Food tips: Brush bird with bacon fat for burnished appearance

Brush the baking holiday turkey with rendered bacon fat and you will be rewarded with gorgeous golden skin with a down-home taste.

Style

It doesn't hurt to buy a couple of extra bunches of herbs for presentation. Sprays of sage, thyme and rosemary tucked around a beautifully cooked bird make for an easy natural garnish. A rule of thumb for all garnishes: Keep them edible and use an ingredient either from the dish or one that has a complementary flavor.

Sweet sides

Thanksgiving is a bonanza for winter-squash lovers since they often show up in both savory and sweet dishes. In recent years, many pint-sized intensely flavored squashes have come to market. Two Food Network Kitchens favorites are the delicious delicata and adorable sweet dumplings. Both have a rounded taste with hints of sweet corn and an agreeable dense flesh. Whether it's the oblong delicata or the cuplike sweet dumpling, both squashes are handled similarly: Stem, split, seed and bake with their flax and green skin intact. Drizzle the squashes with butter, extra-virgin olive oil or nut oil and sprinkle with sage before baking for an easy seasonal side.

Biscuit tips

Freshly made biscuits add a homey touch to the holiday table. Like any quick bread, the less the dough is worked the more tender the biscuit will be. So take care when stirring in the liquid or when pulling the dough together. Biscuits don't have to be round -- have fun and cut them in squares, diamonds or triangles, and you will have less waste or dough to re-roll. Brush the tops of formed biscuits with a hint of milk or cream before baking for a glossy shine.

Before you bake

Check the "use by" date on your baking powder or soda to make sure it is still in its prime.

Table setting

Incorporate the season's bounty into floral arrangements. Skewer small artichokes, ornamental cabbages or pomegranates and use them as accents in your centerpiece. Another festive trick is to secure long-stem flowers in tall glass vases filled with cranberries or in-the-shell walnuts.

Serving a crowd

Don't fret if all your tabletop doesn't match. A colorful mix of family heirloom plates and glassware can be tied together with monochromatic linens and flowers. If your linen tablecloth looks puckered or wrinkled and you don't have time to re-iron it, use a plant mister to lightly spray the cloth right on the table. Pull the edges taught and let it dry.

Double duty

An electric knife makes carving the holiday bird a snap, but that's not the end of this retro tool's usefulness on Thanksgiving Day. Use it to make perfect slivers of pumpkin pie and state-of-the-art slices of cake.