1. Make real cranberry sauce. Like so many people of my age, my childhood memory of Thanksgiving cranberry sauce involves the can-shaped roll that ended up on the table every year. I never touched that stuff; even *I* thought it was disgusting, and my food-disgust threshhold was pretty high when I was a kid (it still is, now that I think about it).

But making homemade cranberry sauce is about as hard as simmering water. Buy a bag of cranberries, put ’em in a pot, add water until they’re just covered, bring to a soft boil until the berries start to burst, reduce heat to simmer and add, oh, a cup of sugar. Dissolve the sugar, keep simmering for a bit and taste the sauce. If it’s not sweet enough, add more sugar. I like to use turbinado sugar, which gives the whole thing a very light molasses undertone, and I also add the zest of a whole orange…but you certainly don’t have to do any of that, and a few splashes of good old out-of-the-fridge orange juice also can add that orange edge.

Homemade cranberry sauce is fantastic and is particularly good if you make it in advance, then refrigerate it to let the flavors meld; this also gives you the option of serving it cold, or reheating it and offering it hot.

2. You, too, can have a juicy turkey. My mom made good turkeys and I don’t really recall eating any dried-out ones, but I had them (and made them) in subsequent years at times after I moved out of the family home. This problem is easily solved: Either brine your turkey (there are a million recipes for this, most easy) or buy a pre-brined (i.e., Butterball or its equivalent) bird. I think you get better results if you brine the bird yourself, but this does require you to be able to keep the bird cold for many hours while it brines.

Of course, even a brined bird can be defeated if you cook it into submission. The problem with a turkey is that the breast often gets finished before the thigh is done — so if you bring the thigh up to temperature, the breast is overcooked and dries out. You can fix that by lightly foiling the breast after your cooking session is about two-thirds done.

Also, USE A MEAT THERMOMETER, for chrissakes, to determine when your bird is ready. It can help you in so many ways! If you’re cooking meat at all, you should own one. I have several cheap instant-reads (which actually take about 15-20 seconds to accurately read the temperature) and I want a Thermapen for Christmas. BTW, the pop-up ‘sensors’ that are embedded in many birds are just this side of useless; don’t believe them.

Side note: In all honesty, the best turkey I’ve ever had was deep-fried. They’re not greasy at all and are so flavorful — but I do not believe there is any way to cook them with absolute safety. If you want to try, you must do this in an open outdoor area way from hour house; you must have a fire extinguisher that can handle a grease fire; you must have the appropriate equipment (a deep pot and a propane burner, typically), you must keep kids and pets far far away and you must know exactly what you’re doing. If you’ve ever seen what happens when cooking oil spills over the top of a pot and hits open flame, you’ll understand my concerns. Years ago, I fried two turkeys in two pots at once, but I honestly spent the whole time in fear (and spent something like $40 on peanut oil alone). I’m not sure the potential problems were worth the payoff.

3. Make your sweet potatoes taste like sweet potatoes — or use ’em for dessert. God, I hate sweet potato casserole. This specific dish kept me away from sweet potatoes for decades, and I’m still mad about that.

First of all, I don’t put marshmallows on anything. Second, sweet potatoes already are sweet — duh! Why do people insist on adding yet again more sugar, plus cinammon, and creating an insulin-shock-inducing side dish that is inferior to a simple roasted sweet potato?

Sweet potatoes also make a great and far more nutritous substitute to white potatoes in your mashed potato dish (although even *I* insist on old-school mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving).

If you must hit your sweet potatoes with sugar and cinnamon, consider making a sweet potato dessert pie that runs rings around pumpkin pie. I prefer Alton Brown’s recipe for this and I owe Say McIntosh a solid for turning me on to this dish many years ago.

4. Skip the Jell-O. I am just not a Jell-O guy. It creeps me out and it’s made from hooves. It’s time to let go of the Jell-O.

5. Make fresh bread. I’m ignoring this one myself — I’m having Pillsbury crescent rolls, which provide a very specific memory for me and my wife and make me look like a hypocrite for calling out Jell-O. But fresh bread isn’t very hard (here are some recipes), particularly if you have a bread machine. Try it out.

Lagniappe: Worried about leftovers? Here’s my recipe for smoked chicken enchiladas. Turkey will work just fine as a substitute and it doesn’t have to be smoked.

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