I love trailing through food stores, peering through shop windows and admiring perfectly arranged still lives of fruits, vegetables, and meats; getting ideas and inspirations. In Selfridge’s palatial food hall in London a few years ago I marveled at the goose eggs, duck eggs, and quail eggs artfully posed in small packages in a case that also included tubs of duck fat. Interesting. Unusual. Nearby there were the picture perfect piles of roasted meats, and strings of sausages, and boatloads of fish and pretty shiny red lobsters: too many culinary concepts for my addled tourist brain to absorb.

We used to live near a butcher shop where all manner of imported specialities are stacked on every surface, and they were fascinating to consider while standing in line for my two pounds of Italian sausage; one hot, one sweet. Perched on counters and shelves there were day-glow pink pickled eggs in Jeroboam-sized jars, capers small, medium and large, a color wheel of of olive varieties, huge cafeteria-sized tins of La Bella San Marzano Italian Plum Tomatoes, gallons of imported light, plain, virgin and extra virgin olive oils in varying-shaped vessels, dusty packages of pastas, trays of fresh mozzarella, and I could continue the inventory all day. I always feel humbled when confronted by all the ingredients of what must be the potential for many feasts, when all I want is some sausage.

One of the first meals that Mr. Sanders wooed me with was a dish of sausage and peppers. We still prepare it regularly, because it is easy, delicious, pairs well with garlic bread and red wine, it reminds us of our mis-spent youth, and it provides leftovers.

Sausage & Peppers
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 large bell peppers, cut into strips (We like the sweeter tasting red or yellow peppers)
• 2 medium onions, thickly sliced (I like Vidalia or any sweet onion)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (or be daring and use your garlic press – it will smell heavenly)
• 1 pound hot Italian sausage
• 1 pound sweet Italian sausage
• A generous sprinkle of crushed red pepper flakes
Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add peppers, onions, garlic and sauté 10 minutes. Cook until tender, about 5 -10 minutes. I like to char the edges of the vegetables.

Cook sausages in another heavy large skillet over medium-high heat until brown and cooked through, turning occasionally, about 15 minutes. Slice the sausage into disks, return to the pan and cook until they are nicely browned. Scoop the peppers and onions onto a platter and pile the meat on top. Mr. Sanders likes to add diaphanous curls of Parmesan cheese. Add a salad, a crusty loaf of bread, a tall glass of red wine (Dry January, ha!), and candles.

This is a good meal to make on the weekend, because you can toss the leftover sausage with pasta or rice, and voila! Dinner is already made for a dreary Monday, when no one (least of all me!) wants to cook. Or you can pile it onto leftover crusty bread and have a pretty deelish sandwich. Or add it as a topping to your Friday Night Pizza! We are kitchen geniuses!

Our smart friends at Food52 add potatoes to their sausage and peppers. Sausage & Peppers

Martha has to get fancy, as one would expect, but at least hers is a sheet pan dinner – super easy to clean up. Martha’s Sheet Pan Sausage

I made this Penne and Sausage dish for Monday night pasta last week, and we had it again on Thursday. The next time I try it, though, I will follow the recipe, and will remove the sausage from the casings and will crumble it in the pan, to speed up the cooking process. I also used half a can of crushed tomatoes because it was what I had in the pantry, and it was cold enough that I was not going back out to the grocery store for one more damn thing. I also substituted whole milk for half & half – too lazy to put on my winter coat. The recipe is that good! Imagine how it will taste when an ambitious, thorough cook like you makes it! Skillet Penne and Sausage Supper

Stay warm and dry! Enjoy the creature comforts you can prepare in the kitchen. Everyone will love you for it – even when you use milk instead of cream.

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
― Carl Reiner

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Winter has arrived. Snow has fallen, and so have the temperatures. I ask my best friend, Alexa, to tell me the temperature throughout the day. She is delighted to tell me the current temp, what the high will be, and what dire weather warning Amazon thinks I should know about, because she is just doing her job.

After all my belly-aching about the summer that wouldn’t end, I should finally be happy that I can wear my precious turtlenecks and wooly sweaters every day. But it has been chilly, even for me. I have been making almost daily announcements about The Miracle of the Heated Car Seat. They bring great comfort and joy. (A genius invented them, and he should be venerated: Robert L. Ballard — inventor of the heated car seat.) Last night I announced to Mr. Sanders that our next house needs to have a heated floor in the bathroom. He just smiled, and turned the page of his book. Think of the luxury of heated floors! I bet they will feel great even in the summer. Luke the wonder dog won’t have his favorite cool retreat then, but that’s life, Luke.

