An Alexa Powered Thanksgiving

Alexa can Ease Your Thanksgiving Prep
And Help you on Thanksgiving Day

An Amazon Echo Makes an Excellent Thanksgiving Assistant

Thanksgiving is a week away. For some people, Thanksgiving is all about the food; for others, it's about football. For most, it is a hectic time that we all love.  But it is also a time in which we can all use a helping hand. And Alexa can step in and give you help, easing some of the stress.  

Today, we're going to look at how Alexa can help you with Thanksgiving, both in the lead up period and on the big day. We will look at Thanksgiving skills that can be enabled, as well as built-in abilities that will come in handy.

Alexa Skills for Thanksgiving Planning and Preparation

Note: Many of these skills need "enabling" before use.

Thanksgiving Countdown 

Thanksgiving Countdown tells the number of days until Thanksgiving. Just ask, "Alexa, open Thanksgiving Countdown."

Turkey Planner

Turkey Planner answers two important questions for Thanksgiving - How many pounds of Turkey is needed for your party, and how many hours it will take to cook!

"It gives reply in a range, so depending on how hungry your party is, there are different sizes to choose. The cooking time also has temperature information along with whether the Turkey is fresh or thawed."

Morton Brine Time 

The Morton Brine Time skill provides a step-by-step guide to brining, through recipes that include the proper quantity of salt, sugar and water needed to brine a turkey. The Morton Brine Time skill also suggests additional flavors to enhance wet or dry brines.

What's Cooking

What's Cooking finds recipes that use as many of the named ingredients as possible. It tells you instructions for the recipe too (i.e. ingredients and cooking steps.) Get started by saying something like "Alexa Ask what's cooking to give me recipes for turkey, onions, and cranberries". You can also add or remove ingredients: say 'no' to get the next recipe and say 'yes' to get the instructions.

Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker  can likewise help you find Thanksgiving recipes, as well as walk you through cooking them when the time comes.  It can help you with cooking times and temperatures, as well as recipe substitutions. It can also answer a lot of cooking related questions.  The app description says: 

Betty Crocker is your trusted cooking resource when you have a question on your mind and ingredients in hand. Food prep doesn’t skip a beat when you simply use your voice to have Alexa ask Betty Crocker for cooking times and temps, emergency substitutions and more. You’ll get answers from our iconic Betty Crocker kitchens in real-time.

Sample Alexa Queries:

• how much time it takes to bake a 10-pound ham?

• what I can use to substitute for baking powder?

• the best way to make fluffy and thick whip cream

• how much turkey I should plan to feed each of my dinner guests?

• are yams and sweet potatoes the same?

• how do I keep my burger from falling apart on the grill?

• how many apples are in a cup?

PieGuy 

PieGuy is an interactive consultant for making and baking pies. Whether during the holidays or just hungry days, PieGuy can help you choose a recipe from different types of pies and list the ingredients and steps necessary to get your kitchen smelling marvelous in no time.

Fruit Stand

Wondering how to store all those ingredients you picked up for the Big Meal?  Fruit Stand tells you whether you should put fruits or vegetables in the refrigerator or in the pantry. For example, you can ask Fruit Stand, "How do I store bananas?"

Alexa Skills for Thanksgiving Day

Roast Calculator

Roast Calculator will let you know for how long to cook your meat (or turkey) in minutes. Understands kilos and pounds.

Ingredient Sub

Without fail, when it comes time to cook SOMETHING, an ingredient is missing.  Ingredient Sub is a handy and simple tool to help with many common ingredient substitutions while cooking. Run out of brown sugar? Ask Ingredient Sub what you can use instead, and it will respond if there is a substitute, with specific quantities and various options. Includes over 100 common ingredient substitutions.

Thanksgiving Facts 

As the name implies, Thanksgiving Facts will give you a fun fact about Thanksgiving.  Use it to entertain the kids or your guests while you prepare the dinner.

