has you covered. 

If you’re confident in your cooking skills, this app also provides convenient substitutions and conversions. You might prefer foreign recipes, but hate struggling with conversions. This allows you to make conversions easily. That way, you don’t waste precious cooking time trying to convert a half cup to kilograms. If you find that you run out of a crucial ingredient, the app also suggests substitutions ensure your cooking session goes on seamlessly. This lets you replace things you forgot to put on your shopping list. 

This app is also convenient for planning purposes. One of the hardest parts of preparing a holiday meal is trying to calculate portion sizes. It’s hard to figure out, but making sure that you have enough to feed everyone is important. You don’t want to run out of the turkey before you’ve even finished filling up people’s plates for first servings. On the other hand, though, you’ve probably had the experience of eating endless turkey sandwiches well into December. This app calculates how much food you’ll need for each adult and child at your celebration. No more leftovers that will haunt your fridge for weeks afterward!

If you eat differently than most people, the holidays may be challenging. Consider the traditional items on a Thanksgiving menu. There is usually turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, stuffing, biscuits or cornbread, cranberry sauce, vegetables, and different types of pie. If you’re a vegetarian, most of these options work. You’ll forgo the turkey centerpiece, of course, but most of it will work. If you’re a vegan, there’s almost nothing on the table that you can eat! Mashed potatoes and gravy both have milk in them. Biscuits and cornbread use milk, butter, or eggs. So does bread, the primary ingredient of stuffing. 

What else are you supposed to eat? Green Kitchen’s app has everything you could want! They have jaw-dropping photography for each recipe. Their selection is healthy and vegetarian centered. If you’re dealing with allergies instead, their recipes still work for you! Green Kitchen’s recipes utilize minimal amounts of gluten, dairy, and sugar. Their app has 110 recipes in multiple languages. Their recipes also convert automatically, whether you want to use the metric system or the US systems. Their recipes also convert between languages, too. Their recipes, with a catalog that includes main courses, snacks, and healthy drinks, includes German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Japanese. You can also favorite recipes so that they’re automatically added to your list! The seamless function of this app makes it a great option for any vegans, vegetarians, health-conscious people, or those with allergies. 

No matter what holidays you choose to celebrate this season, these apps make your life much simpler. From sharing recipes to finding new ones, each app opens the door to experimentation this holiday season!