Today officially kicks of Thanksgiving Prep 2008.  I have all the shopping done (except the fresh turkey that I need to pick up tomorrow).

So, what’s on tap for today?

- Stuffing prep,  including sauteeing the italian sausage and cooking the wild rice.  I’ll assemble it all into a mass of bread cubed goo on Thursday before it goes into the bird.  Yes, I am one of the daredevils that actually puts my stuffing into the turkey to bake it.  I haven’t killed anyone… yet.  Maybe this year!

- Cheese Sauce:  I have been looking forward to making this cheese sauce for weeks.  You see, we belong to an amazing CSA.  This year they offered a cheese share, which we signed up for without even blinking.  Well, we are blinking now!  We love it, don’t get me wrong.  The cheese is some of the best organic, artisan cheese you can find on the planet.  But the reality is that two people can not keep up with the cheese deliveries. 

Not even the staving Shiba Inus have been able to keep up.  So my refrigerator is overflowing with cheese, and the sooner I use it, the sooner I can start using my refrigerator for non-cheese storage. 

- Pumpkin Pies:  I roasted the butternut squashes (also from my CSA) over the weekend, now it is time to assemble them into pies.  I’m making the traditional pumpkin cheesecake pie, of course.

More later - wish me luck!

When it comes to holidays, nothing surpasses Thanksgiving for tradition and for hours of time spent in the kitchen cooking.

And this year will be no different than other years we’ve spent celebrating the holiday.  Twenty-some people will descend on the house like ravenous vultures, eating everything in site.

Ok, that might be somewhat a bit of hyperbole, but it sure doesn’t seem like it when the turkey comes out of the oven and the hordes descend.

I know that the commercials, and cards, and traditional programs around Thanksgiving depict the elder male of the family standing at the head of the table, masterfully carving a beautifully dressed and arranged bird.  His impeccable family sits at the formally set table, dressed in their best finery, with looks of awe and adoration on their faces. Why look! A quick Google image searched showed me exactly that:

Who ARE these people, and what planet do they live on??

This is what it looks like at our house.  The turkey gets pulled out of the oven and the vultures immediately descend.  People start vying for the tail, the skin, and any hunk of meat they can get their hands on before the carving even starts.  Typically, the only way to ward the vultures off is with several serious waves of the carving knife.  And that seldom works.

THAT is our family tradition.  Try to finish off the turkey before it even makes it to the table!  Then fill your plate with everything else, and drowned it all in cheese sauce.

I don’t expect that this is going to change too much.  It pretty much puts an end to any fantasies of an elegantly prepared dinner with candlelight and soothing music playing in the background.  But there is much screaming, yelling and wrestling that takes place, that makes up for the lack of background music, right?

At any rate, here’s the menu, so far:

Appetizers:  Cheese, sausage, crackers, olives, carrots, deviled eggs
Cole Slaw
26 Pound Turkey
Italian Sausage and Wild Rice Stuffing
20 Pounds Mashed Potatoes with herbs and cream cheese
Gravy
Cheese Sauce
Peas and Pancetta with pearl onions
Cauliflower 
Broccoli
Black-Eyed Peas
Cornmeal Fried Okra
Green Bean Crap*
Bread
Pies:  Pumpkin Cheesecake, Apple, Pecan, Chocolate Pecan, Blueberry, Double Chocolate Fudge 

*Yet another family tradition, you can read about it here.  You may note that we had basically the same menu last year.  See, we ARE a traditional family.

Each year I swear I’m going to blog along with all the prep.  I live up to that vow up until Thanksgiving morning.  It’s all over after that.

I’m afraid that I drove a deli counter clerk around the bend recently.  And I still don’t know how it really happened.  A bit of background, first…

There are two bits of Italian food that I absolutely love - Bruschetta and Prosciutto.  As much as I love them, the pronunciation of them has always been a stumbling block unless I thought about it, because my inclination is to pronounce each of these in the opposite way that they should be. 

Bruschetta is pronounced Brew - SKET- ta.  But I always wanted to pronounce it Brew - SHET - ta.  Proscuitto is pronounced pro - SHOE - toe, but I always wanted to pronounce it pro - SKEW- toe.  I’m sure you can understand the stress this has caused me in life.

In my spare time, I could be found muttering to myself “pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta,  pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta,  pro-SHOE-toe - brew-SKET-ta”.  And then one day, it just came naturally.  Without thinking, brew-SKET-ta flowed naturally from my lips without thought.  Pro-SHOE-toe was simply second nature, requiring no deep concentration.

And so, without even thinking, I walked up to the (non-Italian) deli counter in our mass market chain.  They used to carry chopped tomatoes, seasoned with basil, garlic, and olive oil at the counter (they called it bruschetta), but as of late they had started putting it in cartons and hiding it in a new place each time I visited.  I suspect it is one of those games born out of boredom that deli counter workers indulge in worldwide.

“Excuse me,” I said politely.  “Can you tell me where you’ve put the brew-SKET-ta?”.  The deli counter said, “What are you talking about?”.

“Brew-SKET-ta”, I said.  “The chopped tomotoes that you used to keep in the deli counter, but that you now put in cartons.  Can you tell me where they are?”.

The deli counter stared at me with frustration in her eyes and exclaimed loudly, “It’s brewSHETta.  BruSHETta!”

Taken somewhat aback, I merely responded, “Ok, so where do you keep that?”

She waved in the general direction of a deli case afar, and continued to exclaim loudly, “It’s brewSHETa.  I’ve never even heard it called brew-SKET-ta.  I am so sick of you people”.

