You've been nominated; or perhaps your family has issued a decree; or perhaps it's simply your turn. No matter what the reason, you're hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year. This need not be a burden. In fact is can be a pleasure, given the right planning and organization.

I've found that the key to an almost effortless-looking dinner is thinking backward. Start your Thanksgiving planning by visualizing yourself, surrounded by family and friends at the dinner table, then work backward to determine how you got there. Ask yourself which foods took the least amount of preparation, which took the most. Write these things down in a list.

Now refine the list-but only slightly. Which dishes can be prepared the day (or evening) before? Which dishes need to be prepared that day? Which dishes need to be prepared within an hour of dinner?

At this point, you should have at least a vague idea of your plan of attack. So now it's time to refine the list further. In fact, it's time to begin to create a schedule. If you expect to serve dinner at 2:00 p.m., for example, and the turkey will take three hours to roast, then half hour to rest before carving, it needs to be in the oven at 10:15 a.m.

Why 10:15, and not 10:30? My start time factors in the three and one half hours, plus approximately fifteen minutes to get the bird carved and arranged on a serving platter after it has rested. And don't forget that it will take approximately fifteen minutes to pre-heat your oven too. Your schedule should reflect all of those variables.

By now, your list-or maybe lists-has grown substantially, as you refine the necessary tasks to get to that wonderful image of yourself sitting among family and friends at the dinner table. The next step in the process is to begin to identify the tasks involved in preparing the ingredients for the dishes that will make up your Thanksgiving menu; the prep work.

It's lovely to watch the chefs on Food TV blithely talking about adding a cup of chopped onions to a saut