How to expend almost no energy but still contribute to Thanksgiving.
This is the problem with the holidays: You wait all year to have a few weekdays off and when you finally get it you have to spend it navigating crowded airports, shopping for turkeys, and reassuring concerned relatives that no, the West Village is no longer a haven for drug-addicted muggers, and yes, blogging is in fact a real job for which you are rewarded a small but still-real paycheck.
When I go home for the holidays all I want to do is sleep 12 hours a night and spend my days doing nothing but painting my nails Christmas colors, watching “Bad Santa” and drinking heavily spiked eggnog. While this is totally acceptable behavior for a college student home for Thanksgiving, it’s entirely obnoxious for a grown adult.
That’s why this year, Death and Taxes is presenting six super-lazy Thanksgiving recipes—two each day until Thursday—that will require extremely little of you, thus allowing you to relax, while still showing your family that you love them and are slowly but surely plodding your way towards adulthood.
One of the best things about being an adult is getting to start with dessert. So that’s what we’re doing here.
LEMON ICEBOX PIE (Or Lemon Poor-Man’s Cheesecake)
This recipe for Lemon Icebox Pie is so easy it doesn’t even require an oven. There are lots of variations, but I like my aunt’s best. It uses cream cheese instead of cool whip, and thus takes on the quality of a lemon-flavored poor-man’s cheesecake which is a perfectly acceptable second name if you think that will impress a family member.
Ingredients:
1 8oz pack Philadelphia cream cheese
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/3 cup of lemon juice (use real lemons)
1 9-inch pre-made graham cracker crust
If you’re feeling extra nasty a drop of yellow food coloring probably won’t kill anyone
Directions:
Put the first three ingredients in a bowl and whip with an electric mixer until it’s all one substance. Add the drop of yellow if needed, and mix again. Then pour the lemon filling into the graham cracker crust and smooth out with a rubber spatula. Set in the fridge for at least three hours.
As far as garnish is concerned, that’s totally up to you. I’m kind of a purist with my Lemon Icebox Pies, but feel free to sprinkle with graham crackers or Nilla Wafers if you find some in your cupboard. Just check the date to make sure they weren’t bought for an afternoon snack when you were in 6th grade. Also, there’s a good chance someone in your family will have picked up a can of whipped cream, so you should at least set that out with the pie.
DONUT HOT CHOCOLATE
Full disclosure: I haven’t actually tried blending a donut into my hot chocolate, but I read about it on the Green Bay Press Gazette and made one small adjustment based on my extensive experience with hot chocolate. I plan to try it as soon as I get off work today. From what I can gather this dish is ideal to serve the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving to help stretch your stomach out for Thursday’s turkey feast.
Ingredients:
1 Donut, preferably cakey chocolate glazed, though if you’re luck enough to live in L.A. I would try it with a glazed Old Fashioned from Bob’s Coffee and Donuts in the Farmer’s Market.
2 Cups of whole milk
4 packs of your favorite hot chocolate mix.
A pinch of salt
Directions:
Pour the milk in a blender and add the donut. Blend until smooth. The original recipe says this could take over a minute, so be patient. Transfer into a saucepan, add the salt and whisk over medium heat for three to four minutes until hot. Pour into four cups and top with a heaping mountain of mini marshmallows. Serve to you mother with a kiss on the cheek and a comment about how young she looks.
Tomorrow we’ll be covering laziest side dishes. Until then!
