Friday, December 29, 2006
A photo of the Christmas Dinner I prepared for friends and family. Missing from the photo is the delicious roasted goose, which was further down the table. I ordered the goose from Mike at Tamarack Hollow Farm back in September and picked it up at the Union Square Greenmarket the Wednesday before Christmas. I simply roasted it and didn't even bother to baste it while it was in the oven. It was moist and rich in flavor, simply wonderful. To accompany it, I made David Leite's celery root gratin, green beans with shallots and vermouth, mashed sweet potatoes, and caramelized apples, which cooked in goose fat, cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar, and Calvados. Oh the whole meal was so yummy, I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it. The goose and apples was my favorite part. I might want to make that every Christmas from now on!
A more detailed article about yesterday's decision to allow food from clones animals: F.D.A. Tentatively Declares Food From Cloned Animals to Be Safe. "Cloning is too expensive to be used to make animals only to then grind them into hamburger or even to milk them. Rather, farmers and breeders are cloning prized livestock so they can then be used for breeding using more conventional means of reproduction...most food from cloning would come from the sexually produced offspring of the cloned animals."
My bùche de Noël on Christmas Day
Thursday, December 28, 2006
The government declared Thursday that food from cloned animals is safe to eat. "Officials said they don't think special labels are needed, although a decision on labeling is pending." I sure hope they decide to label the cloned animals. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, it seems like you should be able to make an informed decision as a consumer.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
The Scottish celebration of Hogmanay takes place on New Year’s Eve and for centuries ranked above Christmas in the Caledonian calendar. Change up your routine and learn how to celebrate Hogmanay. Why not prepare grouse on a bed of oniony skirlie followed by clootie dumpling for an authentic Scottish spread? (I don't know what half those words even mean, but it sounds interesting.) I was wondering what to do for New Year's Eve, I think Hogmanay may be the answer!
This is the year everyone discovered that food is about politics and people can do something about it. Between Wal-Mart announcing plans to sell organic, the numerous E. coli outbreaks, and the continued rise of farmers' markets, 2006 may just be the year of a great food awakening in the United States. I hope so.
Monday, December 25, 2006
My partner in Serious Eating, Ed Levine, will be on ABC's Good Morning America tomorrow morning, December 26th. He'll be discussing New Year's food ideas. Also don't miss the flaming "yule" log over at Serious Eats today. Doesn't look quite like the bùche de nöel I made!
How's that foie gras ban going in Chicago? The city has sent warning letters to nine restaurants believed to have served foie gras but issued no citations. And Mayor Richard Daley called it "the silliest law" the City Council has ever passed. Chefs are openly serving it and some are even hanging their warning letters on their walls. [via Ruhlman]
Friday, December 22, 2006
Today's final gift suggestion contains neither a picture nor a link, because it's more of a rough idea. And that idea is cheese! Why not go out and buy someone a hunk of some really expensive lovely cheese (Coach Farm's triple cream goat cheese comes to mind, or Humboldt Fog) that they'd never buy for themselves? For the price of a DVD, you can give someone a delicious treat they'll remember long after its been digested. And who doesn't love cheese?
That wraps up not only my gift suggestions but also probably my posting around here for a while. Family arrives in town tomorrow and I've got a Vermont goose waiting for them in my fridge. In addition there's a bûche de nöel to be constructed and many tasty side dishes to be prepared. Updates next week only if the mood strikes. If it doesn't, I'll see you back here in 2007.
Totally excellent photograph of some smiling kettles is an optical illusion. The faces aren't painted on, they're reflections of objects on the stove top. [via bb]
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Anyone interested in food would be interested in reading The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. Again, easy to pick up at the local bookstore for you last-minute shoppers out there. Or for $17.16 from Amazon. Stay tuned for tomorrow's final installment of my gift suggestions guide.
Second-rate chefs who eat one meal at El Bulli and think they’re Ferran Adrià don’t realize that bad foam belongs in cheap mattresses. Ed Levine assess the foodscape to determine what we’re going to see more of on our plates next year, and what we don't want to see ever again.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
"Whether it's sweet or savoury, people always love to receive something homemade," suggests the BBC and today's gift idea follows their advice. You might be too late to order something online, but it's probably not too late to make a nice food-related gift you can bring with you to holiday events. The BBC suggests some things you can purchase and assemble to make a gift basket (which they call a hamper) or you can do something all homemade, like make this lemon curd in less than an hour. $ varies depending upon what you make.
