holiday dinner could be a disaster. But if you are both game, then plan on producing successive meals from the fridge over several hours. (Don't let stuffing and other bacteria-prone dishes rest at room temperature past the time it takes to serve your initial meal, or you will never have anyone come to dinner ever again, period.) So what if you end up microwaving individual portions of turkey and mashed potatoes several times in one night? This approach to Thanksgiving is about camaraderie, not formality. Stack the plates, silverware and napkins in the kitchen; point people in the right direction as they come through the door, open an extra bottle of wine and then sit back and relax. And you might learn, as we did, that what goes around comes around, sometimes in unexpectedly delightful ways. In all of our years of feeding other people, we have collected only one invitation to someone else's home for Thanksgiving. As it happened, we had already invited our own first dinner guest to our house, a friend who was new to Albany and a long way from his family. We were thrilled to let someone host us for a change, but we didn't want to leave our own guest stranded. I called our prospective hosts and explained our dilemma. The wife in this couple thought like us, and didn't miss a beat. "Bring your friend along," she said. And so we did. -- Darryl McGrath Grains of New York If you're going local