Let Lumia, Surface and Microsoft Band help you over Thanksgiving

See how your Lumia smartphone, Surface device, and Microsoft Band can keep you organized and healthy during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Whether you’re traveling hundreds of miles to eat a homemade Thanksgiving meal at your parents’ house or hosting the celebratory dinner yourself, Microsoft’s family of devices can help you over this busy holiday.

Thanksgiving with Lumia

If you’ll be one of the many road warriors on Thanksgiving Day, activate Cortana’s tracking feature so she can alert you when you should start driving given the current weather and traffic conditions. If you’re flying over the Thanksgiving holiday, Cortana can track whether your flight is on time or whether there’s a flight delay as well as give you airport gate information.

Does the idea of preparing a five-course dinner sound daunting? Keeping lists—one of OneNote’s many features – is essential to stay on top of things.

You can jot down the ingredients you need to buy for each course, for example, as well as the drinks for the meal (red wine and beer for the adults, milk and juice for the kids) and create an inventory of chores to do before your guests arrive.

Share OneNote pages if you need input from a friend or family member. And you can pin OneNote pages to your Start screen for easy access (such as when shopping at the grocery store).

Once your guests arrive, you can also use your Lumia phones (perhaps your new Lumia 950) to stream holiday music from your personalized playlist.

Thanksgiving with Surface

Your versatile Surface device (such as the Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book) is perfectly sized to help plan the Thanksgiving meal.

If you don’t already have cherished family recipes stored and shared on OneNote, finding new ones is a breeze on your Surface. Just ask Cortana to find Thanksgiving recipes and the Bing search engine will return thousands of mouth-watering ideas.

Once you’ve found the recipes to try, you can take notes or modify ingredients and the number of servings on Microsoft Edge with your Surface Pen. Save the web page with your edits in OneNote so you can share it with fellow cooks through email or text message.

For a more focused recipe search, there are several free recipe apps for your Surface available in the Windows Store. Here are a few that offer heartwarming holiday recipes:

Allthecooks Recipes: With a vibrant community of cooks from around the world, this app offers more than 150,000 recipes with photos and step-by-step instructions.

Epicurious: Don’t smudge your screen while cooking! Voice-activated commands in this app let you follow tens of thousands of recipes while keeping your hands free.

So Cookbook: Browse more than 350,000 recipes and follow their clear instructions with So Cookbook’s intuitive interface.

Once the turkey, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie are ready and everyone is seated at the dining table, try this: Position your Surface at a place setting and reach a far-flung friend or relative via Skype video. That way, he or she can participate in the family fun–sans calories.

Thanksgiving with Microsoft Band 

Speaking of calories, the new Microsoft Band—in conjunction with your Lumia and the Microsoft Health mobile app—can help you live healthier. Check out these healthy-eating tips from the Microsoft Health Blog (hint: drink more water and less eggnog).

In addition, this Microsoft Health Blog post on staying trim over the holidays recommends doing interval and strength-training before you indulge in that extra piece of apple pie at Thanksgiving.

Are these tips helpful? Let us know on Twitter via @Surface, @Lumia or @MicrosoftBand.