Luke doesn’t know about the heated seats in the car. He only knows that we seem to spend a lot of time in the kitchen these days; chopping, dicing, baking, boiling, broiling, mixing, blending, braising, poaching, blanching, frying, basting, stewing, searing, sautéing, and toasting. We are trying to keep warm in the kitchen and have been cooking up a storm. Luckily for Luke there is gravity, so lots of delicious bits end up on the floor, and he is happy to pounce. The kitchen is a cozy place in the winter, in a house without a fireplace. It’s where you’ll find the three of us most days.

All of that prep work results in delicious meals that generate leftovers for days and nights to come. Spaghetti and meatballs is a fine dinner, with candles and garlic bread, and wine (were this not Dry January). But what we fail to appreciate is that buckets of homemade spaghetti sauce cooked on Tuesday can go into the freezer and reemerge over the weekend. More spaghetti for everyone! Or some hot, cheesy chicken parm. Maybe a lasagne. On Friday night we can use the sauce on Chef Tomasso’s world-famous pizza.

Sunday night will be the perfect opportunity to try some homemade Lasagne Soup

On Thursday night we tried a new recipe for Chicken Noodle Soup, using a rotisserie chicken. It cooked in an apple red Dutch oven, simmering all afternoon, which drove poor Luke nuts. The house was perfumed with the heady scent of hot chicken, and warm garlic. Bits of rotisserie chicken found their way into Luke’s bowl, and he was a happy dog. Instead of being my studio assistant all afternoon, he got to nap in the kitchen, monitoring the soup-making process. He loves cozy family projects that involve food, and Mr. Sanders. This is Luke’s gift to you, a free recipe from the New York Times: Easiest Chicken Noodle Soup You can save those boxes of Lipton’s chicken soup for when your next winter cold hits.

We are expecting snow this weekend, and I feel lucky that we have gallons of hot soup on the stove, and spaghetti sauce in the freezer. We might have to bake some cookies, too. A warm and messy kitchen in the winter is even more wonderful than heated car seats – and that is saying something.

“Bubble, bubble, pasta pot,

Boil me some pasta, nice and hot,

I’m hungry and it’s time to sup,

Boil enough pasta to fill me up.”

—Tomie dePaola

And for your reading pleasure: Heated Seats – Good as Sex?

This is an updated version of the column I wrote last year for New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year, Gentle Readers! 

This New Year’s Eve I will be sitting companionably on the sofa with Mr. Sanders, Luke the wonder dog will be chasing bunnies from his cozy bed nearby. All the holiday cooking and merry making has exhausted us. We were very, very merry. That said, we haven’t stayed awake until midnight on New Year’s Eve in years, let alone gone to a party that involved conversation, panty hose or staying out late. Usually, and in the COVID times, we have had a simple supper of nibbles with candlelight, and a glass or two of fizz before we collapse on that sofa and find a movie we can both enjoy, before one of us falls asleep. I expect no different next week, when we ring in 2025.

Prosecco or Champagne? It’s a personal choice. I prefer the economy of Prosecco, because the quality of the pricey, tinier, more French bubbles in Champagne no longer strikes me as crucial. I’ll be asleep by 10 o’clock, with either French or domestic wine. The nationality of cool, sparkling wine we guzzle while toasting a festive New Year’s Eve is not so important. The significant moment is marked by the gentle pop of the cork; the shimmering rivulet poured into the waiting flutes.

2024 was been a year full of ups and downs, hopes dashed, passions rediscovered. Let’s move briskly on to 2025: with the minimum anxiety and dread, because as a brand spanking new year, it is a tabula rasa, fresh, clean and shiny; as yet unmarred: there are no footsteps in the snow yet.

This year we will greet the new year with the best of intentions: to be economical, resourceful, and clever with our use of leftovers. We will promise to compost and recycle more, waste less food; eat more plants, and less red meat. We pledge to grow something more nutritious than one crop of costly tomatoes, and we will patronize the farmers’ markets. We will exercise more, and will be good volunteers. We will resolve to read more books and spend less time on our screens. We will try to be kind and tolerant.

