Look guys, I'm not going to tell you tomorrow's going to be easy. Historically, Thanksgiving's the time for alcohol-fueled arguments with your racist uncle and this year...well, has been this year. And all of that's before someone overcooks the mashed potatoes or sets the turkey on fire.

Before we face potential anxiety tomorrow, let's live inside a world of calm and confident cooking with America's most darling culinary grandparents: Julia Child and Jacques Pepin.

In their classic 1999 Thanksgiving edition of Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home, the duo hack apart a turkey with a meat cleaver (very satisfying!) in what was more or less an improvised scene that could only be pulled off by professionals like these two.

"We had talked about how to do the turkey a day before we shot that show," Pepin recalled in a conversation with the Washington Post. "Julia had said, 'Let's try to bone it and stuff it.' I had never done a turkey that way before. What you see on camera is the first time, with no recipe, even different than what we had discussed."

While most of our Thanksgiving tables aren't going to employ this level of culinary finesse, Child stresses that improvisation and flexibility are at the heart of cooking, and should theoretically make the experience less intimidating. "As we say, recipes are not written in stone, they're just to give you an idea of what to do and then you go on," she says.

But cooking a high-pressure meal can come with a huge amount of anxiety; luckily, Julia was there to help until her death in 2004. Child "embraced the role of national Thanksgiving commander in chief" as outlined in a lovely profile by the Times about the cook's tradition of leaving her home number listed for nervous strangers to call with any Thanksgiving crisis.

If Pepin and Child's masterpiece meal doesn't make you feel hugged by a warm blanket of comfort then perhaps Pepin's suggestion to drink "a lot of wine" might help.

Recreate Jacques and Julia's meal here, though be forewarned it's not for the faint of heart (or anyone not confident wielding a sharp knife).