Turkey’s gone. Fridge is cleaned out. It is time for the next go around.

I learned some lessons while cooking for 12 at Thanksgiving which hopefully will help me in the future.

1. Never, ever try a new pie crust recipe on the day of, when you have to make two pies. You will come up with a shortage of butter when you have to throw it all out when the crust will not, WILL NOT, hold together.

2. Don’t go out the night before when you were supposed to be making said pies and the soup because you will then have to make it the morning of when you might not be quite awake and you might screw something up, like the pie crust.

3. Print out recipes before the day because if you don’t that is the time your printer will run out of ink. And then you will have to try read the recipes off your phone.

4. Write down the menu and take notes. Save the recipes you like in a folder marked Thanksgiving 2017 or whatever the year. Then you won’t have to worry about the printer running dry or trying to find the recipes — that were so great last year — that have been misplaced or disappeared from the web.

5. Write down who came to dinner. Because oddly the holidays start to blend together (might be an age thing). I am not sure why this is necessary but the subject does come up.

6. Make sure you check all your spices way in advance. You don’t want to go to five stores looking for dried ginger for those damn pies. And you also will pay through the nose (whatever that means) at the local convenience store for a tiny amount.

I will be taking these lessons with me to the next set of holidays.

Something I remember from last Christmas is to make half the amount of eggnog, because we just don’t drink like we used to. I better make a note of that.

— LUCY

Thanks for the helpful tips.

It’s interesting you still use recipes.

I find they just get in the way.

And what’s with the leftover eggnog? Say it isn’t so.

And since I’ve never made a pie crust, maybe I’ll try one Christmas morning.

And as for going out the night before the holiday, that implies dealing with nighttime. Which I seldom do.

And as for spices, I’ve always looked at the holidays as the best time to use those with use-by dates in the 1950s.

And as for writing down who came to dinner, that would be Sidney Poitier.

Now I have to go cook in my new kitchen.

— LOU