Katie Meadow

My husband and I have been making the turkey for about 30 years. In those 30 years neither of us has missed a Thanksgiving with his family: his parents (now only his mom), three siblings plus partners and some or all of their five millennial offspring. This is a family of very different habits. Some are vegetarians, some don't really care for turkey but think it belongs on the table, three large 20-something boys can inhale a fair amount, and so can my hollow legged husband. And then there's me. I'm bored with cooking it, I don't even like turkey that much, but I swear turkey soup is a narcotic for me, so I need the carcass. Also I'm in it for my husband's gravy, which is fantastic; leftover gravy makes for a fantastic turkey pot pie. None of this has anything to do with the latest family wrinkle. We always sat down to dinner around 6:30. But one strong-minded in law has now decided she wants to eat early in the day, like 2 pm. No one wants to cross this woman, and that's all you need to know about her. My husband and I do a lot of work for this meal, and one thing I'm growing increasingly tired of is the chaos in the kitchen working up to dinner hour. Also I don't wish to be in a hurry, scrambling to get things done, etc. When I pointed out to said family members that I wasn't keen on waking up early just so I could get a turkey in the oven by 11 am, one BIL suggested I set an alarm. And he actually meant it. Well, hell will freeze over before I do that on Thanksgiving morning. So, although I grumbled at first, I am now secretly thrilled with our solution: we are going to cook the turkey the day ahead. We will wake up alone at a beach house. It will be peaceful. We will have a long leisurely breakfast. And later we can nibble on the crunchy parts in private. Sounds naughty, doesn't it? Mmm, the Pope's Nose, as my mother used to call it. And we won't have to navigate the kitchen or fight for oven space during the main event, which is Grand Central Station. Yes, I do have a question. How best to heat and serve the turkey meat the day of? Can it be kept in a cool place overnight, but not in the fridge, so it doesn't dry out at all? Heat it in the oven? Microwave? It will be a dry-brined turkey with no stuffing. No clue, any ideas welcome. And remember, my goal is to do as little work as possible on Thursday, so no rolling it up or layering or anything interesting. I'm looking forward to sitting around at 1 pm with a cocktail and and not caring what happens next! Sadly the five cousins, including my daughter, either can't or don't like to boil water, so future is a bit murky when it comes to tradition. And if she continues to live in Atlanta she won't be cooking my turkey an time soon. Prof. Hobbit those onions are to die for. How do you do them? OMG I've written a novel.

But the best thing about Paul Hollywood IS those three women!

Today we had a modest lunch made great by crispy old leaves. We came back from several days on the northern CA coast with a meager bunch of leftovers and a few odds and ends. There was one large heirloom tomato, about a cup and a half of cooked fresh cranberry beans (most used in soup and on garlic toast previously) and a package of wilting sage. I minced the tomato, liberally sprinkled with salt and let it make its own puddle of juice for about half an hour. It turned out to be a very good drippy tomato. I made basmati rice. I heated up the beans with the small amount of bean liquor that was left. Then I took a handful of sage leaves and crisped them up in butter. I topped the rice with tomato and all its juice, the hot beans, and then drizzled over the brown butter and sage leaves. Added salt and pepper and that's now by new favorite thing to do with fresh cranberry beans. Brown butter and sage on beans is like finding a pot of gold.

I might make a sorbet with the pine shoots and needles syrup. What does that one taste like?

Truly a wonderfully written article in the Times; hilarious and chilling, so thanks for the heads up. Today's NYT magazine special food issue includes that piece and several others. I haven't had the nerve to read them all yet. Change is hard, we all know. Too bad the candy industry ruined us when it comes for color / taste memory. I would like to taste a bit of swamp in my green m & m's. We just need to reprogram ourselves and start to enjoy the flavors induced by m & m's with names like blue algae, winter white, sheep dip, alligator, red tide and fog (not mauve for god's sake!) Bring it on, but don't let's forget there's nothing that's actually good for you in a bag of candy.

