The approach of Thanksgiving brings a whole rush of wonderful smells, tastes, sounds and feelings tumbling through my head. Sweet smells of cinnamon come first, followed shortly by the succulent smell of turkey, which brings on the taste of the drippings in the bottom of the roasting pan. I hear clatter and chatter, and football in the distance. There is a sense of camaraderie, and family, and a deep contentment. Seems pretty appropriate for Thanksgiving, doesn't it?

When you are the one in charge of the feast, it is ever so important to have a plan. If the memories of Thanksgiving include dinners that didn't get done until three hours past the time everyone planned on, or forgetting the pumpkin pie, or other such disasters, it won't bring on the warm feelings that Thanksgiving should invoke. So where should you start?

First thing you'll need to do is have a guest list. If you don't know how many people you'll be feeding, you're already dead in the water, so figure out how many are coming.

Next decide whether you can realistically do it all yourself. Different people have different abilities and capacities, so know your own limitations, and work within them. Definitely ask people to bring dishes if you work full time and won't be able to do much advance preparation.

The menu is the next step, and you'll want to have this figured out at least two weeks in advance so that you have time to get ingredients together and let people know if you want them to bring certain dishes. The standard menu would be a whole turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn and/or peas, some kind of bread, beverage, and pumpkin pie. If you want stick with those basics, that works great. If you're more adventurous, the sky is the limit; the Thanksgiving police won't come to take you away if you don't choose to serve turkey, or you would rather have chocolate cake for dessert. Feel free to explore new tastes, and go different directions. The most important thing is to know what you and your guests can handle, and not make things too stressful on yourself.

When you have your menu done, and have asked people to bring things, look at what you have to do yourself, get out recipe books, and figure out a timeline to help you get everything on the table at the appointed time. Don't forget to include time to collect ingredients (you may want to visit a specialty shop or two for out of the ordinary ingredients), set the table, do any decorating,

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