Honey, of course, he loved especially, slathered on bread and butter or crunched in the comb until the sticky goo ran down his chin. Nineteenth-century English poet Percy Shelley loved sweets, but boycotted sugar as many of his countrymen did because of its connection to slavery. An interesting look at some of the history of sugar from The Economist.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
You have until this Friday December 22 at 6 PM PST to donate to Menu for Hope, our food blogging fund raiser for UN World Food Programme. We've raised over $30,000 to date. Instructions here on how to donate, and how to be entered to win the KitchenAid mixer I've donated.
How to deal with the traumatizing experience of dining alone and how to cope with the perils of being a giant loser. Buzzfeed indentifies the latest trend of dining alone, and offers links to help you deal. That is, if you want to jump on the trend bandwagon and dine alone.
From the reader mail bag:
I was wondering if you have any experience trying to make a good General Tso's sauce for either chicken or tofu. I have done some searching of my own but feel that the recipes seem a little boring. Granted, it is a very generic (though popular) food item on a Chinese menu, but I was just hoping you might have come across a recipe or tried one yourself which made the food a little more exciting. I tend to prefer the sauce a little less sweet as well, but that's just me. Any feedback, advice, or creative thinking would be appreciated if you have the time.
I don't. Does anyone else? I don't do much Chinese cooking at home.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Today's better-late-than-never gift suggestion is a book you should be able to pick up at your local bookshop: Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home. Surely you're looking for something for that person who's not sure how to organize his or her kitchen? Martha's "Golden Rules for Kitchen Organization" will solve that, and many other problems your recipient probably didn't even know s/he had. For obsessive homekeeping advice, Martha Stewart is your gal. $27 at Amazon.com, prices may vary at your local bookstore.
Grant Achatz has made the use of pure scents - complementing the taste of food with items used for their smells alone - a hallmark of his inventive cuisine. "This year, for instance, rosemary branches began appearing on Alinea’s tables as centerpieces, only to become aromatics when, midway through the meal, they were placed into holes in the restaurant’s specially designed terra-cotta serving pieces, which were heated to 400 degrees." When I ate there last spring, I was served black cod on a pillow that released the scent of orange as it deflated. It was spectacular.
Photos by Matt Armendariz
Matt Armendariz explains how he creates beautiful food photos like those seen above. Of course he's got great gear, but he says natural light is best. This is my downfall: lighting. I never have enough good natural light when I need to shoot food -- usually because it's dinner time and I'm just about to eat it! His good tips will certainly help me.
Friday, December 15, 2006
It's the last day for gift ideas from handycraft site Etsy and today's selection is this awesome Weiner Dog Screen Printed Shirt! Alas, there's only one in stock, but it looks like they'll have more so maybe this is one of those "gifts" you just order for yourself. Who wouldn't want a t-shirt with this worried little weiner on it? I know I'd love one. $19.00 from Etsy. And next week, gifts procrastinators can (hopefully) pick up locally.
Can an upstart fry pan that costs a quarter of the price of All-Clad come from the kitchen-supply shop and reach the top? Over at Serious Eats, I pit two frying pans against each other to determine whether expensive pans are necessarily better. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments, so please feel free to share at the end of my article.
What happens when you limit yourself to spending $30 on food, for the entire month of November? You lose 18 pounds in one month, drink only water, and learn a lot about yourself and other people. Evan went Hungry For a Month and blogged about it every day. Wow.
The chef and staff of Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon wrote their new cookbook over two years on Mondays, when the restaurant is closed. "That is also the day when they do their pickling and preserving, so they held editorial meetings while making enough cornichons and corn relish to last through the winter." They self-published and sold out their first press run of 6,000 copies in three weeks. It sounds like a crazy, entertaining cookbook. I'd really like to eat there on my next trip to Montreal, whenever that is.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Looking for something for someone who's Oh So Retro? What about this Oh So Retro Half Apron. It's red with white polka dots. "Half-length apron with a flattering, slimming style and a flirty, flared skirt. Long ties at the waist make it adjustable for many sizes." And machine-washable! There's only one in stock like this, but the seller has other awesome aprons to chose from. $25 from Etsy.
