The recipe for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner includes a pinch of frenzy, a dash of angst and a sprinkle of panic. It’s a race against time to get everything baked, broiled, simmered and sautéed before friends and family arrive.

“I have an opinion on this that might be a bit controversial. You really shouldn’t be cooking on Thanksgiving,” Dan Souza, chief content officer for America’s Test Kitchen, told Morning Edition‘s A Martínez.

Souza’s tips aren’t about serving old food to your family and friends. For him, the key to a stress-free holiday meal is simply cooking in advance.

“I want to be clear, I’m not telling you to go order Thanksgiving from someone else and have it brought in. I want you to have home-cooked food. But the real key to Thanksgiving is making the meal ahead of time so [on Thanksgiving day] you’re in reheat mode. You’re only cooking maybe a couple things through and plating the rest. It can be very, very low stress,” Souza said.

Many dishes can be made days, even weeks early, without sacrificing taste, texture and enjoyment.

Here are some of his tips:

Turkey

“We have a fabulous recipe for turkey thigh confit. You’re basically taking the dark meat and salting it. You’re letting it cure for a day, and then you’re slowly cooking it in fat, cooling it in that fat, and then storing it in the fridge. You can do this a week in advance and it continues to get better over that week. The same way a stew is a little bit better the next day in the fridge. It gets better. Day of [Thanksgiving] you’re taking it out and roasting it in a hot oven for 15 minutes. And that’s it.”

Gravy

“You can make your gravy at least a week ahead. And then [on Thanksgiving] day, all you’re doing is adding some drippings from your roasted turkey to sort-of bump up the flavor.”

This kale salad can be made a day ahead of time and still taste fresh and delicious on Thanksgiving

Beth Fuller/America’s Test Kitchen

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Beth Fuller/America’s Test Kitchen

Salad

“We have a kale salad with a vinaigrette dressing that you can make the day before. The vinaigrette actually breaks down the kale a little bit, which is a really good thing. Kale is a sturdy, sturdy green. It’s not really meant for salads. But when you add the vinaigrette it’s better the next day.”

Dinner Rolls

“We have a recipe for make-way-ahead dinner rolls. We bake them almost all the way through, but they still look a little bit blonde. You can Freeze them up to six weeks in advance.”

These dinner rolls can be prepared weeks in advance, frozen and then fluffed back to life on Thanksgiving day.

Carl Tremblay/America’s Test Kitchen

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Carl Tremblay/America’s Test Kitchen

On Thanksgiving day, put them in the oven for 10 minutes and they brown up. Souza says they look and taste great.

Souza says if you plan ahead, you’ll spend most of Thanksgiving reheating instead of cooking.

“The turkey thigh confit takes 15 minutes, 10 minutes to reheat your gravy, 10 minutes to bake your rolls and you plate up your kale salad. All your pies are made ahead and you’re done.”

And no one has to know how easy it was.

CHONBURI PROVINCE, Thailand —  Like most babies, Moo Deng spends a lot of her time sleeping.

But for a few hours a day, the 4-month-old pygmy hippo springs to life, gumming on leaves, zooming around the compound and tossing her head in a silent, open-mouthed roar.

These moments, captured by her zookeeper at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo, a two-hour drive south of Bangkok, and shared on social media, have turned her into a global phenomenon — an “It Girl” beloved for her sporadic fits of energy and proclivity for snapping toothlessly at hoses and knees.

Named for a Thai dish that means “bouncy pork,” Moo Deng has become the muse for cakes, clothing, tattoos and fireworks. Make-up tutorials demonstrate how to get her baby-pink cheeks and dewy skin. Partygoers this year dressed up as the pygmy hippo for Halloween. So did comedian Bowen Yang on “Saturday Night Live.”

Her remote home — struggling post-pandemic — has been transformed into a must-see attraction for international visitors and locals alike.

When Dong Kim, a 29-year-old travel blogger, visited in October, the excited hordes reminded him less of a zoo than a South American soccer game or a Black Friday door-buster sale.

“I’ve gone to the Great Wall, I’ve been to the Colosseum, I’ve been to Christ the Redeemer in Rio. But [this] was by far the longest line I have ever waited in,” he said. “It literally felt like people would die for this hippo.”

But Moo Deng’s sudden celebrity was not merely a result of cute animal worship or the fact that the pygmy hippo, native to West Africa, is an endangered species. While she was gestating in her mother’s womb, a 31-year-old zookeeper was hatching a plan to make her a star — tapping into a worldwide culture well-versed in capitalizing on internet virality — and save the financially strapped zoo while he was at it.

