I'm almost positive I posted this somewhere before but my tip is: never roast a turkey, especially a large one, on a cookie sheet. Reason being? It slides off.

When I was first married, my husband was in the AF and we made it a practice to invite airmen who weren't able to make it home for the holidays. I didn't have much cookware and even less money to buy some, so I made do w/what I had. We invited several men to Tday dinner along w/my parents who drove from PA to our place in VA.

The entire group, my husband and toddler son included, were patiently waiting for me to bring out the turkey to the dinner table; everything else was there. I took the turkey out of the oven and, of course, the juice from the turkey was all over the cookie sheet. You know what happened next. The turkey jiggled around, slid off the cookie sheet and onto the floor. Our apt. was in an old renovated southern mansion and the floor was covered in old linoleum. There were 3 steps next to my oven leading down into my son's bedroom. The turkey then slid across the floor, down the steps and under my son's bed. I had to crawl under his bed to retrieve the turkey, wash it off and serve it, all the while w/a straight face and pretending that nothing unusual had happened. I was near hysterical w/laughter through the entire dinner, much to my husband's irritation because I wouldn't tell him what I was laughing about. He would have been furious. (He had no sense of humor when it came to such things.)

Every year at Tday dinner, I think of that day and this year it will be even funnier to me because this is the first Tday in 11 years that my son has been able to come home.