I too for the first time all year saw English peas at the Berkeley Farmers' Market. No, I don't think its normal. I'm used to seeing them in the spring. I tasted them, and they were so-so, so I didn't buy them. When I asked the seller about it he looked at me like I was insane. So much for solving that mystery. My haul included young fresh ginger with the leaves attached, fresh peanuts (not exactly green, but pretty young I think), lots of tomatoes, garlic, organic Pink Ladies and a couple of other varieties of apple, Espelette peppers, beautiful colorful eggs, fresh cranberry beans and my favorite October item: Barhi dates. Like liquid inside, best right from the fridge. The peanuts will be boiled, southern style. I first had boiled peanuts several years ago. While visiting my daughter in Atlanta in the fall I bought a bagful of them and took them with me to NY to my mother's. We made them there, according to instructions from a woman buying about 20 pounds of them at the Atlanta market. My mother took one taste and told me I was insane. So that makes two, and I'm sure there are others. But I was hooked.

Currently I'm reading Ronni Lundy's book "Butter Beans and Blackberries." Lundy claims that Butter Beans typically refer to the small variety of Lima beans, most notably when they are fresh and in season only. However she waxes downright poetic about what she calls the Speckled Butter Bean. She says it is a variety of Butter Bean (or Lima) that is notable for its speckled purplish-greenish-blackish-brownish appearance, and she claims everything about them puts those big Limas to shame. It sounds like they are available fresh in the deep south, and also seasonally fresh frozen and sold in local markets. According to Lundy, the precious Speckled Butter Beans are mainly found fresh at farmers' markets and farms. Then it gets even more weird. Around Montgomery Alabama she says the Speckled Butter Beans are also called Rattlesnake beans. I'm a devotee of the Rattlesnake Bean that is commonly said to be a cousin of the Pinto, and which is only reliably sold by Purcell Mountain Farms as far as I know. They are a rather blackish brownish mottled color, and don't vary. All that means is that perhaps Purcell only has one supplier. It's quite likely that the deep south Rattlesnake or Speckled Butter Bean is a very different bean than what I've been eating for the past few years. Or not! You could imagine many reasons for calling a bean Rattlesnake, since rattlers are all over the place. And of course--at least all the slithering Rattlesnakes I've ever seen--are speckled. What a tangle. Best get those 'snakes in a pot.

Yes, they were available for a little while when the co. tried to market them here, but it has been several years since then. I assume it was not a big seller, or they would have continued to distribute them on the west coast, or at least in the bay area. Almost all of these newer m & m flavors seem awful, but that of course is without going anywhere near them, let alone having eaten any of them. S'mores? How do you get that hot roasted marshmallow in there? I'm starting to sound like my mother, who used to rail against Tootsie Rolls; apparently they went way downhill after the sixties and never lived up to her expectations after that.

I can think of only one improvement on the original m & m, and that's the dark chocolate m & m. It comes in a purple package and you can't buy it on the west coast as far as I can tell. It isn't as if their dark chocolate is anything to write home about, in fact you can barely distinguish them from the original milk chocolate m & m's since the quality of both is so lousy, but I have to say that every time I am in NY I buy them and eat lots. It's all about color and textures. The blue ones make me insanely happy. As for white chocolate, what the hell is it, anyway? The only thing worse than cheap white chocolate is expensive white chocolate. When I receive white chocolate as a gift it goes right into the trash. If I was marooned on a desert island and the only chocolate available was white chocolate I would slit my wrists. Sorry to all who like white chocolate, you don't deserve this dopey rant, but truly the only pleasure I can glean from the stuff is bad-mouthing it.

Franci, that looks so beautiful. I'm coming right over!

Ronni Lundy's "Butterbeans to Blackberries, Recipes from the Southern Garden." Southerners seem more attached to the foods of their childhoods than just about anyone. No one but a Southerner would rhapsodize so about string beans, and no one else could convince me that cooking them for an hour and a half until they pretty much dissolve in bacon grease would be a truly great treat. But I believe her! I'm ready to make them. Really entertaining read, with lots of asides, stories, historical tidbits and personal reflections. Also the chapters are hilarious. Okra is so beloved that despite only starring in three or four recipes it gets its own chapter. So does corn. This is a really sweet book, and I'm marking more recipes than I thought I would. Ready to order Sorghum on Amazon!

