Creating a Thanksgiving Feast in an RV Kitchen: It Can Be Done!

Hope everyone out there had a very Happy Thanksgiving!  We were a bit lonely down in Florida by ourselves and would have much rather been with family, but we made do and managed to put together a delicious, traditional meal.  

Between the two of us, Barry enjoys baking more than I, so he started getting us into the Thanksgiving spirit ahead of time by baking a "test" pumpkin pie to try out a new crust recipe about a week before the holiday.  We gobble, gobbled that up in just a few days.  We decided the crust would be better with a bit less oil, but it was still plenty tasty. 

He also baked a wonderful pumpkin-chocolate chip bread that was decadently delicious. (Yes, I am a lucky woman!)  We were getting into the Thanksgiving spirit and loosening our belts already!

​Who says you need a fancy gourmet kitchen with a huge granite-topped island to turn out a respectable Thanksgiving Day feast?  We managed pretty well in Pearl's teeny-tiny RV kitchen, though we did have to plan pretty carefully and stretch the tasks out over a couple of days.  We also bought a few things that we might have made from scratch, given a better kitchen, but that was okay too; Martha Stewart brand perfection is not required in an RV (or anywhere, really!)

We don't have a full-size oven, and only one burner of our induction cooktop works properly, but we managed to cook our entire meal in our large convection/toaster oven, one burner on the cooktop, and the microwave.  Here's how we did it.

On Wednesday, aka Thanksgiving Eve, Barry baked the pumpkin pie.  He always uses his mother's recipe for the filling, which he loves because it uses molasses along with brown sugar and makes the filling nice and dark.  My contribution was homemade cranberry sauce with fresh tangerine juice and maple syrup, a new recipe I found online and wanted to try.  It turned out so very good.  

On Thanksgiving Day, Barry made his mother's sweet potato casserole recipe (with crushed pineapple, yum!) before roasting the boneless turkey breast we'd purchased at Aldi.  The three-pound breast was the perfect size for two of us for several meals and for our oven and came out super moist and perfectly done.

After he took the turkey out to rest, I made stuffing on the stovetop, adding chopped onion, pecans, and apple to the packaged seasoned dried cornbread I'd bought.  The spinach and gravy were both simple microwaved store-bought "cheats", but they tasted fine and kept things simple.  The potato rolls from Publix' bakery were soft and melted in our mouths.

All in all, a fine no-panic feast!

The crust was perfect this time, and the pumpkin pie just as good as ever, especially with a little whipped cream on top! 

Paisley enjoyed a couple of turkey scribblin's and some gravy on top of her food.  She'll be bugging us for leftovers for the next few days.  But who can argue with this little angel?