Almost daily from early October, she takes calls from friends around the country who are deep in the holiday weeds. “People think they can do Thanksgiving all in one day, and that is wrong, wrong, wrong,” she said. “I want people to be one step ahead, always. It’s just the key.”

Planning ahead means less work on a day when the house is filled with both people and expectations. Begin now, she advises, by writing a menu. Then gather all of the recipes, and start filling in a calendar. Make a prep list, noting dishes that can be made this week or the next. Make shopping lists so you won’t be running to the store a dozen times. “You need lists for your lists,” she said.

Hers are rendered in precise detail. In October, she begins saving drippings and making stock for gravy. A week before the holiday, she will bring up the wineglasses from the basement. Next to her notation for the Cajun sausages, she wrote, “Have Jimmy bring day before Thanksgiving on his way to hunting camp.”

For the past few weeks, Ms. Charboneau has been making dishes that freeze remarkably well. Don’t gasp. A good bit of her meal will have been in the freezer weeks before it is served. “The only thing I really sweat is what happens if the electricity goes out,” she said. “I am constantly checking the freezers.”

She has already filled two hotel pans with her beloved Natchez creamed spinach, and several more with two variations of dressing. The caramelized sugar custard and other components for her banana trifle are in there, along with disposable aluminum pans of brisket already sliced and in gravy. (Brisket has become a tradition ever since she went looking for an alternative to turkey, which she doesn’t much like, and decided that prime rib was too expensive.)

Clearly, Ms. Charboneau is not your average home cook. In the 1970s, she took a job making food at a construction site in rural Alaska to earn money to attend culinary school in Paris. In the 1980s, she ran Regina’s at the Regis in San Francisco’s theater district. In the 1990s, she opened the nightclub Biscuits and Blues a block away.