I also made the Julia potato gratin for a late lunch. I cut way back on the anchovies because I don't like too much, but in this case I agreed with my husband: I should have used a bit more. We had to add a bit of extra salt to finish, which I didn't anticipate. I had some not very distinguished Yukon Golds, and if I had it to do over again I would try to get a more flavorful farmers' market potato. I like the way the cheese on top crisped up. I used a 3 month old Manchego. It's hot here, so we ate it warm instead of right out of the oven, and liked it. Why does the recipe say not to refrigerate? Where did Julia keep her leftovers? This gratin, along with a nice chicken salad, counts as my debate prep. Let's hope it stays down. Expecting a long and painful evening of Gin and Tonics. And maybe popcorn.

Favorite treat this time of year: Thomcord grapes. In a clamshell at TJs. They were nice and fresh today. Love them! They taste more like Concord grapes than Thompson seedless but they are still seedless, so great for pies, focaccia, various cakes, etc. By the time I get to thinking about baking with them I've already eaten most of them. And that's within an hour of taking them home. Mmm, so delicious.

Club membership and the club's guest rules are really a different issue, although I wouldn't know much about that either, since I've never belonged to a private dining club, nor has anyone ever invited me to one. But I think the original post was really about giving women in specific a menu minus prices. Shelby, it's a good question what happened when two or more men only were dining. If it was a business meal or one person was paying, I imagine the host might have requested the priced menu up front if the restaurant offered such an option. So very glad these will never be my problems. And if I was on a date with someone I didn't know very well and he took me to a restaurant and handed me the priceless menu, you better believe I would order the lobster. And I don't even like lobster that much.

I have never been handed a menu at a restaurant that had no prices. I do know what Shel is talking about, a time when high end restaurants assumed that the man paid the check. Insulting then, and it would be insulting now. Granted I live in one of the most progressive cities in the country (as do you, Shel) and I don't eat out that frequently or that expensively. A so blatantly sexist practice it is hard to believe any place would do that now. What I do see, and what irritates me no end, are the high-end restaurants that put their menus up on their websites without prices. Give me a break. What are they trying to tell me? That if I have to ask I can't afford it? That I'm not their target diner? They shouldn't worry, because they are getting what they wanted. They might see the sharp end of my fork, but they won't see my money.

The range of responses to various legumes is amazing, and my own likes and dislikes are just as quirky, or maybe more quirky. Lentils: Let's start with the thing I really like the least: standard brown ones. Those little green French puy are better. Red lentils and teensy black lentils can make a yummy soup given the rest of the ingredients have strong flavors. Garbanzos: I adore home-made hummus. Also like falafel, if it's done right. But garbanzos in soups or salads? Nope. Any soup calling for garbanzos I usually just sub some other bean, or leave them out. Fresh fava beans I DO like in a salad, especially with tomato and a sprinkle of pecorino and a drizzle of olive oil. Edamame: fresh or fresh frozen, I love them: in the pod, salted, or tossed shelled into soups or grain salads or fried rice. If you are sick and craving chicken soup it gives you something green to add, straight from the freezer. Dried soy beans in anything any way? Yech. All other beans: wow I'm so picky I can't justify it. I lived in NM for many years, and if I never eat another pinto bean I won't be sorry. But the cousin of the pinto, the Rattlesnake bean, is my favorite bean on earth; I make a big pot using ham stock or smoked turkey stock and always add some form of chile. It never fails to make me happy served over white rice. I like a good dish of red beans and rice, but not all red beans are equal. My favorites are the dark red organic beans from Purcell Farms, also my source for Rattlesnakes. I like black beans, but usually people undercook them. I don't like them, or most other beans, in salads. My favorite beans from Rancho Gordo: Yellow Indian Woman, Marcella, Good Mother Stallard. Too bad, all three are sold out right now. Biggest turn-offs: beans paired in any way with seafood. Beans that should be great but rarely are: various kinds of baked beans. For years I've collected recipes for baked beans and pretended I am going to rise to the challenge but I just don't. The ingredients always sound so enticing: mustard, hickory, maple or cane syrup, vinegar, worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, bbq whatever, etc. Right? Fresh shelling beans: Fresh black eyed peas are a treat, served as Hoppin' John or served warm over sliced heirloom tomatoes with lots of crunchy salt and olive oil (and bacon never hurts). Not so fun to shell, but some children with long attention spans are very good at it. A developmental task for sure, and there's a small window. Another great fresh bean is the butter bean, but rarely available in these parts. There used to be an older fellow who sold fresh eggs and butter beans in season, and he would even have bags of them already shelled. I loved him. Sadly he has been gone from the Berkeley Farmers Market for years. There are a number of fresh beans (cranberry is only one) that can be had this time of year. I love to bake them in the oven in a bath of olive oil, some chopped tomato and onions and thyme. And I'm sure I would be very happy with whatever Professional Hobbit wants to do with them next weekend. But enough about me. Anna, I would be so happy to invite you over for some beans (and back-up dishes) if you lived within 2,000 miles of me here in CA, but being ho hum about beans isn't anything to lose sleep over. And I have a confession to make (yes, okay back to me again) : beans have never totally agreed with me, so before I retired I kind of avoided them for the most part. Now I really find them satisfying, although I only partly subscribe to RG's philosophy that the more you eat, etc.

