Photo: Food52

For those moments this season when your smartphone isn't either blaring Christmas carols or streaming videos of a calming ocean, these five apps will help you be a little more productive.

FOOD52 Holiday Recipe & Survival Guide, $9.99 for iPad.
This app, spun off of the crowd-sourced site Food52, has 75 recipes for Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year's, 100 minutes of video tutorials, plus extras like step-by-step photos of zesting, peeling and segmenting citrus; rules for reheating food; and a dish-washing game plan.

Baking with Dorie, $7.99 for iPad.
Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan gives more than 20 baking lessons via 100-plus videos in this app that's as useful as it is beautiful to look at. Learn how to make Dorie's All-in-One Holiday Bundt Cake (with pumpkin, cranberries, pecans and a maple syrup icing), Cinnamon Squares and more cold-weather treats.

Grocery iQ, free for Android, iPhone and iPad.
This app lets you build your food shopping list quickly by scanning the barcode for any product, or via predictive text (and its database contains millions of food items). You can create lists for multiple stores, sort your list by aisle, and find coupons for items you're shopping for.

If, like me, you're feeling a little slow after four days of heavenly (but not exactly light) food, try one of these healthy dishes. Every one of them is easy to make on a weeknight, has minimal ingredients, and won't leave you feeling like you need to loosen your belt.

1. Sea Scallops with Orange and Rosemary
Low-calorie scallops and high-vitamin OJ combine in this fancier-than-your-average-Tuesday-night dish.

2. Lisa Oz's Lentils with Chia Seeds Recipe
Aromatics and herbs transform vegetables from simple to spectacular.

3. Mango Chicken Salad
This simple salad lets the fresh, sweet flavor of mangoes shine through.

4. Low-Fat Spaghetti Carbonara Pasta with Peas
Thanks to the low-fat milk in this recipe, you won't come away from the table feeling like you overdid it.

5. Moroccan Chicken Over Couscous
This is one of those back-pocket recipes you can take in any direction: Our instructions explain how to make it Italian, Indian or Chinese.

6. Miso Salmon with Cucumber Salad
Broiling salmon in miso, mirin and soy sauce keeps it moist and imparts salty-sweet flavor.

7. Double-Soy Ginger Tofu
Humble bean curd is actually incredibly delicious. With rice and a salad, or some nice green vegetable, this makes a more-than-satisfying dinner.

8. Curry Carrot Ginger Soup
This tangy, Asian-inspired take on traditional carrot soup includes lemongrass, coconut milk and ginger.

Photo: Thinkstock

Low in calories and fat, high in fiber, and mouth-puckeringly tart, these berries have become a mainstay in granola, oatmeal and salad. But we've found their sweetness lends just the right kick to many other foods, too. Try adding them to...

1. Couscous, quinoa or pilafs
2. Thanksgiving stuffing
3. Roasted apples, sweet potatoes or winter squash
4. Teriyaki (really!)
5. Tuna or chicken salad
6. Turkey wraps
7. Brie wrapped up in crescent roll dough and baked
8. Cookie batter (they go especially well with white chocolate)
9. Banana bread
10. Apple pie

Keep Reading
Tyler Florence's recipe for Broccoli Slaw with Cranberries
7 ways to cook with fresh cranberries
November's must-try food guide

Photo: Cristina Ferrare

For years in my family, every Thanksgiving, a petty argument among the dark meat lovers would start about 20 minutes before dinner. It was always about who was going to get a wing, leg, or thigh, since there are only two of those per bird. The thighs were the easiest to deal with, since I could get two to three servings from each. The wings and legs, not so much. So I decided to make life easier for myself by preparing extra wings, legs and thighs. I also realized by doing this I didn’t have to deal with people who would gather around the dinner table way before it was time to eat so they could be the first to grab the dark meat. Preparing extra turkey parts (I make more than I need) ensured everyone would get what they wanted and it made me feel less anxious since I always play chef as well as referee!

