As the beginning of November has arrived our thoughts here at ONK are pointed to Thanksgiving. Not so much because we are patriots, religious, or spiritual, but because we love to make good food. What better excuse to make great food than to share it with our families, so this year we are trying to host our families in our home. This is not my first year planning a Thanksgiving feast; a few years ago my mother allowed me to make our family’s Thanksgiving dinner and it was a disaster. Since then I have been relegated to making bread and pies.

While I enjoy baking, and ComputerNerd likes the time I spend baking to play video games, both of our parents are aging and especially mine over the last couple of years have been able to take on less and less of the planning and execution of the holiday festivities. So I think it’s our time to step it up, but I do not want to make the mistakes I made my first go. Also I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. So here I’m going to go over a few of my mistakes and how to prevent those mistakes for your Turkey Day.

Mistake: Trying new recipes. Now we here at ONK encourage people everyday to try new things so why am I now telling you not to? When cooking for guests stick to the tried and true. Even if it’s mom’s squash and apples recipe; if it’s your first time making it don’t do it. You still have a few weeks at this point to try the recipe out. You don’t have to make a lot of it, just enough to know that when the day comes you have something good to serve. Remember no one wants to eat scalloped celeriac… trust me, I know.

Mistake: Serving people food they are uncomfortable with. It’s one thing to make a new veggie at a dinner party, but Thanksgiving is not the time to try to introduce figs to your family. Regardless of how great figs are, Thanksgiving is not the time to attempt to get your family to expand their repertoire. I would love to get my family eating chard… but you don’t want to rock the boat too much. Stick to the tried and true, family favorites are favorites for a reason!

Mistake: Not doing enough ahead of time. Looking back on my mistakes, I would not just have baked my pies the day before, I also would make sure I had all the chopped onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and bread cubes that I need before the morning of Thanksgiving. Cutting veggies is a huge time suck, so do it ahead of time.

Mistake: Running low on time. Now I aver this was not completely my fault. No one informed me that my brother had to work at 6PM that night. I was shooting for a 5PM dinner, but was then told it needed to be done by 4PM. Since then, I have come up with a better way of estimating the prep time you will need. Think about the moment of no return, the point where the turkey must be in the oven to leave enough time for resting, and still be ready to eat for dinner. Now move that deadline forward by two hours. That’s about when you need to start getting your turkey ready for the oven. If you finish early? Great, set it aside and move on to something else.

So now that you’ve seen some of my mistakes, share yours below so that everyone can have a stress-free turkey day.