In the meantime, it is Friday night, and it has been a long week. It’s the last time to indulge in 2024. Instead pouring a glass of my usual cheap winter Malbec, I thought I should test some seasonal, perhaps New Year’s Eve-ish cocktail recipes, to get back into the holiday spirit. These are crowd pleasers, but they require a little planning.

“The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love is like being enlivened with Champagne.”


– Samuel Johnson

My Favorite French 75s

“Hits with remarkable precision.”
The Savoy Cocktail Book

2 ounces gin
1 ounce lemon juice
1 spoonful extra fine sugar
Champagne
Shake the gin, lemon juice and sugar in a cocktail shaker filled with cracked ice until chilled and well-mixed and then pour into tall glass containing cracked ice and fill up the glass with Champagne. This clever cocktail was said to have been devised during WWI, the kick from the alcohol combo being described as powerful as the French 75mm howitzer gun.

“Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of Champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.”
—Winston Churchill

Champagne Cocktail

In a Champagne glass add a teaspoon of sugar and enough Angostura bitters to melt the sugar.
Add a tablespoon of Grand Marnier or cognac and mix in with the sugar, bitters mix.
Add a “fine” quality Champagne and stir.
Float a slice of thin orange on top.
This is what Ilsa and Victor Laszlo sipped in Casablanca.

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”
-Mark Twain

As always, our party hearty friends at Food52 have some delightful ideas for nibbles to help soak up some of the bubbly we are sure to be drinking on New Year’s Eve.
 9 Bites to Go with Your Bubbly

This is very pretty, and so seasonal:
Pomegranate Mimosas.
Yumsters.

“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough Champagne”
-John Maynard Keynes

And the best of both worlds: a Black Velvet!
 Champagne and Guinness.
This drink is simply equal parts stout and sparkling wine, and to be honest, there are some who will never understand its appeal. But to fans, this is a perfect special-occasion drink, particularly suited to mornings and late afternoons.

Black Velvet

4 ounces (1/2 cup) chilled Champagne or Prosecco
4 ounces (1/2 cup) chilled Guinness Extra Stout

Pour the Champagne into a tall glass. This is not an effete drink. It is robust, and fills your hand with determination. Be sure to pour the Guinness on top. (This is important: Guinness is heavier. If you pour the sparkling wine second, it won’t combine evenly, and will need to be stirred. I shudder at the thought!)

Enjoy yourself. Happy New Year! Call an old friend. Read a good book. Let the games begin, again, on Wednesday.

“Isn’t it amazing… how a full bottle of wine isn’t enough for two people any more?”
–John Updike

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

Tomorrow is the winter solstice and shortest day of the year. I hope you are all bundled up and ready for the holidays. We left Luke the wonder dog home with another Kong-ful of peanut butter as we took the last packages off to the post office on Wednesday, mailing our love tokens of books, and socks, and Christmas cookies. We stood in the conga line of similarly festive folks, patiently waiting, and smiling, watching the clock tick. It’s almost time to settle in for a long winter’s retreat to the living room. We have books, and movies, and popcorn, and some of the remaining homemade Christmas cookies. There is a turkey thawing in the fridge, potatoes in the larder, and the ingredients for a family fave of flourless chocolate cake. Cue the snow, please.

I like to have a little pot of something boiling away on the stovetop during the Christmas holidays. It fills the house with cozy, childhood aromas. Wafting clouds of orange, cloves, and cinnamon linger in corners, reminding me of homey scenes from Little Women, or the Little House books. Remember the year that Laura and Mary found oranges in their stockings? The snow was deep out there in the vast, lonely Dakota Territory, but Santa still located the deserving Ingalls girls. What a wonderful Christmas that was.

Christmas movies and old television specials easily toy with our vulnerable, sentimental hearts. There are Christmas commercials that make me cry. All these holiday feelings are easily triggered by singing about the Who Hash and the rare Who roast beast. Listen to that squeaking as the Grinch easily separates little Whos from their candy canes. What an outrageous, Grinchy thing to do!