Maybe a lot of local growers in the Bay Area have a glut this time of year? It's typical for the price of heirloom tomatoes to start dropping in September; certainly true of the east bay farmers' markets. This morning we bought lots of them, including some varieties that are new to me. It's espelette pepper season! Only one vendor I know of at the Berkeley market sells 'em, and this year they are fiery hot. There's only a couple of Asian vendors at the Saturday Berkeley market, but this is their best time of year. Fresh raw peanuts in the shell, fresh baby ginger with the stalks and leaves attached (truly amazing, and you can throw the leaves into a stir-fry!) Also they have good okra. What do I do with the peanuts? I boil them, like the good southern girl I am NOT. Professor Hobbit (that's how I think of you, Soba) I have a question for you, since you are clearly frequenting farmers' market every week end. Actually two questions. Did you see any English peas this year? They were noticeable absent over here in the east bay in the spring and early summer. Tons of edible pod sugar peas, but no English. Also are you seeing any eggplants? Seems to me in years past they would come in with peppers, but so far no.

Pink Pearl. That's my newest crush. They are smallish to medium size, pearly and creamy on the outside, and the flesh is a mottled red/pink. They are crisp and juicy and tart, very tart. The apple was developed in CA in the forties, but they aren't widely sold as far as I can tell. They are grown in CA and Oregon and probably in WA state as well. For a person like me who grew up on the east coast and who will never forget what it's like to bite into the first early Vermont Mac of the season, the Pink Pearl is Paradise. Lucky for me my husband is not as enamored, so I get to eat them all. Maybe not quite right for a tarte tatin. David, your cousin is just wrong. Although in a pinch creme fraiche on warm caramel apples can be pretty yummy.

I assume there must be a serious nostalgia factor among some vegetarians or vegans who don't eat meat for moral or political reasons that makes them crave the foods they loved as kids or in past lives or whatever. If you don't really enjoy the taste or texture of meat it doesn't seem like you would want to create an imitation. Because most vegetable matter that tries to be a burger doesn't cut the mustard; it's over processed and manipulated. Bulgur wheat or black beans with ketchup and mustard and pickles can't possibly taste like meat. Meat tastes like animal fat. All fats taste different. You wouldn't expect coconut oil to taste like olive oil, and you probably wouldn't put it on a caesar salad or make hummus with it. Unless of course you wanted your hummus to taste like an Indian garbanzo curry. I'm not a vegetarian, but I usually eat meat or fish only a couple of times a week, and the rest of the time I'm happy with vegetables that look like and taste like what they are, especially at the time of year they are at their best. Life is hard enough without trying to make one food tastes like another. If I were starving to death I would eat a tofu dog before I'd eat a real dog, and I'd be awfully grateful for it, but I am counting on never having to make that choice. Food produced in a lab seems so incredibly unappealing. How is trying to make meat without an animal so different than trying to make an eggplant taste like a tomato? But do whatcha gotta do to, and hopefully you can find someone who will do it with you. Lab coats can be sexy in the flickering light of a bunsen burner!

