The key to happiness, it seems to me, is being able to turn adversity into opportunity. As the folks at Sun-Kist say (or was it Sun Tzu?), when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Which is all right in the abstract, but what happens when you find yourself staring adversity square in the face? That's how most of America probably feels this morning after hearing about the nationwide shortage of waffles that was first reported yesterday.

Talk about blindsided. Who knew? But before you sell the house and take the family off to live in one of those bunkers in the mountains, consider this: It's really easy to make your own waffles. Once you get the hang of it, you'll never want to touch one of those miserable frozen things ever again. Here's a basic waffles recipe.

The classic pan gravy is one of the simplest sauces there is, and it's also a must for your holiday table — especially if you're planning to serve a roasted turkey, which tends to be, well, let's just say, not overly moist.

Making gravy from a roasted chicken or turkey typically starts with the pan drippings from the roasted bird. But in a pinch, you can make a simple gravy from a can of chicken broth and a tablespoon each of butter and flour.

Either way, you'll start by combining the flour and butter to form a roux, and then you'll whisk the stock (with the pan drippings added) into the roux. This easy tutorial shows you how to make gravy.

I suspect it's more than a coincidence that, just a week and a half before Thanksgiving, Spaghetti Carbonara is one of the most popular recipes here on your favorite culinary arts site. I have no doubt that the great food writer Calvin Trillin would be pleased.

Trillin wrote the classic essay "Spaghetti Carbonara Day," in which he argues that we should eat Spaghetti Carbonara on Thanksgiving instead of the traditional dry, flavorless turkey.

Written nearly three decades ago, the rationale for Trillin's choice might strike some readers as a bit dated. After all, hardly anyone these days can seriously claim that "Columbus discovered America;" not with a straight face, anyway. Still, Spaghetti Carbonara is good, and roasted turkey isn't. What more rationale does a food lover need? Enjoy this simple recipe for Spaghetti Carbonara.

Want to create a fun and festive centerpiece for your holiday table? Do you have a sharp knife and a spare apple lying around? If so, get ready to impress your friends and family with this easier-than-it-looks apple swan.

As you've probably observed, cut apples will start to turn brown after being exposed to the air for a few minutes. To avoid this, squeeze some lemon juice onto the flesh of the apple. It'll stay nice and white.

This short video, which is brilliantly produced by the always entertaining and increasingly famous Chef John Mitzewich, About.com's Guide to American Food, will show you how quick and easy it is to make an apple swan.

Thanksgiving is without a doubt one of the truly high-impact culinary events of the year. For that reason (and it makes sense), no one wants to commit to making something from scratch if it's going to take hours and/or tie up valuable kitchen resources. Especially not when the can opener beckons.

That's right, I'm talking about cranberry sauce. Like much of the traditional Thanksgiving meal, cranberry sauce earns a spot on your crowded plate because of the flavor and moisture it brings to an otherwise dry and flavorless turkey.

Sure, we rely on gravy to add flavor and moisture. Creamy, buttery mashed potatoes help, too (in addition to their secondary role as a delivery system for still more gravy). But your palate needs more than that — which is where cranberry sauce comes in.

Cranberry sauce brings a marvelous tartness that cuts through all that rich, buttery gravyness. Without it, everything on your plate would kind of taste the same.

But you know all that. What you might not know is that it's incredibly easy to make — so easy that you'll never reach for the canned stuff again. Here's a simple cranberry sauce recipe that I make every year.

Finally, if you'd like to see the procedure in more detail, here's a step by step tutorial on how to make cranberry sauce.

I've been enjoying this recent blog post from the New York Times, 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1). In this case, when the author says "restaurant staffers," he really means "servers," but I still found it entertaining. Some highlights:

No. 17:
"Do not take an empty plate from one guest while others are still eating the same course."

No. 31:
"Never remove a plate full of food without asking what went wrong. Obviously, something went wrong."

No. 36:
"Never reek from perfume or cigarettes. People want to smell the food and beverage."

And so on. Even though the item focuses on so-called "front-of-the-house" workers, that's still a part of the culinary arts. Indeed, most culinary arts programs include a class on dining room management.

So, what about you? Do you have any restaurant pet peeves?

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which means it's just about time for the yearly flurry of articles from so-called "experts" offering the secrets to roasting the "perfect turkey." But here's one secret no one will dare share with you: The perfectly roasted turkey is a myth.

That's right, there's no such thing — it's a physical impossibility. The reason for this is a phenomenon I call the Poultry Paradox, which is responsible for every mouthful of dry, flavorless, overcooked turkey you've ever had to force down your throat.

Well, it's 2009, people, and it's time to stop the madness. We've landed a man on the moon and we can make a car run on canola oil. It's time to get a handle on the trouble with turkey.

How does food get hot? It's simple, right? Just put it in the oven or heat it on the stovetop.

But the way heat travels from something hot, like a flame or a pot of boiling water, to the food item we intend to cook, is a process called heat transfer, and the different ways this can be accomplished determines how the food is cooked and what the end result will be.

Learn more about the two main methods of heat transfer: conduction and convection.

First of all, why is it called "brown" stock? When you go to the store, you see chicken stock, vegetable stock and beef stock. There's no "brown" stock anywhere, other than the beef stock, which happens to be brown. Because beef is, well, brown. Right?

Not exactly. Yes, stock is made from bones, and beef bones are the most common bones used in making brown stock. But you could also use the bones of veal, venison, buffalo, moose or whatever. The reason a brown stock is brown is because we roast the bones before simmering them, and also because we add a little bit of tomato paste to the bones. The acid in the tomato helps break down collagens in the cartilage and other connective tissues, and also adds color to the stock.

Theoretically, you could make a white stock from beef bones. For a white stock, we blanch the bones, skip the roasting and don't use any tomato product. It's not what kind of bones you use, but what technique you use.

Here's the basic procedure for making brown stock. And here's some more info about making stock:

• The Basics of Stock
• How to Make White Stock
• Basic Chicken Stock Recipe

There are relatively few hard-and-fast rules in the culinary arts. Like other art forms, the culinary canon merely offers tried-and-true techniques that, over time, have been shown to produce favorable results. Besides, it'd be impossible to incarcerate every chef who served some sort of "deconstructed" dish, or included any kind of "foam" on a plate of food — we simply couldn't build the new prisons fast enough.

Even so, this laissez-faire attitude doesn't extend to food safety. This is one area where following the rules isn't optional. And with good reason. Doing things the wrong way won't just result in bad food — it could make someone sick.

A classic example of this is thawing a frozen turkey. There really is a right way and wrong way — many wrong ways, actually. And while turkey season is more than a month away, you might be surprised to learn that thawing a 20-pound turkey safely and properly could take the better part of a week. So you see, it's never too soon to start planning for the big day. Find out how NOT to thaw a frozen turkey.