The Thanksgiving shop works best split across three trips: shelf-stable things a fortnight out, the bulk of the fresh shop the weekend before, and a short Wednesday run for herbs, salad and bread. The mistake is treating it as one enormous trip in the last few days, which is when the shops are worst and the celery runs out.
The other mistake is building the list recipe by recipe. Six recipes each calling for "one stick of butter" look modest right up until you are standing in the dairy aisle doing arithmetic.
Everything here keeps, and buying it now means the busy trips are shorter.
Baking and pantry
Tins and jars
Spices — check these rather than buying blind. Ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, sage, thyme, poultry seasoning. Spices that have been in the cupboard three years are not doing much.
Non-food, the part nobody puts on a list: foil, parchment, cling film, containers for leftovers, bin bags, kitchen roll, candles.
This is the one with a deadline attached.
A frozen turkey needs roughly 24 hours per 4 to 5 pounds to thaw in the fridge. So a 12 to 14 pound bird wants about three days, and a 20 pound bird four to five. Work back from Thursday and that is your buy-by date.
A fresh turkey skips all of that, but needs ordering, and wants collecting in the last couple of days. Either is fine. What does not work is a frozen bird bought on the Tuesday.
Buy at 1 to 1.5 pounds per guest, bone in, toward the top of that range if you want leftovers.
The bulk of it, and the trip worth doing properly.
Produce
Dairy and chilled
Bread and baking
Drinks — wine, something non-alcoholic that is not just water, coffee for the morning after, and more ice than seems reasonable.
Keep this to things that genuinely do not survive four days:
If the Wednesday list is longer than a handful of items, something has gone wrong earlier. Wednesday is the worst shopping day of the year and you have cooking to do.
The combining is the part worth automating. Six recipes wanting a stick of butter each is a pound and a half; three wanting two sticks of celery is most of a head.
Combined across every recipe in the plan, then sorted by aisle.
In Tradish you put the menu into a meal plan, tap Build grocery list, and it adds up quantities across every recipe, removes the duplicates, and groups the result by aisle. The non-recipe things go on by hand. If you are splitting the shop between a warehouse store and a supermarket, you can set up both with their own aisle order and filter the list by store.
Tradish is launching on iOS and Android soon. One list built from the whole menu, combined across recipes and sorted the way you walk the shop. Join the waitlist for early access and our best launch price.
Worth a separate line, because these are what send people out on Thursday morning:
None of it appears in a recipe, and all of it is needed on the day.
Shelf-stable things two weeks out, the frozen turkey early enough to thaw, most of the fresh shop the weekend before, and only the herbs, salad and bread on Wednesday. The last-minute list should be short enough to carry.
A frozen turkey needs about 24 hours per 4 to 5 pounds to thaw in the fridge, so a 12 to 14 pound bird wants roughly three days and a 20 pound bird four to five. Buy it in time for that, or order a fresh one to collect in the last couple of days.
More than any single recipe suggests. Six recipes that each want a stick add up to a pound and a half, which is why the list should be built from every recipe at once rather than one at a time.
The things no recipe mentions: foil, parchment, containers for leftovers, ice, bin bags, and something for people to drink that isn't wine. Those belong on the list even though no dish calls for them.
Build it from all the recipes at once so shared ingredients combine into one line, then sort it by aisle. One pass through the shop beats three laps looking for the celery you already bought.
Shelf-stable early, the real shop the weekend before, and a short run on Wednesday. Build the list from the whole menu at once so the butter adds up properly, and put the foil and the ice on it even though no recipe asked.
Tradish is launching on iOS and Android soon. Join the waitlist to be first to know when we launch.
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