Main meal today came courtesy of the Saturday Berkeley farmers' market, from which we took home, among other things, tomatoes, avocados, red potatoes, sweet onions, Espelette peppers and yellow baby watermelon. I sliced Black Prince and dry farm Early Girl tomatoes and drizzled on a simple avocado sauce of mainly creamed avocado, olive oil, and lime juice. I made a New York Times recipe called Roasted Potato Hash with the cubed potatoes, wedges of sweet onion (tagged as Walla Walla, and delicious, but we all know a true WW Sweet has to be grown in WW soil) and a few peppers that turned out to be really fiery. I must remember to wash my hands about twelve times before I try to take out my contact lenses later tonight. The roast potato recipe is a nice one, very crispy. The potatoes and Espelettes come from a vendor who also sells several varieties of fresh shell beans as well this time of year. The potatoes are unidentified and excellent, the Espelettes are a treat; I've never seen them any where else. They are only available for about a month, and I roast tons of them and freeze them to use during the winter. I work them into Spanish rice salads and chicken with smoked paprika and whatever else I can think of. For dessert, my very favorite watermelon: seeded (always better than seedless, I think) yellow babies are a crap shoot, and not always great, but this one was like candy. Also, sadly, a short season. I. Am. So. Spoiled.

Today's main meal was strictly from this morning's farmers' market, the Temescal / North Oakland market. We usually go to the Berkeley market on Saturday morning but we were busy yesterday. We ate: fabulous super fresh corn, grilled padron peppers, Greek salads with Japanese cukes and two types of tomato, Cherokee Chocolate and Marvel Stripe. Okay, one item not from the farmers' market, a baguette. The Berkeley market has my favorite vendors for peaches and grapes, most vegetables and a variety of other items, but the Temescal market has a terrific pizza truck that hauls around a heavy duty oven and makes awfully good pizza.

I've been buying Fiore Sardo, the Sardinian sheep milk cheese, for years now. It's always seemed like a very versatile cheese, especially to travel with, as it keeps well in a not-so-cold cooler, can be eaten sliced on a cracker, but it is firm and aged enough to grate for soups or pasta. Yesterday I was in a hurry and grabbed a wedge without reading the label carefully. Turns out it said Fiore Sardo Aged, which is not what it usually says. I don't remember ever eating this cheese before. The rind is rather gray, and smells smoky, like bacon or a campfire. It's very hard, and the paste is a little darker or browner than typically. I always thought Fiore Sardo was aged cheese, but this cheese must be aged to a fare-thee-well. It's so hard that when we grated it over hot soup it didn't dissolve or melt at all. If I were going to make mac & cheese (which I no longer do) I might use some of this to turn it into campfire nostalgia food; I assume that baking it would melt it, but who knows. Has anyone else had this cheese?

Okay, it sounds like the IP is pretty useful. In fact, judging from several (not all) pages of this thread it can be used for just about everything except maybe a grilled steak, but I don't really have a sense of what it does best. I don't own a pressure cooker or a rice cooker. Some of the things I might want to do faster and simpler are the following: Cook rice for a crowd (I love the rice I cook stovetop, but large quantities for more than 4 or 5 people when I have lots of other things to juggle is a pain). Cook grits or polenta without all the intensive labor. Make modest quantities of stock quickly for specific dishes if I don't have any frozen stock on hand. It seems like all three of these tasks could be done well with the IP, correct? Oh, and I don't make yogurt nor do I want to. The pricier model seems to involve the yogurt function. Is that good for anything else? It would be useful to hear what your top uses are for the IP; like what three or four chores do you swear by it for?

Wow, are we opening a can of tuna or a can of worms? Once upon a time you went to the supermarket and bought a can of tuna and your biggest choice was packed in water or packed in oil. It was a reasonably cheap source of protein, especially for those without access to affordable fresh fish. They all tasted pretty much the same once you added the standard American amount of mayo. But times have changed. Tuna is a key fish and the choices are a lot more complicated than how does it taste. How was it caught? Is it endangered? How much mercury is in it? Is it fresh or farmed? An excellent read is Paul Greenberg's Four Fish. At this point no one should be surprised that there's a price to pay, whether it be your wallet or your health or the health of the planet. I don't believe you can untangle all the lines. Or turn back time. The original post sets the table.

Thanks for that tip; the Amazon deal for a 12-pack is excellent. Even the 4-pack is a better deal than what I can find in the bay area. I love tuna, but I try not eat it too often, for probably murky reasons. Either it isn't sustainably fished or it has mercury in it or it's endangered. Ortiz claims their Bonito del Norte is line-caught. A good thing, and I am assuming it is true. Someone please confirm my theory about bonito: if they really mean that it is bonito, it should be from a smaller fish than some other canned tuna, which means less mercury. When I googled bonito it seems that some sites say it is actually a tuna, and others call it a tuna-ilke fish. What is it? And is it actually likely to contain less mercury?