I love The Bishop’s Wife, with its chaste romance and its debonair angel-in-business-suit. No Christmas tree since has been covered by that much tinsel, and so quickly. Oh, for Dudley to keep my glass full with warming, inspiring – though never inebriating – sherry. I’d love to have luncheon with Dudley and Julia at Michel’s, without the paprika.

Clarence, the endearingly clumsy angel in It’s a Wonderful Life, is more my speed. I, too, would stumble into Nick’s rough Pottersville joint and attempt to order something inappropriately fey, like hot mulled wine. And could I have some tasty nibbles, too, please?

In honor of Clarence, and the whole Christmas season, the Spy Test Kitchen researched hot, mulled wine. And considering we are about to spend lots of time on the sofa, it’s nice to have choices. Let’s start simmering with the queen, Ina Garten: Hot Mulled Wine

Martha has a white wine version: and a red wine version – which she says is, “like Christmas in a glass.” I wonder what Snoop thinks? As much as I like a cheap white wine, I think mulled wine calls for a nice red. It’s winter, and Christmas, and it’s cold outside. Give me something that is full-bodied and heart-warming.
Like this: Erin Clark’s Mulled Wine

Even Reddit has an opinion about the best wines to use for mulled wine: Reddit Mulled Wine

And the young folk on TikTok have a genius approach – to use a slow cooker! Finally, we can pull ours out of the pantry and use it for something other than beef stew or chili! Tiktok slow cooker recipe

Our stockings are draped on the back of the desk chair in hopes that St. Nick finds them there, despite us not having a fireplace. Oranges are welcome, but I would like some new mechanical pencils, too. Cheers!

“He took the Who’s feast, he took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast. He cleaned out that ice box as quick as a flash. Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash.”
—Dr. Seuss

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

The holidays are upon us, and I don’t feel as if we are quite ready, or even in the mood yet. There are cookies to bake! Boxes to mail! Candy canes and gum drops to buy. Christmas cards to address. Ho, ho, ho. How can I feel glum when I spent 22 minutes in line at the post office, to mail a card to a sweet friend in the UK? Joy to the world.

We have been going through all the ritual motions for Christmas. We got the Tupperware boxes of ornaments, lights, stockings, baubles, and treasured gewgaws down from the attic over the weekend, much to Luke the wonder dog’s consternation. Life isn’t so exciting for him now, after Thanksgiving. He doesn’t have a 4-year-old sidekick stealthily palming him dog biscuits all day long. He follows Mr. Sanders around the house as closely as he can, and yet he wasn’t prepared for the ladder that suddenly descended in the hall, or for the dusty boxes stacked on his favorite sunning spots on the living room rug. Luke sat sentinel on the front porch, watching as we strung ropes of lights in the Japanese maple tree in the front yard, and draped swags of red-ribboned greenery from the front porch lights. The Christmas tree in the living room doesn’t smell quite right to Luke. There is no eau de chat that he can detect; no squirrel, no deer, no opossum. And the tree is blocking Luke’s view of the street: he can’t see when the life-threatening UPS truck comes to call. He is a little put out by these changes.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t getting underfoot at every possible turn. In our little house Luke has several carefully chosen observation points which maximize his enjoyment of our daily activities: he likes lying under the kitchen table, where he can keep one eye on the cook, and another on the squirrels raiding the bird feeder. Luke inches closer to the action when actual cooking is taking place, because he understands gravity, and the tendency of cheese and other delicious bits of food to fall unbidden to the kitchen floor. He selflessly rushes to hoover up all dropped food without being asked. Though he does not care for lettuce, or raw gingersnap dough, as we have discovered this week.

We left Luke home for a few hours last weekend, with a Kong-ful of peanut butter, so we could do a little local shopping downtown and visit the library. Our library has just re-opened after being closed for almost a year, to repair foundation damage sustained during the hurricane a few years ago. We ventured downtown to wander through the familiar stacks now standing firmly on spanking new floors. And it was delightful. The smell of new paint was heady. The books were still orderly. I had a good wallow in the cook books and through the new acquisitions. One book that I snatched up was The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America by Sara B. Franklin. Judith Jones edited novels and poems by John Cheever, cookbooks by Julia Child and most famously, Anne Frank’s diary. I hadn’t heard of her until I watched the delightful series about Julia Child, about her time in Boston, at WGBH. Julia And now I am looking forward to spending some quality time with Judith Jones.

