Thank Us Later: Here’s Your Roadmap to a Flawless Thanksgiving
You know it’s Thanksgiving when... A) The refrigerator overflows and the cooler comes in from the garage as backup. B) Every inch of counter space (plus the dining table) is fair game. C) You drum up any help you can get to peel apples and sweet potatoes, then debate the best way to turn them into casseroles and pies. D) Lunch is vegetable scraps dipped in salad dressing. E) All of the above. (It’s E, obviously.)
It’s a holiday centered around one meal, sure, but it begins long before the turkey is on the table. It starts when we’re menu mapping, grocery shopping, and picking the kitchen playlist to motivate us while we stare down a truckload of brussels and multiple bags of cranberries. It starts days before The Day, and it’s the cooking—in a family-crammed kitchen with limited oven space—that makes the final feast so worthwhile.
This year, all of the communal effort of a takes-a-village Thanksgiving culminates in a menu of all-star classics with mini modern makeovers. They’re recipes your great-aunt, baby cousin, and neighbor’s girlfriend can all have a hand in (after all, it’s the one time of year when there’s no such thing as too many cooks), and thanks to a roster of clever strategies we’ve honed over the years, none of it is so hard to pull off. Here's how we do it, and how you can too:









