Thanksgiving is like any other holiday.  To derive maximum enjoyment from it, you need to follow some rules.  Food is the central component in every Thanksgiving celebration, so prepare your plate properly to get the most taste satisfaction possible out of your meal.

First, certain foods on your Thanksgiving Day plate are complimentary and others are competitive.  It’s important to assemble your plate so that complimentary foods are next to one another and competitive foods are isolated on their own separate side of the plate.

If you load your plate like me, I pile it high.  Pieces of turkey are hanging over over the sides and a meniscus of gravy swells right to the edge.  I seem to forget that I can go back and get a second helping.  It’s like, I have a depression era food-rationing mentality.  I don’t want to wait in a two hour breadline again so, I’m going to pile as much food on my plate the first time, as possible.  Like I won’t get a second chance.  Stupid, I know, but it makes my plate preparation rules all that much more critical.

Basically, here’s how you load up.  All foods that are enhanced by gravy should be placed adjoining on one side of the plate.  This means your salty family (i.e. turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beens, and corn) need to be piled on one side of the abbondanza.  You can recklessly splash gravy all over this side of the plate and every single food item will be enhanced.  Potatoes need gravy.  Dressing?  All the better with a nice dousing.  Gravy is the perfect turkey lubricant.  And corn?  What the hell?  Gravy doesn’t hurt it a bit.

But your sweeter items like: yams, marshmallow fluff, and sweet potato casserole, all belongs on the other side of the plate.  Guard that side of the plate like you were trying to keep Santa Anna’s army out of the Alamo.  Whatever you do, don’t let any gravy get on that side of the plate!  Form a little moat out of dressing and potatoes if you have to to keep the gravy on its proper side.  Gravy destroys the delicate, finer tastes of your sweet items.  Keep it the hell out of there.   In fact, get another plate for the sweet items if you have to…  This may garner some odd looks from your Mom or a jibe or two from your brother, so only grab a second plate if you can do it without ridicule.

That’s about it!  A few simple rules and off you go to Turkey Day nirvana!  The only exception to this rule is the great equalizer: cranberry sauce.  Cranberry sauce is the only sweet item that belongs on the salty side of the plate.  And I don’t mean the good, high-end cranberry sauce that your grandma painstakingly makes with bits of real cranberry in it.  I mean the cheap, tube-shaped stuff that comes out of a can – complete with little rings around the side like a log of congealed cranberry juice.  Beautiful.  A tiny sliver of this wonder with a bit of gravy soaked dressing will completely enhance your enjoyment of the salty side of your plate.