Today Moo Deng is the most famous animal on the planet — for now.

Nearly 175 years before Moo Deng took the internet by storm, another exotic hippo helped save the world’s first modern zoo.

The London Zoo began in 1828 as a members-only community, but opened to the public in 1847 in an effort to earn enough money to stay afloat. Visitors grew bored until Obaysch, named after an island in the Nile where he was captured, arrived three years later. The first hippo seen in Europe since the Roman Empire, Obaysch doubled annual attendance, drawing up to 10,000 visitors every day.

Baby hippo Moo Deng plays with a zookeeper in the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in September.

(Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)

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“They had to figure out a way to keep the public interested,” said Robert Young, professor of wildlife conservation at the University of Salford in England. “The thing they came up with … celebrity animals.”

Fans quickly grew attached to their favorites. When the zoo sold Jumbo the Elephant to P.T. Barnum in 1882, people protested in the streets. A black bear named Winnipeg became the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Guy, a western lowland gorilla, received hundreds of birthday cards every year.

In the 20th century, animals in the news (Sea Biscuit) and movies and TV shows (Lassie, Punxsutawney Phil) captured the hearts of millions. Recently, social media has hastened the celebrity of animals such as Grumpy Cat and JiffPom the Pomeranian.

In 2017, Fiona the hippo went viral as the internet watched her fight to survive infancy. She became the biggest attraction at the Cincinnati Zoo, inspiring her own ice cream flavor and children’s book.

Leasing giant pandas from China has become another strategy to draw visitors. But foot traffic subsides after two years, Young said, while zoos spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on bamboo that the pandas sometimes refuse. Pygmy hippos can be housed and supported at a much lower cost.

Huanyuan Zhang, a college lecturer at the University of Oxford who studies West African forest ecology, was surprised to see a sudden uptick this year in references to his research. He was even more perplexed to discover the cause was a pygmy hippo born more than 6,000 miles from its native land.

“It just feels like, out of many friends, one of your normal friends suddenly becomes a celebrity,” said Zhang, who hopes that the world’s love for Moo Deng will raise awareness of deforestation and endangered species. There are fewer than 2,500 pygmy hippos alive today compared with 12,000 in 1982.

Male panda Yun Chuan was introduced to the public at the San Diego Zoo on Aug. 8. He and Xin Bao, a female panda, are the first giant pandas to enter the United States in 21 years.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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Young said zoos often rely on ambassador animals to bring attention to lesser-known species. But social media, he noted, will always favor the Moo Dengs of the world.

“The big issue,” he said, “is how do you get people interested in the uglies? Getting people to want to save a gorilla is quite easy. You try and get people to want to save the aye-aye, possibly the ugliest primate on the planet, it’s a very different situation.”

Four years after the pandemic choked off travel, the Khao Kheow Open Zoo had yet to recover from the financial devastation. With only a couple of thousand visitors per day, the budget to maintain the 2,000-acre zoo was stretched to its limits. Anticipating the birth of Moo Deng, zookeeper Atthapon Nundee sensed an opportunity.

Nundee had studied to become an electrician, but his first job out of college was driving a 10-wheeler truck around the country. After three years, he started looking for something closer to home. The zoo, a five-minute commute, had an opening.

Fans cheer as they see Moo Deng run around her enclosure at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in November.

(Lauren DeCicca / Getty Images)

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Over the next eight years, Nundee cared for baby hippos including two of Moo Deng’s siblings: Moo Wan and Moo Tun, also named after Thai pork dishes. Though Moo Deng is known for her spunky attitude, Nundee said her siblings were just as playful. So with one more on the way, Nundee was ready.

“I know when they become funny, how to set up the camera, which angle to take to see when it’s cute,” he said. “Any animal can become famous like Moo Deng. It’s just about how friendly you are with the animal.”

Moo Deng’s celebrity did not start at the moment of birth. To his dismay, Nundee discovered her crawling around the morning of July 10, placenta still attached. Their star had been born, and no one was there to document it.

But in August, the zoo posted a poll online asking the public to help choose her name. Nundee’s close-ups of her splashing in the water and snapping at the air started circulating on social media. Admirers called her sweet, or feisty, or filled with silent rage. Japanese residents working at the local industrial park shared their fan art, boosting Moo Deng’s popularity in Asia before her stardom spread west.

By September, the meme-ification of Moo Deng caught the attention of Molly Swindall, an influencer who posts about baby animals and attending Taylor Swift concerts. The 29-year-old was so enchanted that, in early October, she flew more than 18 hours to Thailand, stood at Moo Deng’s enclosure for four hours, and then returned to New York the next day.

