melkor

Strangely, things went effortlessly. The food turned out well, the wine showed well, and there was very little to cleanup. Hopefully everyone else had an excellent turkeyday.

Potatoes are in the oven. The turkey left the smoker an hour or so ago and is now in the oven. Onion soup is on the stove. Stuffing is ready to go into the oven. The table is partly set. Things are coming along nicely.

My camera never showed up yesterday so I'll be without pictures it seems. The last thing we made last night was a batch of creamed spinach, which got forgotten on the stove while we had dinner. This morning we'll figure out how to disguise overcooked creamed spinach as something less gross. I need to fire up the smoker in 90min or so. In the meantime breakfast for the visiting family needs to be sorted out.

Turns out we didn't bake enough sweet potatoes, so another batch are in the oven now. The pumpkin pie is done, and we made a batch of meyer lemon sorbet.

The tarte and bourbon pecan pie are both done and are cooling. Pumpkin pie is on the way into the oven. Sweet potatoes are baking in the other oven.

You've got plenty of time - thanksgiving is still plenty far away. I'm expecting my camera to show up today, so I'll post some pics once I get it.

Pie crusts are in the fridge. The focaccia dough is on the counter warming up after it's night in the fridge. Tart dough is in the fridge. The onion soup is as made as it can be in advance - it just needs a re-heat, a crouton, and some cheese. The kitchen is clean again and it's time to think about breakfast.

I think your being too hard on them - take a pumpkin pie and dust it with sugar then torch it. Pumpkin pie brulee kicks ass. You have four pies, which could make for some interesting expriments. You could brine two of the pies, then heat all four and see if you can tell the difference. Or you could deep fry them! I agree with Seth, you should brine them.

Thats the plan here also, we'll drink a bunch of sparklers then serve a riesling and an as-yet unknown red. I suspect we'll be able to get away with a bigger red if its only matching the bird, stuffing, and roasted potatoes - we'll probably end up with a cali cab.

It all depends how the bird is cooked, an unbrined bird that's baked until the plastic thing pops up is a poor match for most any wine. There are plenty of prep options that would be well suited to a Zin paring, even the 01 Ridge line - which to be fair is closer to Turley in style than ridge usualy is.

Cafe Capriccio is the best Italian in Albany, but they are far from flawless. Most everything they serve is well made and uses good ingredients. Friday night they still have great live music, that's when it's worth going.

The turkey is sitting in the fridge, in a giant pot full of brine. I suspect we'll have lots of leftovers, we ended up with an 18 pound bird. After a quick lunch we need to roast coffee, and make the pre-ferment for the focaccia.

You could start with a sparkler (prosecco/cali sparkler/sekt/cremant) then with your food serve a riesling and a california rhone blend, they tend to be more fruit forward early in life - Phelps Le Mistral is a good thanksgiving match. You can find any number of good prosecco's for $10-$15, the riesling is likely to set you back a similar amount, and the Phelps runs $20 to $25 depending on your wine shop.

Today we've got a bunch of prep work to do and a bunch of errands to run. Somehow I'd rather be rambling about that on this prepblog than actually doing any of it. I can't come up with much in the way of excuses for my continued procrastination, so I'm going to actually go get started.

It's true that some things are better frozen in season than fresh out of season. Corn for example is awful this time of year - frozen corn is slightly less awful. Your quite close to dixon - why not just head out to Pedricks and pick up your produce there? They have good stuff year round, and it's often cheaper than the grocery store.

I'm itching to start cooking. If it were warmer outside I'd be out roasting some coffee, I'll get around to it in a bit. In the meantime I threw together a meyer lemon vinaigrette for the salad. I've got to watch some of the stuff queued up on Tivo before I'm hopelessly behind.

I think your being too hard on them - take a pumpkin pie and dust it with sugar then torch it. Pumpkin pie brulee kicks ass.

I think grocery store pies stay in a constant state of badness for a fairly long period of time. I can't imagine they will get much worse.

I'm not sure about AK, but in Oregon and California the hatcheries clip the adipose fin on all the fish they release. In Oregon your only able to keep fish with clipped fins, the wild-wild fish need to be released - California lets you keep either.

We finished up our shopping today, we've got everything but the bird. We made the smoked salmon mousse this morning, since I couldn't find a reasonable looking recipe we just made one up. The biscotti are also made, as are some chocolates. There was some leftover tempered chocolate after making peanutbutter filled chocolate cups so some of the biscotti are now coated on one side. This batch of chocolates is far better than my previous attempts. Hopefully the camera will come back from Canon sometime soon and I'll be able to take some digital pictures. Tomorrow I need to roast some coffee and I'm not sure what else.

I was there recently as well, and yes, I agree, they probably had the best selection of new cookbooks I've ever seen. All they need is a couple of armchairs and free admission to the store and it would be worth the drive! The armchairs they don't have, but you can go to the giftshop/restaurant/deli without having to pay the admission fee - just tell them at the ticket window thats where your going and they give you a restricted access button.

Orangutan tastes best deep fried whole.

I'll remember to post a full schedule in advance of all interesting things I do so you and the people who apparently speak through you are well informed of my activities.

It was 29 degrees out this morning here in northern ca, the tomatoes that are under a row cover are still looking good - the others all died. Winter has clearly arrived.

Jacks rocks. It's a block away from my old office in Albany. I've had far far too many meals there - including one where a co-worker bent on abusing a vendor's expense account had two orders of surf and turf for lunch.