by J. Michael Wheeler
Thanksgiving Tips: Game Plan
There’s no question about it, for me, Thanksgiving is absolutely the best holiday: it’s all about getting together with friends and family and eating a great meal. No Christmas present stresses or New Year’s Eve anxiety. Cook a lot of good food and share it with friends and family. One of my favorite Thanksgivings was when I was in college in San Diego and I organized an “Orphan’s Thanksgiving” for my fellow college friends who wouldn’t be traveling home for the holiday. It was a bit less than traditional, but the spirit certainly was there.
Of course, for the host, Thanksgiving might not be all that stress-free. Still-frozen turkeys, wallpaper-paste gravies, and well, we’ve all got our stories (we’d love to yours). So in the interest of everyone enjoying our favorite holiday, we’re sharing with you some tips for a great Thanksgiving. We’ll start out with an overall game plan that we call, cleverly, T-Day Game Plan.
Break it Down
Sit down with paper and pen well before your first trip to the grocery store (yes, you’ll shop in phases) and starting with the menu, break the T-Day undertakings into steps. This will give you a bird’s eye view (couldn’t resist that one) of what needs to be done and when. As you accomplish each task you can check it off, giving you a measure of your progress, as well as what tasks remain to be done. Learn to love Lists.
Big Helpful Tip: Organize all of the recipes you plan to use ahead of time. Photocopy each recipe from your cookbook, recipe card, or torn out newspaper article and create your own personal T-Day Cookbook for that meal. With all of your recipes together, in one place, you won’t have to flip through several books and different pages.
There’re a lot of different kinds of cheese. There is Asiago, Appenzeller, Blue, Boursin, Bucheron, Camembert, Chèvre, Devonshire, Dunlop, Emmental, and Gloucester. There is Gouda, Havarti, Hoppenkäse, Lancashire, Montrechet and Meunster. There is Port-Salut, Pyramide, Raclette, Reblochon, Roquefort, Saint André, Stilton, Swiss, Tillamook, and Vacherin. 
There’re a lot of different kinds of bread. There are ashcakes, baguettes, biscuits, bloomers, Boston brown breads, ciabattas, cobs, cottage loaves, crispbreads, granary loaves, harvest loaves, milk breads, potato breads, Vienna bread, white, marble rye, and whole-wheat breads. 