Photo: Thinkstock

As French macarons continue to invade our shores, vying for the spot of sweetest little treat and giving the cupcake craze a run for its money, it can be easy for fans of the delicate almond-flour cookies to overlook one thing: Cupcakes are damn easy to make. Most of us grew up dumping flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl for school birthdays and Girl Scout bake sales. There's an art to the cupcake, of course, but it's unfussy, and even a lumpy or chewy batch can be slathered over with enough icing and eaten. The macaron, though, can be intimidating. Crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside, the brightly colored cookies burn easily and seem to crack without reason. When I made my first batch at home, piping almond batter onto a cookie sheet, I was left with more corkscrews than ovals on the tray and in my zeal to sandwich two of them together around a sweet jelly, I overfilled them and helped more than one friend stain her shirt.

So when I met Daniel Hebet at a macaron-making demonstration in southern France, I had a few questions. (To start, why do my macaroons come out like broken jelly bombs while yours are perfectly airy, brightly hued confections?) Hebet cut his teeth at Ladurée, the famous macaron shop that opened its Parisian doors in 1862, and he's now the owner of the Michelin-starred Les Jardins du Quai in Provence. (It's from there that he leads cooking demonstrations for Trafalgar Tours.) As we whipped up a batch of perfectly shaped, perfectly baked macarons, Hebet shared these secrets, which will work with any macaron recipe you favor.

Photo: Craig Cutler

With six Momofuku restaurants in New York, Sydney and Toronto, chef David Chang is an expert at pleasing multiple and varying palates. And then there's Thanksgiving with his family. For the annual eat-fest, 40 or 50 of his Korean relatives all bring their own "famous" dish. The menu mixes classic Thanksgiving foods with Korean specialities, like Chang's aunt's "insane dumplings," and his mom's braised short ribs. Six years ago, Chang started contributing his own dish to the potluck: the Brussels sprouts with chili, cilantro, and lime juice he'd just started making at his restaurants. Today, it's his famous dish for the annual family feast.

The side isn't completely vegetarian (it does contain fish sauce), but it's considerably less meaty than the fare Chang is known for, in that it does not call for at least a little bit of chicken fat. And while we are aware that some people keep a safe distance from these cute little cabbages unless they're served with some sort of cured meat (and yes, this Bacon Brussels Sprouts recipe does sound amazing), there's so much excitement in Chang's dish--spicy heat, tangy citrus, cooling herbs--that they just might turn on the teenager whose plate is usually a half-and-half mix of turkey and mashed potatoes. It's a brilliant mash-up of international flavors with a traditional American food (for more examples of fusion that works, check out this Ginger-Pear Cranberry Sauce and this Goat Cheese Panna Cotta with Canned Cranberry Jelly Cut-Outs).

For Chang's recipe--and 8 other sides from Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Giada De Laurentiis, April Bloomfield, Eric Ripert and others--see our Thanksgiving Side Dish Recipes from the World's Best Chefs slideshow.

Photo: Thinkstock

Aside from a roasting pan, lots of serving platters and a clean oven, here are 5 essential items that will make cooking the biggest dinner of the year a little easier.

Containers You're Willing to Part With
There will be leftovers: Now's the time to assess your Tupperware collection and toss any partner-less bottoms or lids. If the clean-up session leaves you with just a few choice sets you don't want to give away, buy inexpensive containers at your supermarket or consider these Biotek take-out boxes, which you can order in small quantities for just $1.10 each.

Heavy-Duty Tin Foil
Any kind of foil will work if you just want to keep side dishes warm, but a heavier weight one is necessary to keep turkey breast meat juicy and prevent the skin from burning before the rest of the bird has cooked (which is a likely scenario, since higher-fat dark meat cooks more slowly than white). Many cooks like to cover the bird loosely with foil for the first few hours of cooking.

