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Thanksgiving is easily in the top two or three holidays for most Americans. Who doesn't love spending time with family and gorging themselves all sorts of delicious tryptophan laced foods? Thanksgiving day is usually extremely relaxing and fun, unless you have to cook. It takes a lot of work to make a dinner like that happen, but by following these tips you can cook your thanksgiving in a fraction of what it would take otherwise.The first thing you need to do is get organized ahead of time. Have recipes for everything you want to cook and make a shopping lit for the items that you need. Go into your favorite grocery store several days ahead of time to make sure that you have all the ingredients needed. Also make sure that you have all the dishes that you will need to present the meal, such as glassware, silverware and serving containers.

Most people end up buying a large turkey and having turkey left-overs for the following two weeks. A good rule of thumb is to get a pound of turkey for each person sitting at the table, so if you only have 5 or 6 people, a smaller 8 pound turkey will do you fine. If you have a small family, you might even consider not getting a fully turkey. You could just get a turkey breast instead if your family doesn't like dark meat.

A lot of people get themselves into trouble when cooking Thanksgiving dinner because they simply have too many sides. Some people put out multiple types of potatoes and multiple dressings. Keep your side-dishes manageable, no more than four. After that things just become to complicated unless you have multiple cooks and are feeding a large group.

Ask for help. If you have guests coming over, ask them if they would be willing to bring the dessert or a side-dish to help cut back on the work that you have to do. If there's another cook among you feel free to ask for some help in the kitchen. Chances are there's something someone else could do to make your day a little bit easier.

Another good suggestion is to prepare any food you can the day before. You could easily make a pie on the day before and be just fine. The same could be true for a number of the other sides.

Keep your decorations simple. Remember, people are there for the food, not the fancy center piece. There's no reason to put a lot of time and effort into a gorgeous centerpiece when a simple flower arrangement will suffice!

Thanksgiving dinner can take a substantial amount of effort to make happen, but by following these tips you can have a much more successful thanksgiving dinner.

Learn more about this author, JQ Adams.
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