I grabbed my carton of bruschetta and carried on, as the deli counter clerk continued to rant loudly.  Three aisles away, I could still hear her loudly exclaiming her disgust with customers in general, but me specifically.  Though not the smartest move on my part, I turned back to the counter to discuss her clear stress.  She got even louder as she screeched about the twenty years of service she had put in dealing with idiots like me.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry you didn’t agree with my pronunciation - but don’t you think this is a bit uncalled for?  I’m just here shopping.  There’s no need to scream at me while I am three aisles away”.

The deli counter clerk  exclaimed, “I hate customers.  I’m through with customers.  I’ve spent twenty years dealing with customers and I’ve had it!  Go ahead and turn me into the manager - I’ve already turned my two week notice in.  What are they going to do, fire me?!?!?”

I admit.  I did go and speak with the manager.  I let him know that one of his employees had snapped, and was on the verge of doing irreparable damage to his customer service image.  I didn’t really need to tell him - we could hear her screaming as we talked.  As he approached her to get her to calm down, she grabbed her belongings and announced her intentions to leave rather than be asked to leave.

I’m still a bit puzzled by it all.  My only hope is that it does not create a setback in my newly found bruschetta/prosciutto confidence!  Who knew the peril that could be found in proper pronunciation.

It’s that time of year when anyone who writes about wine feels obligated to make recommendations for wines to serve at Thanksgiving. In keeping with that tradition, here are mine.

My significant other and I have fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving, an elegant meal with a small group of gourmet friends featuring a number of elegant courses accented by fine wine paired perfectly with each dish. The realitiy is that we host a family gathering of eighteen (or is it twenty?) people ranging in age from roughly one to seventy. The dinner is traditional turkey (26 pounds), mashed potatoes (15 pounds), various vegetables served with cheese sauce (too many pounds to count), and of course that jellied cranberry sauce that only one or two people eat. We’re lucky that by adding two tables end to end with the dining room table and using every chair in the house we can actually get the crowd all seated, if only momentarily. Only about half of the adults are wine drinkers with the rest drinking milk, soda and beer.

With that in mind, we avoid anything over $15, try to keep it simple, and have enough on hand so that there is a glass left to drink while cleaning up after the crowd has gone. Here then is what we probably will be drinking this Thanksgiving.

For a white, we’ve been drinking the Hogue Gewurtztraminer ($9). I am not a big fan of Chardonnay, especially at the low end, and don’t find it a good match for food. The Hogue has a nice balance of crispness and fruitiness without being too sweet. Just the thing to go with turkey and mashed potatoes. If you prefer your whites a little sweeter, Hogue also makes a Late Harvest Riesling in the same price range that should suit you. Both of these wines are readily available.

The subject of the perfect red wine for Thanksgiving always causes debate, and from any group of three wine experts you can expect at least four opinions. In the past, I’ve usually chosen either a Zinfandel or a Syrah. Syrah is a very food friendly wine and Zinfandel has enough fruitiness to avoid overpowering the turkey.

This year I think we will go with the Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel ($12-$14). This is a nice Zin with a bit more depth to it than Zin’s a few dollars less. There are certainly a number of Zin’s in this price range that would also be good choices, the Ravenswood Vintner’s Blend ($10) and the Renwood Sierra Foothils ($12) come to mind.

If I was going to go with a Syrah, I’d be tempted to choose the Qupe Central Coast ($16) though it is just over the $15 mark. I’ve been a fan of this wine for years. It is elegant, smooth, and extremely food friendly, everything one looks for in a good Syrah. There are of course any number of Australian Syrah’s (Shiraz), but this is after all, an American holiday.

Cheesecakes from The Confectional

We recently received a delivery of cheesecakes from The Confectional, out of Seattle, WA.  We don’t live anywhere near Seattle, so that might seem a little bit awkaward and strange.  Why order cheesecakes from afar?

We can think of at least 14 reasaons why!  The cheesecakes come in at least that many flavors, and they are great!  Caramel, Cocunut Cherry Chocolate, Cookies & Mint Chocolate, Kahlua White Chocolate, Mexican Chocolate, Mochaccino, Peanut Butter & Chocolate, Quadruple Chocolate, Raspberry White Chocolate, Seattle’s New York-Style, Sugar-Free Rasberry Chocolate and Triple Berry are the “standard” flavors of cheesecakes that you can choose from, and trust us, after experiencing all of these flavors, it would be hard to choose a favorite.  They were all rich, moist and flavorful, and each one stood on its own as a top notch treat.

The Confectional delivers these mini-cheesecakes to your doorstep, and they are the perfect size for serving as an elegent end to a formal dinner party.  They would also be perfect for serving at a casual buffet, a bridal or baby shower, or any other get together.  These cheesecakes are unique, and add a touch to any event that would be hard to achieve in any other way.

We served our cheesecakes at a business meeting.  The delivery arrived very quickly from The Confectional, and in perfect condition.  When this company packs their goods for shipping, they mean business.  It was shipped FedEx, with care given to every detail geared around getting the shipment to its destination intact and at a safe temperature.  Take a look at some of the packing material - you can see why these cheesecakes arrived on the doorstep in better shape than carrying a cheesecake home from across town:

All in all, The Confectional delivers the best cheesecakes you can buy, in the perfect portion, elegantly.  We enthusiastically recommend these cheesecakes for any occasion, from a business meeting (like ours) to a formal event, to a treat to horde for just yourself and your friends and family. 

The Confectional
1530 Pike Place, Seattle, WA 98101
theconfectional.com
(206) 282-4422