I found some new cookbooks to bring home, to get some ideas, and to just soak up the sunshine of other cooks. It is quieter after Thanksgiving, after all. There aren’t any sweet little boys offering up dog treats. I will avoid the post office as much as I can, and I’ll find more time to visit the library. And I’ll be sure that a nice hunk of cheese will drop in Luke’s periphery, so he starts to get in the mood for the holidays, too.

Go wander through your library and revisit some old friends, make some new ones, too. Smell the paper and the glue, chat with the reference librarian, smile at the kiddos. Imagine all the stories in that building, just minutes from home.

These are the other books we brought home: Milk Street by Christopher Kimball, Simply Genius by our friends at Food52, and The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen.

“At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.”
― Thomas Tusser

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

We are edging toward Thanksgiving. Carefully. Warily. What else can happen? What else can go wrong? More importantly, when do turkeys go on sale? Has the 2024 Beaujolais Nouveau been released yet? (Non! Beaujolais Nouveau Day is November 21st!) Apple pie, or pumpkin? What about Boston Cream? One of the young ‘uns has suggested a purple sweet potato pie. Really? Purple Sweet Potato Pie

I have made Mr. Sanders promise that we will stop at the very first Trader Joe’s we encounter on our 5-hour drive to the rental house where we will be celebrating Thanksgiving this year. I just watched a video of Hope Walz emptying holiday goodies from her TJ’s shopping bags. She had snagged three packages of the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joes that I loved so much last year. I had FORGOTTEN about those divine cookies. Hope Walz on Tik Tok I just love holidays with food expectations. Now I feel up to the challenge of herding the cats and going away for Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble indeed!

Some of my bravado comes from the notion that this year I have the ultimate pie crust recipe. It is uncomplicated, and almost as easy as passing off a store-bought pie as something I personally rolled out, fluted, crimped, washed with egg, and blind baked with professional finesse. You have to understand that my signature pie consists of a cumulus cloud of whipped cream resting on a delicious base of Jell-O chocolate pudding, in a darkly-satisfying, crunchy (store-bought ) chocolate cookie pie shell — just so you have a basis for comparison. I have just never been able to crimp a pie crust neatly, or even roll out a circle of pie dough. My mother’s major disappointment with me – that I knew about – was that I bought pie crusts. That I didn’t have the emotional backbone to learn how to roll out homemade dough. Well, this year, I will not be lurking in the pastry shell section of the frozen foods at the grocery store. I will be baking homemade pies.

This year I have stolen quite boldly from the New York Times’ test kitchens.

Shortcut Pie Crust
By Clare de Boer

INGREDIENTS
1 ½ cups/190 grams all-purpose flour
½ cup/60 grams confectioners’ sugar, passed through a sieve
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
9 tablespoons/130 grams cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 large egg yolks

PREPARATION
Combine the flour, confectioners’ sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Add the cubed butter and blitz until the flour mixture has a sandy texture with some pea-size butter bits.

Add the egg yolks and blitz then pulse just until the pastry begins to come together.
Tip the pastry out onto a rectangle of plastic wrap. Using your hands, form it into a 6-inch log. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill, at least 3 hours or up to 3 days, or wrap and freeze for up to 3 months. If using frozen dough, allow to soften slightly in the fridge for an hour before using.

Using the large holes on a box grater, grate 3/4 of the chilled pastry directly into your pie dish or tart pan. Working quickly by hand, press the grated pastry into the dish, starting with the sides then covering the bottom, grating more of the chilled pastry into the dish as needed to cover evenly. Pay attention to the seam between the sides and the base, making sure it is the same thickness as the rest of the pastry: The crust should form an even layer that is about 1/4-inch thick. (Save any leftover pastry for another use.) Chill, at least 30 minutes or up to 2 days. (This can be done ahead.)
The crust can take various routes from here; refer to whichever pie or tart recipe you’re using for guidance. If blind-baking this crust, it cooks best at 350°F.
NYT Shortcut Pie Crust

Our friends at Food52 understand that we need shortcuts, and crimping an attractive pie crust isn’t vital to the meaning of Thanksgiving. Food52 Apple Pie

They further understand that when you are ready for pumpkin pie you don’t care about the pie crust. Pumpkins are bold; a gingersnap pie crust enhances the pumpkin experience. Be prepared to have seconds. Food52 Pumpkin Pie

We had friends in Florida who celebrated family birthdays with pies instead of cakes. Be daring. Try some homemade apple pie. Or even a purple sweet potato pie.