It's official, the end times are upon us. Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of American Dictionaries, appeared on the Rachael Ray show last week to present a Certificate of Recognition to Rachael. EVOO is going into the next edition of the Oxford American College Dictionary. That's extra-virgin olive oil, for all you non-Food Network, non-Rachael Ray folks out there. Now that's it's official, I'm shall start to use it, but I'll pronounce it "ee-vous".
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Over the weekend, my friend Leslie passed away. Even though Leslie and I both loved to cook, somehow we never cooked for each other. That seems so odd now, I'm not sure how it happened, and I so wish we had. There was talk of a shipment of Madeleines to my door at one point, but that's as close as I came to tasting her food. So instead of cooking for each other, we shared advice about food with each other.
For my tips on turkey brining, I received in return two full pages of New York City recommendations from someone who knew and loved the city better than almost anyone I know. When she returned to New York to visit, she insisted on taking me to Pastis, and introduced me to their green beans. I'll never eat them again without thinking of Leslie. She even had a VIP phone number for reservations at Pastis and tried to share it with me, encouraging me to use it while she was living in San Francisco and unable to take advantage of it. "How could I pass for you?" I asked her, "That's crazy!" They all knew her there, she was a memorable figure. There was no way I could walk in and give my name as Leslie.
Whenever I go to a Le Gamin cafe, I can hear her voice in the menu items. I can hear her articulating the deliciousness of Oeufs Gamin. I can hear her emphatically stating that the cafe au lait at Le Gamin is The. Best. In. The. City. I've never dared have one anywhere else since I moved here. Of course, she didn't share her food tips with me alone, she posted pictures and recipes of an entire vegetarian dinner with recipes to Flickr.
I've been looking for a good recipe for my Christmas cookies this year. Fittingly, Leslie's last advent calendar post contained a recipe for Simple Sugar Cookies. When I saw it, I noticed she hadn't posted a frosting recipe. I'd planned to email her about it. I'm certain the one she would have shared with me would have been the best. Leslie wouldn't have had it any other way.
Today's gift idea: recipe cards! With vintage cookbook graphics, this set of ten recipe cards is perfect for your recipe-sharing gift recipient. Also included in your order: a set of 4 1" buttons made from old cookbook pages. Very cool. $5 from Etsy.
Speaking of coffee, all week Dethroner is writing about coffee, from grinder guidance to coffee maker musings. If you're looking to get up to speed on the roasted bean, it's a great place to start.
Does the purchase of Fairtrade coffee encourage the over-production of coffee? Is organic farming worse for the environment than using synthetic fertilizers? What about saving the environment by buying local? The Economist takes an interesting look at using food dollars as a form of political action.
Is a restaurant worth its conscionable weight if it never has enough capitol/care/time to offer its employees health insurance? "Do you ask the waiter if the chicken is free-range if you don't care whether he/she's making a living wage? Can you say you believe in immigrant's rights if you eat in a restaurant that hires undocumented workers because they're cheaper and won't complain about low wages/lack of healthcare/unbearable working conditions/boring, repetitive tasks/long hours without overtime? Can you preach the Organic values of a restaurant whose kitchen is 25% unpaid 'volunteer' workers?" Shuna asks if the public is ready for a transparent restaurant industry. I wonder if they're ready for the price increases that would accompany it.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Today's Etsy holiday gift idea is this way cool Barnyard Buddies Towel Set for all your animal-loving kitchen-towel using friends. The seller also offers towels with other designs as well, such as swallows, chickadees, and deer. Two towels for $17.50. Thanks Alaina!
Recently I learned how to make braised chicken wings with Daniel Boulud. Watch the video and learn for yourself, and then you can make them, as we'll be (shortly) posting the recipe for Daniel's wings on the Serious Eats site.
Munching fishbrain bread from Finland? No taste bud challenge is too great for lead singer Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, who's enjoyed a variety of culinary experiences as his band toured the world over the last couple of years.
In case my listing of gifts isn't doing it for you, here's a list of Gifts for the Nanogastronome from Wired News that features such sure-hit items as foamers and dehydrators. [via The Grinder]
Monday, December 11, 2006
I'm happy to announce that I'm participating in the Menu for Hope, a food blogger fundraising campaign. This year, Menu for Hope III will raise funds to support the UN World Food Programme, which provides hunger relief for needy people worldwide. Last year's Menu for Hope raised over $17,000 for Unicef, and I'm sure with more participation we can do even better this year!
