Having at last arrived at the age of backward glances and pleasant memories, I contemplate Thanksgiving this year in a frame of mind best described as “mellow.”

For those who enjoy Thanksgiving—especially when someone else sets the table, cooks, and serves the meal, and then cleans it all up while everyone else watches football on television—those memories are tinged with the warm glow that comes from having enjoyed a lavish feast without having to do any of the actual work involved, let alone the second job of wrangling the refrigerator full of left-overs on the following day. For those who actually do all of the preparation, execution, and cleanup involved with hosting Thanksgiving, memories may be slightly more jaundiced:

• Calling the Butterball Hotline to ascertain, for the umpty-ninth time, how long and at what temperature to cook the bird.
• Agonizing over whether to cook the bird stuffed or not stuffed, prompting yet another call to the Butterball Hotline.
• Overcooking the bird despite frantic calls to the Butterball Hotline.
• Dropping the turkey on the floor trying to muscle it out of the oven (I am not admitting to anything, but this might have happened to me in the past. But only once. Or maybe twice. Okay—three times, but over the course of 60 years, this is not a bad record).
• Having a crisis of conscience when you decide to serve canned cranberries instead of making them yourself from scratch.
• Gagging as you prepare the disgusting green bean casserole gloop that your Aunt Amelia absolutely cannot live without eating every year.
• Wondering if you REALLY need to make both mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, considering that half the people you know are on a low-carb diet, and the other half are diabetic.
• Tearing your hair out trying to figure out how to cook a vegan Thanksgiving meal for the three guests who refuse to eat animal products.
• Contemplating the left-overs with dread in your heart, then scouring your cookbooks for recipes for turkey tetrazzini, turkey soup, turkey croquettes, and turkey shepherd’s pie.
• Watching everyone in your family wince as you serve them some form of Thanksgiving left-over for the sixth night in a row.
• Swearing that you will never host Thanksgiving again.

Hosting Thanksgiving is a little bit like giving birth: anxiety-producing, labor-intensive, and exhausting to the extent that you resolve never to do it again—until you develop amnesia about 10 months later and end up, in a post-partum fog, having another one.

I have spent many, many Thanksgivings hosting and cooking the meal that unnerves and exhausts even the most ardent chefs. The Thanksgivings I remember best were those spent cooking with either my mother or my friend Phyllis, for whom I worked as a live-in cook during my mid-20s.

Both my mother and I and Phyllis and I worked well in tandem. We made the meal so often together that we were a well-oiled machine. Stuffing and sides were assembled the day before so that on Thanksgiving Day we could focus on the main event: turkey.

The tablecloths were laid; the good china and crystal emerged from the ornate cabinets that housed them; the good silver was polished; and the house was cleaned until it sparkled. Dicing, slicing, chopping, mashing, stirring, and baking commenced. The house smelled heavenly, redolent of pecans and butter and cornbread and pumpkin pie. At my mom’s house, there was apple cake as well. Phyllis always handled making the creamed onions—one of her mother’s food traditions—although it had all the appeal, to me, of the gloopy green bean casserole.

My mother complained every year that all the guests came empty-handed, forgetting every year that she insisted on making everything herself. Carving the turkey always presented its own special challenge as we navigated leg and wing joints. Phyllis had an electric knife, wielded by a cousin who tore hunks of turkey off the bones and ate them with his bare hands while carving, causing all witnesses to become deeply repulsed. Nevertheless, he carved the bird every year.

Tradition. Cousin Ben carved, everyone was horrified, and then everyone ate. To the best of my knowledge, no one ever got food poisoning. It was nothing short of a Thanksgiving miracle.

Extra drumsticks were prepared at Chez Phyllis so that a fist fight didn’t break out in the buffet line. Her partner insisted on frying an additional turkey every year. This created even more left-overs with which to contend.

Curried turkey salad, anyone?

Now, of course, one must also contemplate seating arrangements for all invitees, in an effort to avoid political melt-downs. It was bad enough when people just got on each other’s nerves because of long-simmering family resentments. We can now look forward to nuclear war from both sides of the aisle. Perhaps we have arrived at the dawn of red tables and blue tables, contained within sound-proof booths, and separated by razor wire. Jaunty helmets and flak jackets might become de rigueur fashion accessories in our new “us versus them” holiday climate.

While everyone has their own treasured recipes and family favorites, mine, of course, are the best. Here are a few tips for the tastiest turkey ever:

STUFF THE BIRD. Phyllis had a very clever method of making sure that the stuffing could be removed entirely the minute the bird emerged from the oven: Rub the turkey cavity with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and sage. Open a large piece of cheesecloth and line the hollow turkey cavity with it, then spoon in the stuffing. This operation often involves one person holding the turkey upright while another person shoves stuffing into the cheesecloth-lined cavity. WEAR AN APRON!

Sprinkle the outside of the turkey with more salt, pepper, garlic powder, and sage (Phyllis was always resistant to garlic powder, but my mother could not have conceived of leaving it out). Melt a stick or two of butter and brush all parts of the bird with it to achieve a luscious golden crust when it roasts in the oven.

Call the Butterball Hotline in order to have your annual Thanksgiving freak-out about how long to roast the bird, so that one of their highly-trained interventionists can talk you off the ledge. After you get off the phone, call everyone you know to see if they agree with the advice given by the Butterball Hotline. This will create a good deal of anxiety, so have a nice bottle of wine on hand and drink it quickly to steady your nerves.

When I roast a turkey, I always follow my mother’s admonition to first roast it breast-side down, so that the breast stays moist. After the back has browned, flip the turkey and continue roasting breast-side up. This will also require two people, for it is during this particular maneuver that the bird is most likely to fall on the floor. Wear heat-proof rubber gloves—they give you more control.

In the meantime, start simmering the stock: at least eight cups of turkey or chicken broth to begin with, along with sage. As the stock reduces, you can add more broth. The giblets—which, for the novice, must be removed from the turkey before you stuff it—should go into the pot with everything else. Again, for novices, remove the paper from the giblets before dropping them into the stock. Add a big glug of either Cointreau or some other, less expensive orange liqueur to the pot. Bring to a simmer. As the turkey roasts, baste with the stock about once every half hour. Don’t forget that if the turkey is stuffed, it will need to roast longer. This will likely result in another frantic call to the Butterball Hotline.

After flipping the turkey, if it becomes too brown, loosely tent with foil. At the appointed hour, remove the bird, lift it onto a carving board, and immediately yank the stuffing-filled cheesecloth from the cavity. Place the stuffing—minus the cheesecloth—into a heat-proof bowl. The turkey should rest for a good 20 minutes before carving so that the juices can settle.

In the meantime, remove the giblets from the stock and chop fine. Return the giblets to the stock pot. Don’t chop the neck—you don’t want all of those bones in the finished gravy. In my mother’s house, we treasured the neck, removing it from the stock and vying for a piece so that we could suck the meat off the bones. Mash up equal parts butter and flour and whisk into the simmering stock to thicken it. A good rule of thumb is a tablespoon each of butter and flour for every cup of liquid in the pot.

I would provide the recipe for the stuffing, but then, of course, Phyllis and I would have to kill you; it is a closely guarded secret. Sorry.

And with that I bid a happy Thanksgiving to all readers of The Edge. My partner and I will be dining out, since we have discovered that a well-prepared, prepaid Thanksgiving buffet in a remote location beats the hell out of freaking out and working like a longshoreman for the better part of a week.

Best part: no left-overs.