“She’s absolutely iconic,” Swindall said. “Whether it’s a leaf being stuck to her face for a couple hours, or her moon-walking or biting knees, or running around with rage, she just makes you laugh.”

Moo Deng was so popular the zoo had to impose time limits for viewing.

(Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)

By the time she returned for a second visit, the zoo had implemented a five-minute limit for spectators, after some were caught tossing water and shells to try and rouse Moo Deng. Swindall still went through the queue three times, waiting about 30 to 40 minutes each round.

The baby hippo’s economic impact has spread far beyond the confines of the sprawling zoo in the Chonburi province.

Miles before the entrance, posters advertise Moo Deng ice cream. The restaurants in the area fill up at lunch time, and on weekends, makeshift stalls sell snacks along the road. The influx of tourists has boosted local incomes by 50% or more, nearby workers said. The month that Moo Deng was born, the zoo had fewer than 85,000 visitors. In October, total attendance rose to 300,000.

Decha Sontanawan, 59, spent about $1,000 to turn an old truck into a merchandise stall for Moo Deng pillows, keychains and T-shirts to sell outside the zoo. He recouped his investment within four days.

Decha Sontanawan sells Moo Deng pillows outside the Khao Kheow Open Zoo.

(Lauren DeCicca / Getty Images)

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Now Sontanawan, his wife, his daughter and his son-in-law, who all work at the zoo, take turns manning the Moo Deng truck on their days off. “Everything is better. Everything’s recovered, everything’s booming,” he said.

Skyrocketing demand has transformed Moo Deng into a brand. About 70 companies have paid the zoo for the rights to print Moo Deng on products such as pajamas, pet food and squeezable condensed milk. A supermarket chain launched its own Moo Deng-themed coconut juice after signing a contract that Monday afternoon, and a Thai business newspaper has reported that collaborations are expected to generate as much as $4.3 million by March.

The money now accounts for 30% of revenue, according to Narongwit Chodchoy, the zoo director, with proceeds going to zoo habitats and living conditions, as well as flood victims in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.

“We have to try to keep her fame and reputation going,” he said, although, at some point Moo Deng will lose some of her youthful “bounciness,” and thus some of her charm.

That’s why the zoo is already pursuing its next viral hit. A pair of two-toed sloths is on the way, in the hopes that with three — two males and one female— the zoo will produce another small star. If so, the baby also will be managed by Moo Deng’s keeper, who has enjoyed his own rise in fame, if not in pay.

For now, Moo Deng is still going strong. Other baby pygmy hippos born this year in Sydney, Berlin and Edinburgh, have failed to match her allure. The Edinburgh Zoo promoted its newborn pygmy hippo Haggis this month as a rival to Moo Deng’s famed cuteness. It later apologized for pitting the babies against each other.

Skyrocketing demand has transformed Moo Deng into a brand. About 70 companies have paid the zoo for the rights to print Moo Deng on products such as pajamas, pet food and squeezable condensed milk.

(Sakchai Lalit / Associated Press)

When a common hippo was born in Eastern Thailand last month, she was named by an online poll too, and christened Hom Daeng, the Thai word for “Shallot.” Pygmy hippo fans couldn’t help but compare. One Facebook user complained that Hom Daeng was too dry, unlike Moo Deng, who appears perpetually moist in photos.

“This one has no aura at all,” another critic wrote. “It’s like comparing a celebrity to an ordinary person.”

Special correspondent Poypiti Amatatham in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Bailey Williams was 18 when signed up for the Marine Corps, in part, she says, to escape her strict Mormon upbringing. During her three years as a military linguist, she pushed her body to extremes to prove her strength. She began running four hours a day, starving herself and binging and purging. Later she learned that eating disorders are more prevalent in the Marine Corps than they are in any other branch of the military.

“There’s a significant overlap in values that you’ll see in someone who’s committed to an eating disorder and someone who’s committed to being a good Marine: a level of competition, a level of bodily self-denial, and the belief that self-mastery comes in the form of physical prowess,” Williams says. “Those values make really good Marines and pretty solid chances of developing an eating disorder as well.”

Williams’ new memoir, Hollow, offers a vivid and, at times, brutal account of being a woman in the Marine Corps while struggling with disordered eating. She says that one of the things that drew her to the military was the “promise of meritocracy that I would be judged on my character and my effort — what I could control — and not my gender.” But, in fact, the opposite was true.

“My gender was so aggressively [judged],” she says. “I was sexualized from the first day, and that never really ended until the last day I left the Marine Corps.”

