If you've seen more than a few Take Control ebooks, then you've almost certainly read one of Joe Kissell's best-selling titles, full of meticulous research and friendly advice. What you might not know is that Joe has a life beyond being a Mac guru, much of which revolves around food. In his "Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner" (just updated to version 1.1 to address candied sweet potato sauce compatibility issues with the 2007 feasting season), Joe helps you plan and prepare a classic Thanksgiving dinner with a minimum of stress and effort. The ebook is meant to be read on a laptop in the kitchen, and it has lots of internal navigation links, includes recommended recipes, has links to Web resources (it's easier to carve a turkey if you first watch a video), and was beta tested with gusto by friends and family in San Francisco, Seattle, and Ithaca. It includes illustrations by Jeff Tolbert (author of the Take Control of GarageBand ebooks) that help you visualize some of the trickier aspects of prepping a turkey for roasting. It also comes with a special Print Me file that gives you shopping lists, schedules, and recipes that you can annotate as desired, tape up in the kitchen, or hand off to a helper.

We realize that this ebook has nothing to do with the Mac, except that you can certainly (and ideally) read it on one. We do intend to keep our focus (mostly) on writing about computers, but we think that occasionally thinking out of the box - how would you create a cookbook that was also an ebook? - keeps us all fresh. And, if you cook from the ebook, you'll be, in a way, joining our extended family, since everyone who worked on the ebook performed extensive beta tests, engaged in lengthy discussions about the pros and cons of various dishes and techniques, and anticipated helping others work through some of the more snarly aspects of enjoyably preparing a Thanksgiving feast. Please, join us!

(If you already own the ebook, click Check for Updates on the first page of the PDF to access your free update.)