 ThanksgivingFunJokes

ThanksgivingFunJokes will tell you fun, Thanksgiving-related jokes. This is another skill that can keep others entertained while you play hostess.

Turkey Day

Turkey Day is a skill that will tell you a Thanksgiving fact or Thanksgiving trivia.  Learn something new while you cook!

Gobble Gobble Sounds

Gobble Gobble Sounds is a silly skill, good for entertaining the kids. Like the name implies, this skill will have Alexa make Gobble Gobble Sounds, like a turkey.  

Say Grace

Say Grace will recite a blessing before the meal. When you invoke this skill, Alexa will randomly choose a prayer of thanksgiving. All you have to do is bow your head and say Amen!

Post-Meal Thanksgiving Skills

Black Friday Calendar

Black Friday Calendar tells you door buster hours and sale hours for major retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Old Navy, Staples, Bed bath and beyond, Costco,Gamestop, Home Depot, Lowe's,JCP, and Macy's. Yes, Alexa can help you with your post meal shopping!

FridgeStorageTimesHelper 

FridgeStorageTimesHelper  tells you how long all those leftovers can be safely kept.  The information is sourced from Foodsafety.gov, and it covers most common meats, fruits, and vegetables. 

Other Useful Thanksgiving Skills

Timers

On Thanksgiving, you never seem to have enough oven space or timers for everything you have to cook. Alexa may not be able to make your oven larger, but she CAN set multiple timers, as well as tell you what is left on each. So you can set a "Turkey" timer, as well as a "Baste" timer, a "potatoes" timer and a "casserole" timer, all by voice.  

Sports Scores

If you are one of those people who thinks Thanksgiving is synonymous with football, but cooking is keeping you away from the game, you can ask Alexa to give you updates and to tell you scores.

Music

Although "Thanksgiving Music" is not a genre, you can ask Alexa to play one of her many "Thanksgiving Playlists." You can even ask for a Thanksgiving playlist in a certain genre of music. And you will not miss hearing your timer because you're too involved in the music if Alexa is responsible for both.

Games

Again, Alexa can help to entertain your guests while you're finishing up the meal. Set your guests up with a game of Jeopardy, 20 Questions, Magic Door, or one of the many other game skills Alexa has available.

Have a Happy Alexa Powered Thanksgiving

So another Holiday rolls around, and Alexa again proves herself to be a valuable assistant. She can help you prepare for Thanksgiving by helping you figure out what size turkey to buy, how to store it, how to brine it, and how to cook it.  She can help you find recipes for side dishes as well. When the time comes for cooking, she can walk you through everything, even keeping timers for each separate dish. She can help you find ingredient substitutions you can trust, should you find yourself short of something mid-recipe.  

Alexa can help alleviate the inevitable stress with music, jokes, or ridiculous gobbling.  She can give you game and score updates for the sports you're unable to watch.  If you have more than one Alexa device, she can even act as an intercom, so you can call those folks who are glued to the TV upstairs when the meal is ready.

While you're dining, Alexa can provide background music. She can even say Grace for you when the meal begins.  And after dinner, she can tell you how to store leftovers, as well as help you plan your Black Friday excursions.  And of course, you can access Amazon and Best Buy's Black Friday deals directly through Alexa.  

Alexa proves herself very handy in the kitchen on a day-to-day basis, and even more so on Thanksgiving.   She is especially handy because she is hands free, so you can literally have your hands elbow deep inside a bird, and still set a timer and get recipe instructions, without worrying about contaminating anything. You can even create a Thanksgiving To Do list using Alexa and check off things as you go. Alexa and your Amazon Echo device can do a lot to alleviate the inevitable stress of Thanksgiving. I just wish the rest of the family were so helpful.

Will you be using Alexa before, during, and/or after Thanksgiving? What skills do you think you'll be using most? Hit us up in the comments and let us know. We wish all of our readers a Happy Thanksgiving.  To our readers who do not observe this holiday, hopefully you've picked up some tips that can be useful during another large meal.  Many of these tips can be handy for other types of Dinner Parties as well.