November 7, 2005

IT’S THANKSGIVING MORNING AND YOU FORGOT TO DEFROST THE TURKEY... NOW WHAT?

Allrecipes.com Offers the Definitive Guide for Thanksgiving Cooking including Tips for Common Turkey Day Mistakes, Simple Meal Ideas for the Days Leading to Thanksgiving, and Recipes for America’s Most Common Day-after Leftovers

Seattle, November 7, 2005 — We lead busy lives and cooking for 20 isn’t something many of us do often. Allrecipes.com, the world’s largest community recipe site for home cooks, hears the Thanksgiving planning pains from its million plus members this time each year and has developed a comprehensive advice collection to help everyday cooks make Thanksgiving a success.

The Allrecipes.com Thanksgiving Advice feature is available at the website now (allrecipes.com) and offers helpful planning guides for every facet of the holiday. The site includes advice on:

• Quick fixes for saving potential dinner disasters. Many first time and veteran Thanksgiving hosts make a simple mistake when preparing the meal. Scaling for 20 or more when the home cook is used to cooking for four is not easy. This section offers helpful tips from how to defrost the turkey in a hurry to how to fix a bird that is burning on the outside but has a long way to go on the inside (add some cayenne pepper and call it Cajun!) to saving mashed potatoes that resemble glue—it’s all there.
• Meal ideas for all parts of your Thanksgiving planning, including the days leading up to Thanksgiving. As hosts, most home cooks are focused solely on Thanksgiving day. This section offers simple and quick meal ideas for feeding those relatives that showed up days before Thanksgiving. It also offers readers ideas for the day after to help them fuel up for tackling the holiday season’s busiest shopping day and for Saturday, statistically the day most American’s trim their Christmas tree.
• Make-ahead dish ideas. Rather that trying to compress 10 hours of cooking in to 2 hours, this section provides simple dish ideas that can be prepared ahead to help make Thanksgiving Day a little more sane.
• Tools. All restaurant chefs agree on one thing, the right kitchen tools and gadgets make all the difference. This section showcases the Top Ten Must-Haves for the season.
• Wine Pairings. This section helps home cooks select the right wines to pair with their favorite Thanksgiving menus.
• And a Family Fun section. Most Americans turn Thanksgiving into a four-day weekend. This section provides tips on how to involve the entire family, kids included, in the preparations to ensure that time is best spent together.

“Thanksgiving is a widely stressful day for most home cooks,” said Jerry Gulley, editor-in-chief, Allrecipes.com. “With insight into the cooking habits of millions of home cooks we know what works and what doesn’t and we’ve gathered some helpful tips and fun ideas that we are certain will help make the day run smoothly. We love cooking as much as our members and visitors do. We want to make sure they still love it on the Friday after Thanksgiving!”
In addition to the Thanksgiving Advice feature Allrecipes.com offers more than 1,500 tried and tested Thanksgiving recipes for any palette—covering everything from time tested classics to new twists on old traditions. Home cooks will find all of the recipes they need for roasted the turkey as well as all the trimming including stuffing, pies, salads, breads, cranberry sauces, soups and more. All of the recipes have been rated and reviewed by Allrecipes.com audiences of millions of home cooks over the past 8 years. So home cooks can benefits from the hints, tips and ideas that other cooks just like them have posted on the site.

Editors Note: Jerry Gulley, editor-in-chief of Allrecipes.com and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, is available for interviews upon request.

About Allrecipes
Allrecipes, the world’s largest social network of food and entertaining enthusiasts, receives more than 35 million annual visits from users who share and download recipes, reviews, photos, personal profiles, and meal ideas. For more than 10 years, the Seattle-based site has served as a dynamic, indispensable resource for cooks of all skill levels seeking trusted recipes, entertaining ideas, everyday and holiday meal solutions, practical cooking tips and food advice. As the fastest growing independent food Internet site, and part of the Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. food and entertainment division, Allrecipes provides insights into the kitchens and cooking passions of home cooks everywhere.