Jamie Oliver has traveled the world and has done what many thought to be impossible, promoting a healthy lifestyle by healthy eating habits, but even he, an experienced cook, knows that preparing Christmas dinner can be quite a difficult task to accomplish. Experience, Oliver says in a Daily Mail column, has nothing to do with making sure the traditional turkey and everything else come out just right – it’s all in being well organized.

Because the Christmas dinner is such an important event, a special occasion when all of us sit down at the same table, surrounded by family and the best of friends, the amount of pressure put on the person in charge of everything is huge. Because of this, Oliver says, there are people out there who start stressing about it as early as October. In fact, the solution to getting everything right is precisely in eliminating the stress by learning to think things ahead.

“Christmas should be a time when you get family and friends round and really enjoy the day, but for too many people it’s a stressful time, and the big meal is one of the major reasons for that. Back in October I started getting letters from people who were panicking about cooking Christmas dinner, even though it was months away. But the good news is that pulling together a fantastic dinner without spinning out of control can be done: it just takes a little forward planning,” Jamie says in the aforementioned column.

“It’s all about preparation and doing as much as you can before the big day – and there is a lot you can do on Christmas Eve or even earlier. And a quick note about the turkey – please buy the best welfare bird you can afford. It makes such a difference. And please, please don’t forget to let the bird rest after you’ve cooked it and before carving. This lets all the juices get back into the meat and gives you a far better tasting turkey – and it gives you valuable time to get all the trimmings sorted,” the cook further says.

In order to make things even easier for those at home in need of a helping hand, Oliver also includes a few of his favorite recipes, which you can see here, while also being available in the latest issue of Jamie Magazine. As for his own Christmas dinner, this year, Jamie is planning on letting other members of the family take some responsibility off his shoulders as he will be putting his “feet up” for a while, he says.