How does it work? If you make a $10 contribution, you will be entered to win your choice of prizes donated by participating food bloggers. There's some really cool stuff in there, including coffee with Thomas Keller (either in CA or NY). I've donated a KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-Quart Mixer (in Empire Red).
If you're interested in participating, here's what you need to do:
1. Go to the donation page at First Giving.
2. Make a donation, each $10 will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize or prizes you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation. The prize code for my KitchenAid mixer is UE03. Do tell us how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code -for example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for UW01 and 3 for UW02.
3. If your company matches your charity donation, please remember to check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
4. Please also check the box to allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone.
5. Check back on Chez Pim on January 15 when we announce the result of the raffle. (The drawing will be done electronically. Our friend the code wizard Derrick at Obsession with Food is responsible for the wicked application that will do the job.)
Thanks for your participation, and good luck in the raffle!
Lovely hand-drawn sushi instructions from Flickr user MontanaRaven.
Today only 13 slaughterhouses process the majority of the beef consumed by 300 million Americans. Eric Schlosser on the sorry state of our food supply safety efforts and the role politics has played in making it less safe. One chilling statistic: "Cutbacks in staff and budgets have reduced the number of food-safety inspections conducted by the F.D.A. to about 3,400 a year -- from 35,000 in the 1970s." With food distribution more centralized than ever, ensuring the safety of our food supply is critical.
This week's gift suggestion comes from my favorite place for unique gifts: Etsy! Etsy, if you're not familiar with it, is an online marketplace for handcrafted goods. All week I'll be featuring gifts from Etsy, but consider yourself warned now: if you like what you see, you better go ahead and order it right away. Since everything's handcrafted, quantities are limited. Today's gift is a Llama Felt Snowman Ornament. "4 and 1/2 inch tall snowman with a lavender hat and a blue scarf. He's made entirely from my llama fiber with 'coal' buttons and eyes and a 'carrot' nose." So cute, he can hang from your recipient's tree for only $15.
The term "molecular gastronomy" does not describe our cooking, or indeed any style of cooking. Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal, Thomas Keller and Harold McGee step up with an international agenda for great cooking. "Three basic principles guide our cooking: excellence, openness, and integrity." Great principles, they should be applied to a lot more than cooking.
Could a chef make dishes that are as good, or better, using only the trace amount of trans fats allowed under the city’s new rules? With the passage of the trans fat ban in New York City, chefs are reformulating recipes to be compliant with the new regulations. I wonder if we'll see the development of a black market for trans fat baked goods in the future?
Friday, December 8, 2006
Yikes, I'm late on today's holiday gift recommendation! But this Bamboo Cutting Board is an easy, inexpensive present for your favorite cook or entertainer. It's great as a cutting board but stylish enough to put out as a cheese tray or dessert platter. I own two different sized boards, and I love the clean lines and interesting pattern of the bamboo. It's the hippest $15 present you'll find. $14.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond.
This year has brought an especially good crop of New York oyster varieties, reports Grub Street, and offers "three top places to slurp your share of the local abundance." I would like to do a comparison of some New England oysters and some Long Islands because Wellfleets are my favorite, but I can't say I've really tried Blue Points or some of the others mentioned in the Grub Street article.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Chicken Fried Bacon is all you need to know about this video. Hear about its invention, watch it being made, and then watch it being consumed. If you're not in awe of this man's genius and anxious to try some, you are dead to me. [via Metafilter]
Looking for a gift for a big beer drinker? What about a 5L Beer Dispenser? "A classy alternative to a keg, this contemporary beer dispenser keeps up to 5 liters of beer cool and right at your fingertips." What I can't figure out is how the beer gets in there (do you just pour a whole bunch of cans of Bud into it?) but I imagine a savvy beer drinker, before s/he's had too many, can solve the problem. And then you can just place this baby next to your sofa and refill without even getting up. Sunday football just got a little bit better. $99.99 from target.com.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
The White House Menu for the 2006 Holiday Receptions includes such American classics as "Chicken Fried Beef Tenderloin with White Onion Gravy," "Asparagus Tier with Lemon-Garlic Aioli" , and "Warm MacIntosh Apple Cobbler." Yum, I wish I were going to a White House Holiday Reception, if only for the chicken fried tenderloin.
Attention Megnut RSS Users: I've made a change to the location of my RSS file. It should be transparent to you and your newsreader, and you should seamlessly be redirected to the new location. But as we all know, these things never quite work right. Please let me know if you have any problems accessing my feed. And lets all cross our fingers that it just works right the first time.
The organic paradox: The movement's adherents have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, but success has imperiled their ideals. "It simply isn't clear that organic food production can be replicated on a mass scale." Business Week cover story from a few months ago about the threat to organic because of the ever-increasing demand. [via Jaded Vegetarian]
Today's gift idea is for a true geeky food lover, Hervé This' Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor. If you know someone who loves McGee, they will enjoy this book. "In each short chapter This presents a piece of debatable conventional wisdom-such as whether it is better to make a stock by placing meat in already boiling water, or water before it is boiled-and gives its history, often quoting famous French chefs, before making scientific pronouncements." There's almost nothing I enjoy more than understanding why stuff happens in the kitchen, and seeing traditions wives' tales explained or disproved. Several reviews do warn that it's heavy on the science, so save it for a recipient who likes chemistry and physics, not someone who has trouble keeping up with Alton Brown. $19.77 from Amazon.com.
I hate being discriminated against because I'm skinny. "What often happens is that I'm standing in a pizza line next to a big guy and two pizza slices come fresh out of the oven for us. The server takes a look at me and then at him and gives me the smaller piece and him the bigger piece."
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Over the weekend I made my favorite Cream of Mushroom Soup (with requisite homemade mushroom stock). The picture shows the stock on the stove as it gets under way. This is probably my favorite soup to make because it's so easy and it's so delicious. It never fails to impress, and I've discovered you can totally leave out the cream and it still tastes really good. Now I usually just garnish it with a dollop of whipped cream, but I never add cream to the soup. Try it over the holiday season, I'm sure you'll be the belle of the ball if you make it. It's elegant and rich and just the thing on a wintery night.
Eighty-three percent of chicken sold in U.S. grocery stores may contain bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses. The USDA denies the report from Consumer Reports, saying their sample size was too small. Consumer Reports also said the rate of bacteria contamination was "34 percentage points higher than the rate it found three years ago." I'm not sure who's "right" on this one, but if Consumer Reports used the same methodology as they did last time, and still found at 34% increase, it seems like there might be more bacteria on the meat.
Update: Here's a more detailed article on the Consumer Reports site. Thanks Rory!
Gastrokid is a great blog about feeding kids good food. Two dads write it and share recipes and tales of success in getting their children to eat vegetables (like broccoli rabe) and fruit. A great source of inspiration for anyone trying to feed healthy, whole foods to their children. [via Typepad Featured Blog]
Every weekday between now and December 22, I'm going to do a food enthusiast gift idea. There will be ideas for all gift-giving budgets, so if you find yourself stuck for a present, and the myriad lists other people have created can't help, you might spy something here. Today we begin with a Wine Knot from Modern furniture purveyor Design Within Reach. An "ingenious interplay of shape and color," Wine Knot holds six liter wine bottles, with space in the center for a magnum. This is a wine holder for display, not cellaring. $98 from www.dwr.com.
Monday, December 4, 2006
It turns out the Sticky Toffee Pudding ice cream was the result of a Food Network contest and there were ten semi-finalists. You can watch the segments about each of them on the site. The only competition I see on the list is "Mocha Malt Crunch" but that's because I'm a malt freak. The others sound good, but too fancy for my taste (e.g. Caramelized Figs and Walnuts). Mmmm...I want to eat sticky toffee pudding right now!
Handmade holiday gift ideas from Martha Stewart Living. Somehow one of the best, Mulling Sachets, is on the splash page for the article but not included in the big list. But there's all sorts of stuff there if you're the crafty type and looking to make some presents this year. I like to give and receive homemade food stuffs (like jam, or mulling spices), so a lot on the list appealed to me.
Get the dish on what it's like to be a female chef in a 3-star Parisian restaurant from this great blog that was recently brought to my attention. Not surprisingly, it's a lot of hard, back-breaking labor. But the author writes so well and shares so much enthusiasm (and great photos), that I'm envious of her job as I read. I look forward to following her tale. Thanks Nelson!