After being honorably discharged from the Marines in 2011, Williams spent most of her 20s backpacking and writing, which helped her change her relationship with her body and overcome her disordered eating.

“The story in Hollow [is] I feel within my own body that I am inherently weak,” she says. “And over the years of writing it, I was actively working on cultivating this new story of my body, which is actually I’m really strong and I’m very much capable of holding this younger self that … didn’t have that sense of value and self-worth and strength.”

Interview highlights

On going from the Mormon community to the Marines

I really struggled with some components of Mormon culture that I experienced as a reprimand to be smaller, to be quieter, to be a follower and not a leader. I knew that I didn’t want that. But I still had the imprint of that incredibly patriarchal upbringing that made it very hard for me to even understand that there was another way to live. I assumed somebody needed to be in charge of me. I needed some structure, some leadership, some degree of something I could plug into, some organization where I could feel like I was a participant. And the Marine Corps, it was another religion for me.

On her eating disorder

An eating disorder weakens you, but you don’t see it that way when you’re in it. I knew that what I was doing was harming me. I could feel it, especially in the end when I was very sick. Like, I could feel these warning lights dimly going off in my body, like something is very wrong internally. And yet I always found this mental acrobatics to justify my eating disorder as the only thing that would fix it. …

Bingeing and purging, that felt awful. It was just a horrible experience. So obviously the answer was I needed to just not eat, like that’s going to fix it — which is not at all true. It was so inconceivable to me that to feed myself would actually strengthen me. I think this really speaks to how inherently unsustainable an eating disorder is, because effectively you are crippling your energetic force. Right? Like you’re taking your life force and you’re trying to constrict it and say, “I can live on less,” and then, “I can live on even less than that.”

On her concern for women in the military during the Trump administration 

Since the recent election, I kind of have felt this really familiar fire under my skin. Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is saying that women are incompetent and that their presence in the military causes love triangles and drama. And the conversation about women in combat is a really charged one. And it distracts from the fact that ostensible leaders saying that kind of dismissive, reductionistic language is going to seep down through the ranks and it is going to affect women like me who are nowhere near combat, but are still going to be hearing this language of inherently: Your value within the Marine Corps, your value within the military is less than a man’s because you are not as mission critical. … And that kind of “othering” dismissed the heck out of the contributions of women who have been leaders in the military and have been smashing all these barriers as long as they’ve been in.

On the normalizing of inappropriate behavior and the silence around sexual assault

I was conditioned to understand that basically anything I heard that was inappropriate, the thing to do that would best convey that I wanted to be on this team was silence. So it starts there. And then there’s the casual touching, like the man who would just find an excuse to stand behind me and put their hands around my waist, or who would move me physically with their hands. …

And then you learn to not believe other women that you know. The first platoon I was in, there were women who had had a sexual violation, I don’t know the details fully, but I do know that the perpetrators were back in our platoon. [There had been] some slap on the wrist, some degree of being removed. And then they were back. … I learned to question when women said, “This thing happened to me,” because I was hearing, “Well, what were you wearing? Had you been drinking? Were you supposed to be there? What did you expect?”

On being sexually assaulted and deciding not to report it

I, at no point, seriously considered reporting that assault, in part because I lacked the language to name it, and secondly, because I knew it wouldn’t be taken seriously. Or, at least, I felt that it would not be taken seriously. I saw and heard for years how we spoke about women who did report sexual assault, and I knew that it would somehow be my fault. I was there, I hadn’t been drinking, but I was there. …

I just so absolutely anticipated that the response would be, But did he really? … It was violating and painful and sad and it was like, I don’t want to expose this to scrutiny and to doubt. … I knew it wouldn’t be taken seriously. And if it was taken seriously, it was going to be my life that got harder and not his.

On how she feels in her body now as a civilian and a yoga teacher

The years since leaving the Marine Corps have been so beautiful. I have been outrageously blessed and just have had a really great last decade or so. Yoga was very transformative. I’ve practiced and taught for almost a decade and just learned different perspectives of feeling like my body is an ally and not something to subjugate. I think of my body as a teacher and like a very good teacher and a profoundly wise and intuitive teacher. I know this book is quite dark. I know I worked with some really dark elements within it, but I also would name that I feel so much joy within my physical being and within my relationships and within my family. And I know in my heart that some of that joy I would not feel in quite the same way had I not known the alternative. So, yes, I feel great joy in my body and a gratitude that comes from recovery and knowing that there was a different way to live in my body that is no longer my story.

To find out more, or get help in dealing with an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorder Association or text “HOME” to 741741.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.