I like to give the objects in my life names. My station wagon is named Louise (as in: "Please start, Louise"). My rocking chair from childhood is named Baby (as in: "Why is it when Mommy sits down in Baby and relaxes with a nice quiet book, everybody suddenly wants a glass of milk in a Cars 2 cup with a straw?"). My slow cooker is named Sanchez. This is because the first authentically delicious dinner I ever made in it was an adobe-covered pork shoulder that I shredded with a fork and served on warm corn tortillas with a homemade mango salsa. This is also because I need to thank my slow cooker for nourishing my kids and saving my dinners on a daily basis. "Thank you, Sanchez!" sounds a lot better than "Thank you West Bend 5-Quart Oblong-Shaped Slow Cooker."

Photo:Thinkstock

There was another time, however, when Sanchez and I did not connect. For one long painful year, I made about 52 dishes (one per week) in it, all of which tasted the same. There was tender bland saddle with gravy, tender bland saddle with white wine, bits of tender bland saddle with garlic and mushrooms, and whole tender bland saddle with egg noodles. Some weekends, I would even invite guests over and brag about how easy using a slow cooker was—"Guys, you can sit around drinking wine and cracking jokes with your friends, and when it's time to eat, you just open up the cooker and slop it onto your plates!" But there was always that illuminating moment when we all had sat down, bit into our first forkful of so-called meat and chewed and chewed and chewed, trying to discover any taste in the food at all or any polite adjective that we could use besides "bleck!." Occasionally, I would ask brightly, "Who want seconds?" just to watch the whole table gasp in horror and look guilty down at their still full plates.

It wasn't as though I was in denial about my slow cooker fiascos. I simply had no solution. My life is too insane to spend long hours at the stove, where things catch of fire if you don't pay attention. So I approached the problem the way I do when I have to fix the DVD player—I plugged in a bunch of stuff. I tried ingredients after ingredient into the slow cooker, as well as called in some experts, trying to figure out what kind of foods not just bring out the flavor of dish, but also amp it up to downright delectable. The 7 magical answers (here) will surprise you.

Read More:
The Secret Ingredients to Transform Your Slow Cooker
Rediscovering the Crock Pot
Anchovies in a stew?

Photo: Cristina Ferrare

I have been having so much fun sharing Thanksgiving recipes with you over these past few weeks (follow me @cristinacooks for the latest). I'm curious to hear which ones will actually make it to your dinner table. This week I'm sharing a recipe for stuffing that happens to be one of Oprah's favorites dishes! I made it for her on her show and we had a great time in the kitchen together. I've also had the pleasure of making it for her along with family and other friends for Christmas Day feasts many times over the years! The moment I start to prepare the stuffing, I get so excited. The aroma from the onions, carrots and celery in the fruity olive oil smells so familiar, I guess because it's how my mom and grandmother would start their stuffing. It immediately conjures up warm feelings of home and family. I love it when my kids or husband will shout out from the other room, "It smells like Thanksgiving in here!"  That makes me smile every time!

Photo: Thinkstock

After a certain point in life, you start to realize your limits. In my case, it's how many ingredients I will buy to make a weeknight supper. I don't have a set number, but generally, I'm willing to pick up two, maybe three things--4 tops. The rest of the meal usually comes out of the pantry. At the risk of sounding like a complete nut, sometimes the prospect of buying one more ingredient is enough to make me not make a dish. ("And I need to get cream cheese? Forget it.")

Which is why I love when a recipe tells me to thicken a sauce with yogurt. I adore cream cheese and sour cream (which many recipes rely on to make dishes creamy), but they aren't staples in my house. Yogurt is, though, since it's healthy, kid-friendly and something everyone in the family will eat for breakfast, a snack or dessert. And with the cool weather, my weeknight suppers have taken a heartier turn, so now yogurt's popping up on my dinner menu, too. I'm using it in in soups and stews from carrot-ginger to curried lentil; cooling dips, which go well with spicy chicken dishes; and salad dressings accompanying winter greens like endive.

Cooking with yogurt is easy. Here's how to do it.