“So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie.
Open your eyes. Let life happen.”
—Sylvia Plath

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Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. The illustrations she contributes to the Spies are done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink.

I read someplace on the internet that whoever scheduled Halloween, the clock change, and the presidential election all in the same week has some explaining to do. We have had too much of sugar highs, a dog who keeps waking up an hour earlier than the humans, and emotional swings that cannot be regulated by cheap white wine. And yesterday I ate the very last Halloween Snickers bar, so I am all out of sources of instant gratification.

I’ve decided instead to use the energy produced by my anxiety for good! We are looking forward to our mini family reunion at Thanksgiving with our children, their spouses, and two grandchildren at a rented lake house. Luke the wonder dog is coming along with us, just to add to the fun – I hope he doesn’t meet his match with the energetic 4-year-old.

Holiday cooking at rental houses can be fraught with complications because you never know what to bring, and how close the nearest grocery store is. I tend to over prepare and I bring it all: the KitchenAid stand mixer, the cookie sheets, the roasting pan, the rolling pin, the gravy separator, the electric knife, a few platters, rolls of aluminum foil, parchment paper and Saran Wrap for the leftovers, mayonnaise for the leftovers turkey sandwiches, candles, tablecloths, you name it, it will be packed in the back of the car along with Luke’s crate. A case of wine. Diet Coke. Half and half, heavy cream, oat milk, 2% milk. We never travel light.

I have been reading all manner of helpful holiday hints: what can we make ahead of time so we don’t need to cook every single menu item on the actual day of Thanksgiving. Without giving folks ptomaine poisoning. I need to formulate an actual meal plan instead relying on my normal tendency of just winging it – there will be the expectations of 7 other people to meet, after all. It makes sense to keep a list, and smugly tick off each dish as the preparations proceed.

Food & Wine says that we can make lots of the meal beforehand: stuffing, casseroles, all the veggies, gravy, turkey stock, desserts, and in theory, we could prepare the Brussels sprouts, though I think not. No Brussels sprouts for us! Give us green beans, but hold the mushroom soup. Note to self: remember to buy the cranberries this year. Last year we inadvertently went cranberry-free – but no one else noticed. I hope. Food & Wine

Food & Wine discourages making rolls, mashed potatoes or cornbread before the big day. But other food experts offer different opinions. The Pioneer Woman suggests that a huge time saver is making the potatoes ahead of time. Personally, I love peeling 5 pounds of potatoes in a strange kitchen, all by myself, every year, while the others are off enjoying child-oriented activities and photo ops while the meal clock ticks. Sorry Food & Wine, this year I am mashing the potatoes early. Pioneer Woman

The Food Network espouses their theory that the entire meal can be made ahead of time and then frozen. My deep-seated fear of food poisoning comes into play here – we have a 5-hour drive on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I imagine that our Yeti-adjacent cooler will not keep everything frozen rock hard and germ resistant, but maybe this would work for you. You can be fresh as a daisy on Thanksgiving, having done the yeoman’s work a couple of days ahead, and you can focus on passing hors d’oeuvres and watching touch football in the front yard. I envy your panache. Food Network And personally – if you ever freeze whipped cream instead of serving it fresh, right out of the mixing bowl, you should be ashamed of yourself. You might as well use Cool Whip on top of your pumpkin pie. Shocking!

What started me down this particular garden path was a 4-page recipe I found from America’s Test Kitchens for “Make Way Ahead Dinner Rolls”. I am always interested in irresistible carbs, which is why Thanksgiving is my favorite meal. I am sure that these dinner rolls are divinely tasty, warm and yeasty, dripping with good, salted Irish butter. Make-Way-Ahead Dinner Rolls But I know for a fact that the Pepperidge Farm dinner rolls that I will pick up Tuesday night at the Food Lion that is just 5 miles from our rental house are going to be delicious, too. Which will leave me plenty of leisure time for family photo ops and whipping the cream. Use your time wisely. Life is short. Gobble, gobble.

More from Ina Garten, who knows her way around a kitchen:Ina Garten Thanksgiving

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain