Katie Meadow

Like @heidihI'm in it for the carcass. And the gravy, primarily so I can use it to flavor a turkey pot pie, which to be clear, I make with chicken. The turkey white meat, wing excepted maybe, is a bore. I give chunks of the breast away to guests, who are thrilled to have it. Win win!

What Smithy says, all of which contributes to the fact that they are good for you and taste great. Besides that: They are fresh. They are consistent. They are beautiful. The packages are tidy and easy to open and they are clean. Almost never are found stones, dirt or weird beans. And if you order $50 worth of stuff, which is easier than ever to do, the shipping is free.

I declared the same, several years ago. So my husband does the whole job, including gravy! I'm so happy to give it up. The truth is, excluding what my mother always referred to as "the Pope's nose," turkey bores me to death. Although my husband's gravy is to die for on mashed potatoes. As long as I am in control of the potatoes. We did however totally give up on stuffing the bird. We used to make a giant amount of chestnut and bread stuffing, using the better part of it for vegetarian stuffing cooked separately. For many years there were grandparents (husband's parents), four siblings plus spouses and five cousins. Now it's a tamer affair. The cousins are spread out over the country and often go to their respective partners' families for the holiday. The only new generation is my daughter's twins, and they all stay in Atlanta and do it up with friends. This year will be the largest group since before the pandemic and everyone will be a grown-up, including some of my sister-in-law's boyfriend's relations. Hopefully his nephew will do a repeat of his fantastic mac n cheese, which was never a part of Thanksgiving for my family or my husband's family and for which I am eternally grateful! Edited because I thought I was in the Thanksgiving thread!

It's pomegranate season! Could I be any happier? Last night I made a salad from the NYT composed of three ingredients: slices of oranges (these were cara caras) a sprinkling of pomegranate arils and then a sprinkling of lightly salted chopped roasted pistachios. The orange was quite good, considering citrus season is only getting started. The pomegranate was the best one I've ever had. The recipe called for orange flower water, which I don't have and never use, and a sprinkle of confectioner's sugar which I saw no good reason to add. There was no dressing. This was the most delicious combination of three. My husband thought it needed a dressing so he drizzled his portion with a little olive oil and was sorry he did. After cutting open the pomegranate a large pool of juice filled the plate. After I tilted the plate and drank it I realized it might have been put on the salad, but it was too late. The rest of the pomegranate will be eaten by me today, standing over the sink.

Both are easily available at Amazon

Yes I'm a fan! Of the syrup, that is. My first taste was "sorghum butter" served with bread at a restaurant in Tennessee. It was just sorghum mixed into butter. We eat a lot of biscuits in our house, and I keep the sorghum in a squeeze bottle within arm's reach of a biscuit, whether the biscuit is fresh out of the oven or toasted the next day. I like it in hot cereal too and sometimes on pancakes when I don't feel like maple flavor. Doesn't taste like anything else, I don't think. I don't cook with it but I imagine it would work well along with other sweeteners in a pecan pie. I am also a big fan of Steen's cane syrup, which is less sweet than sorghum and more mellow than molasses.That works in pecan pie, granola, etc. Also on biscuits!

I absolutely adore shad, which is not available here on the west coast. Whenever I used to visit my mother in NY I would make a pilgrimage to Citarella, where they would debone it. One of her all-time favorite foods was shad roe, wrapped in bacon and sautéed. Shad are iconic. John McPhee's book "The Founding Fish" is really a great read.

I'm somewhat in the seasonal camp. Here in the Bay Area summers are unpredictable. Sometimes there's a heat wave and it takes a couple of days to gather the ingredients for gazpacho. If you want the weather to cool down, you make gazpacho for dinner. By four in the afternoon the fog comes rolling in and the temperature plummets. Like clockwork. A few days ago I made my first soup of the season. Continuing my attempt to shovel in dark leafy greens it was a pureed soup of chard, spinach and potato. Very green it was. I like mine with toasted garlic croutons and a flurry of chives. It's time to stock up the freezer again: ham broth, chicken broth and veg broth.

Nothing could be more horrible than circus peanuts. Although Peeps give them a run for their money. The saving grace of "original" candy corn is that it has pretty much no flavor. Never mess with a "good" thing. Junk food companies must have the weirdest brainstorming meetings. Do the creative teams sit around saying, "How can we make this worse?"

This article ranks high among things I wish I didn't know. Red Mullet must be delicious. I've never had it, but have always noted that all good recipes for bouillabaisse require it. The Romans were a sick bunch. Watching a fish die at the dinner table for fun? No thanks.

The same is true of Empires. The one from the farm was fantastic. Occasionally these appear in the East Bay but are always soft.

That was always true of the Macintosh apples we used to get: eat 'em when they are nice and hard because they turn soft in a heartbeat. There were also Cortlands at the orchard but they didn't seem as firm and I'm not about to bake a pie on this trip, or most likely any trip.

And here I am again in apple country, this time in Middlefield MA, about 45 minutes from Northhampton. Yesterday we spent the morning in Easthampton at an apple farm. Yes, I did get my apple cider donut fix. It was very good, although my nephew said they are best right out of the oven (duh) and without the sugar topping, which he claims masks the subtle flavor of the cider. Until the gods see fit to provide me with the perfect donut I'll take what I can get. We had the remaining ones warmed up the next morning for breakfast in our charming little cabin airbnb. Blissful. We purchased several varieties of apples at the farm, all of which were new to me. So far we have eaten a Macoun ( nice all around flavorful and juicy) and a Ruby Macintosh, which I loved. I grew up eating early Vermont Macs and this was even better. Super crisp, tart but not as tart as the greener macs. We still have left to try a Florina and a Cosmic Crisp and an Empire. Those will be for the plane ride home to SFO. After five weeks away I'm looking forward to my own cooking and my own equipment and my own shower.

Yes, it makes good French toast...ok, Italian French toast. Like French toast made with brioche bread it doesn't need a long soak. No doubt kids would love that, even if the panettone was full of neon fruit. Or maybe because of it.

For all the years I've been on eG I have been a huge fan of Anna N. This news is extremely hard to take. She was clever and funny and generous. I loved the Manitoulin blogs, which I suspect were often spooled from her brain. I can't tell you how many times I wished I were there with the two of you having cocktails and looking at the sun set over the water. BFF's like Anna are a lifegiving treasure, and I know how much she appreciated all the love she received from Kerry during the pandemic years and up to her very last day, I'm sure. I will miss her terribly.

Here's my two cents about panettone. Most of them are too sweet and contain plasticky neon fruit. Also many sit on shelves for weeks and are stale. Once in a while a really good one pops out of the xmas murk and it is plain and delicate and delicious. And yes, very nice toasted. So, love it when it is really good, but usually it isn't worth writing home about.

It's hard to imagine anyone taking that recipe seriously, but the world is big and there are some strange people in it.

A whole crocodile roasts for only 20 minutes? It must be a baby croc. In which case 250 g of ginger is rather a lot.

Truth be told I am a long-time devotee of Trader Joe's chocolate biscotti. Although the texture and shape are nothing like Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers, the not-so-sweet chocolate flavor is similar. So, if you are mourning the demise of those wafers, you can't make an ice-box roll with them, but the TJ's biscotti may satisfy your nostalgia.

Dinner in Decatur last night was a combined effort. My SIL made his prize winning lemon pepper wings, my daughter made sweet potato fries, and the grandparents (us!) made braised greens with bacon. The greens were a mix of collards, turnip and chard. All delicious. The sweet potatoes were a new to me variety called Mississippi, and they were very good. The other sweet potatoes/ yam choices were Garnets from CA and a few picked over Beauregard's that didn't look very fresh. All thanks to the amazing Dekalb International Farmers' Market.

I've never seen chocolate ones, but I will be on the lookout. I too first tasted them on a plane. Sometimes, if making a graham cracker pie crust I will mix in some crumbled Biscoff with the grahams f.or a little extra flavor.

@Kim ShookWhat brand ceramic knife is it? I have used Kyocera paring knives for years and I've never had a handle go gooey on me. The handles are not rubbery in any way, so maybe Kyocera are made of different material than some other types. And when I say knives I mean several replacement knives of the same size. Even though I don't use the ceramic knife for most tasks, over time they do chip and they do get dull. They can be sharpened, but that costs more than the price of one small knife.

These islands look incredible. I never knew they even existed. Fantastic trip.

My oldest friend in the world (from 4th grade!) came down from NY to spend a week with us in Decatur and Highlands. The night before last we made them shrimp 'n' grits. At home in Oakland we pay about $20 or more per lb. for wild gulf shrimp. At the amazing Dekalb market they were were super nice, for $13 lb. My daughter claims her husband really likes shrimp n grits, so I'm trying hard to accommodate his eating preferences. Anyway, if I do say so myself, I make an excellent version. This trip I went as far as to bring my favorite Cajun spice mix from home all the way to the South, since every mix I've tasted from local GA sources takes like nothing but a mix of cayenne and salt. Mostly salt. The twins like grits, and one of the girls ate a bucketload of shrimp. What do toddlers eat these days? The juice box has morphed into the Puree Pouch with an opening the size of a boba straw. It's supposed to be mixed vegetables and fruit, the assumption being, I am guessing, that the apple juice in it masks the taste of carrots and green stuff. The twins love these things, so I suspect the great percentage is apple juice. They like apples and talk about applesauce all the time, and yet neither of them liked my fried apples made with butter, sugar and Steen's syrup. More for me!

,Most unbalanced dinner ever! My daughter's HOA had their annual get together, which for the past few years has involved a wing contest. My SIL won it last year, but didn't enter this year. There were six entries, all spicy. Five were quite good. I passed on the various pasta salads and the pizzas. and just had wings and beer for dinner. Our family contribution to the potluck was brownies, made by me. That was my dessert. The weather was lovely, not hot. The crowd was diverse and interesting and there were hoards of children, most of whom looked to be under 7 yrs old. As you would expect there was abundant talk about the schools in the area. SOO glad I'm done with that!