Recall alert! Recall alert! All of you planning your Thanksgiving dinners, check your cranberries. Ocean Spray announced a recall Friday for sweetened, dried cranberries (AKA "Craisins") and -- HEY WAIT A MINUTE! Thanksgiving was THURSDAY -- and Ocean Spray waited until FRIDAY to announce a recall?!?

Not good, Ocean Spray. Not good. I might as well give you the details up front here: Tiny, "hair-like" fragments of metal may have been found in some packages. Ocean Spray initiated the recall on Wednesday but they didn't announce it until Friday, which brings me back to my question: REALLY, Ocean Spray? Go public with the cranberry recall AFTER Thanksgiving? Don't you think we could have used this information the day BEFORE Thanksgiving instead?

I don't know about you, but I can hardly bring myself to open the refrigerator door. Every time I look at those Thanksgiving leftovers, all I can hear is Bubba's monologue from Forrest Gump (with "turkey" replacing "shrimp," of course): Dey's uh, turkey kabobs, turkey creole, turkey gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple turkey, lemon turkey, coconut turkey, pepper turkey, turkey soup, turkey stew ...

What I'm getting at here is, I already cooked that dang turkey once. The last thing I want to do is cook it again ... and again ... and again. Still, something must be done with all the bonus bird ...

That's why I love the idea of Turkey Pot Pie. You can basically use up ALL your leftover turkey making one (or several), and they freeze fabulously, so you don't even have to eat it today! Or tomorrow!

I just can't decide which of the following recipes to try first ...

Use your leftover sweet potatoes for this recipe!So, how was your Thanksgiving? Are you recovering from the cooking and feasting? And do you know yet what you're doing with all those leftovers? Mmm, turkey sandwiches! And what else? Hello turkey sweet potato shepherd's pie! Oh yeah, use up three different Thanksgiving dishes in one scrumptious casserole: roasted turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, and gravy.

Rachael Ray's recipe has you cooking more sweet potatoes from scratch, but if you already have some leftover sweet potatoes, here's an adaptation of that recipe. I mean, didn't you do enough cooking YESTERDAY??? Okay, let's go for something that tastes just like Thanksgiving dinner only much, much easier!

Grandma DottieGrandmas cook. It's what they do. Well, a lot of them anyway. Not my mother — my kids have a grandmother that could burn a pot of boiling water. But that's an entirely different story.

Usually grandmas cook, and though not all of them are amazing cooks, the love that goes into their preparation outweighs the terribly bad slightly "off" meal every now and again. And a lot of grandmas have their dish. You know the one ... the one the grandkids clamor for.

But as children and grandchildren get older, they figure out how to cook and may just try to move in on grandma's territory, especially around the holidays. This is exactly what happened with my husband, when he was 22. And it could have really been a disaster!

While I'm no fan of how America came about -- entitled white Pilgrims robbing the Native Americans of their land, their liberty, and their lives -- I am a huge fan of my country as it is today. And I'm sure you are too.

Yet, nearly every day we engage in activities, from big to small, that we all take for granted. We call President Bush/Obama/Fill in the blank an "idiot" (or worse). We send our children -- sons and daughters -- to school (and grumble about education today). We women are free to drive cars (and free to complain about all the carpooling we do). We let our baby girls live (even when we secretly hoped for a boy). We pray the way we want to -- or even not at all.

We wear nail polish.

If you're like me, your Thanksgiving preparations have been consumed by the big things. You've focused on things like how to brine your turkey, how to make perfect potatoes, and how to make a spectacular pie to wow the crowd you're feeding. But a few things may have slipped your list -- things like appetizers.

While there's food aplenty on this day of all days, appetizers are an important way to start the celebration ... and keep the cries of is dinner ready yet? to a minimum. Before you panic and head out to the store once again, you very well may have on hand most of the ingredients for one of the best appetizers of all times: Deviled eggs. People love them, and they're a snap to whip up with just a few basic ingredients. Here are a few varieties for you to try. 

I've got a handle on pumpkin pie, and I've now got a fab list of pecan pie recipes. But a Thanksgiving classic I've never tried baking is sweet potato pie. So this year I'm checking out recipes -- and I've already left behind any notion that sweet potato pies are even remotely healthy. Oh no. There may be beta carotene lurking within these pies, but these recipes are all about sweet, rich decadence!

The sweet potato pie being a Southern specialty, I'm looking to the authorities. All of these recipes are by food writers and cooks from the South. No slight to you, Yankees and Midwesterners -- I just want my pie straight from the source, and maybe with a side of Kentucky bourbon. 

This Thanksgiving, some of us will head to the kitchen and cook up a meal made from recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. But for others, it's a game of researching the best, tastiest, most widely reviewed recipes on the web. When faced with so many options -- especially for something as traditional as stuffing -- it's not the worst thing to hunt down a celeb chef recipe! And who better to entrust your taste buds to than the Skinnygirl herself, Bethenny Frankel?

Yes, knowing Bethenny, her "Out of This World" Stuffing recipe is slimmed down, but at the same time, it's probably totally delicious. You know she wouldn't settle for anything less, and neither should we. So, without further ado, here's how to give one of the yummiest Turkey Day side dishes some star power ...