The work for which we reserve top honors this year isn’t a cookbook, but rather Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. Leite's Culinaria names the 20 best food books of 2006. I've only read five of them, and by read I mean "at least opened the cover and read a few pages of it, if not the whole thing." Pathetic. I will endeavor to do better in 2007. [via Ruhlman]
Around the world, competitive oyster shucking has come of age. Winners at the local level progress to nationals, and those winners head to the World Oyster Opening Championships in Galway, Ireland. "Speed is only one element of a competition. Presentation is the other." I would lose very quickly on both. I can shuck but not very fast, and I always seem to be picking tiny bits of shell out before I serve them. But I don't mind because the pleasure of fresh oysters makes it all worth it.
I just discovered the yummiest flavor of ice cream ever! Häagen-Dazs has a limited flavor of Sticky Toffee Pudding. "A tribute to the popular English dessert, our rich vanilla ice cream is swirled with a sticky toffee sauce and morsels of moist, brown sugar cake." According to the website, it will run through January. It's been around, supposedly, since July, but Saturday AM was the first I'd seen of it. I love the real sticky toffee pudding dessert, and now I love the ice cream version of it as well.
Friday, December 1, 2006
For the past few months, I've been helping Ed Levine and a small team get a new food website called Serious Eats off the ground. Though the site will officially launch on Monday, Megnut readers can get some special "friends and family" access starting right now. Simply visit http://preview.seriouseats.com. You will be prompted for a username ("serious") and a password ("eater") to enter, and then you can take a look around and create an account. We've got discussions, original content like features and video, and a whole lot more to come. This is just the beginning. I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to your feedback. We want to make it the best damn food site on the web. Well, second best, second to Megnut, of course! ;)
What if we got some of Toronto’s most exciting architects and designers to build gingerbread houses? The Toronto Star's got the amazing results from seven firms and the photos are great. A far cry from what I envision building. If you live in the Toronto area, you can see the houses on display at the Manulife Centre at 55 Bloor St. W. Very cool.
Win a Shake Shack t-shirt autographed by Danny Meyer! Numero Uno hamburger blog A Hamburger Today is sponsoring a contest on this, the last day of Shake Shack 2006. Simply head over to the Shack today and order a burger. Present your receipt to AHT and the person with the latest time/date stamp on his or her receipt will get the signed t-shirt. Pretty cool! The Shake Shack closes at 7 PM, so plan accordingly.
Becoming soy-a-holics and automatically downing anything made from soybeans is not the road to health, but neither is shunning and stigmatizing soyfoods. This page has more links and information about soy than you could possibly read in a day. Lots of stuff to poke through and digest if you're interested in the health benefit claims of soy.
Today is December 1st, and you know what that means? It's the first day of my chocolate advent calendar! I couldn't resist picking one up last week when I spied them at the market. And I was so excited to get started with it this morning. Having a chocolate advent calendar is one of my favorite childhood memories. We never got to have candy, so getting a small chocolate each day for nearly a month was almost better than Christmas itself. One year, we got calendars that had an extra-large chocolate for the 24th. Each day I carefully opened the cardboard door to reveal the small chocolate inside, and savored it with my breakfast.
Every day, I edged closer and closer to the big one, until the morning of the 24th. I sat at the table with my calendar in hand, and as I attempted to pry open the door, I realized it had already been opened. Someone had opened it and then closed it again. And then I looked in shock: No Chocolate! My giant chocolate I'd been waiting a month for was gone! And who was the culprit? My brother, who'd eaten his entire chocolate advent calendar in one sitting on December 1st and couldn't resist eating mine as well. Honestly, I remember this as one of the most crushing disappointments of my childhood. Probably because my brother not only didn't get in trouble for eating his calendar, but he didn't get punished for eating mine either! And I, the patient older child who played by the rules, was just out one giant Santa-shaped chocolate. My calendar this year doesn't have an over-sized chocolate for the 24th. Nevertheless, I will be hyper-vigilant, lest my husband attempt a similar, nefarious trick to crush my chocolate advent spirit!
A rich dish that comes from the Cajun cuisine tradition, classic Turducken is a created by deboning and layering a whole turkey, duck and chicken, then inserting layers of stuffing. Hannaford, a supermarket chain in the Northeastern US, is selling turducken for the holidays! If I had known, I could have picked up a turducken last week when I was at one of their stores. I've always wanted to try one.
