Cranberry sauce. Brown gravy. Sweet potato casserole. Some sort of cherry Jell-o mold, with what appears to be fragments of fruit encased inside. Nope, not the menu. That's what's on your shirt at the end of Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving meals are great, but they are also a brightly colored minefield of foods that, for some reason, seem particularly attracted to your clothes. When you're at a family dinner, or at her family's house for dinner, you don't want to spend the evening with stains on your shirt. (And if you've seen the way food flies when my family sits down to eat, you know there will be stains.)

Here's a solution: While we were at lunch a few weeks ago, a buddy of mine used a Tide to Go stain remover pen to take a tomato sauce stain out of his dress shirt. I sat there, amazed and dumbfounded, looking at him like people looked at David Blaine when he announced he was going to spend a week buried in concrete up to his neck with a cage of live rats over his head. (He didn't really announce that. It's just something I keep hoping for.)

I've been addicted to Tide to Go ever since. I bought a 3-pack, and keep one at work, one in my briefcase, and one at The Pad. It's great on fresh food and drink stains - like ketchup, bbq sauce, coffee, wine - the usual stuff I find down the front of my shirt.

When you're heading to a holiday party, or an important business meeting or job interview, slip one of these pens in your briefcase or pocket. That way everyone will focus on how sloppy the Lions are playing, and not on how sloppy you are.

I paid about $6 for a 3-pack. Available at supermarkets everywhere. www.tidetogo.com