Yearly Archives: 2006

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

It’s been a busy month already, so I haven’t posted as much as I’d like. The Well Fed Network is doing a holiday tradition series in all of the blogs there, so check out the info over there!

I did want to take a moment, though, and wish all my readers a really great holiday season this year. I hope you and your families have a great Christmas and a happy New Year. I appreciate all the comments and emails over the last months, and hope to keep improving the blog as 2007 starts. Continue reading →

I woke up at 7 am, and it was cold, in the low 20s, and my bed was telling me to stay put. The air in the house was chilled, and I knew it was much colder outside. Since I don’t get up as spryly as I did in my youth, I moan and groan into a pair of jeans and an old flannel shirt, putting on shoes and a jacket before daring to open the front door. Armed with a torch and newspaper, I venture out, though, and get hit with cold air as I open the door. Refusing to let this deter me, I open the garage and get some charcoal into a chimney by the smoker, lighting the newspaper and getting things going. Continue reading →

Now that Thanksgiving Day is over, I’d like to try to get a bit of cooperation from readers… I want to find out what recipes, techniques, etc., were used this year that were done because of reading about it online. Continue reading →

To be honest, my favorite thing to do with leftover turkey is to make a straightforward sandwich: white bread, turkey slices and cranberry sauce as the only condiment! But there’s still about 10 lbs of turkey left! Continue reading →

oday is the day that “new” wines are released in France. These are wine that are young wines – this year’s vintage. These wines generally don’t age well, and should be drunk sooner rather than later. The great thing about these wines is that they’re very drinkable. Wine Sediments, a member site of the Well Fed Network, has articles from several contributros on new wines today. By French law, these wines are released at one minute past midnight on the third Thursday of November every year.

Beaujolais Nouveau is the best known of these wines and is a very approachable wine. Into Wine has several pages dedicated to this fun to drink wine, including this tidbit:

Beaujolais Nouveau owes its easy drinkability to a winemaking process called carbonic maceration—also called whole berry fermentation. This technique preserves the fresh, fruity quality of the wine, without extracting bitter tannins from the grape skins. Continue reading →

Last weekend, I thought it was a good idea to do something of a run-through for Thanksgiving Day. Last year was a bit of a disaster! I had a 20 lbs. turkey and didn’t want to get up at 3:00 AM to cook it, so I figured I’d indirectly grill it.

Good thought, but the wind picked up and got the temp in the cooker way too high, so the bird went over 200 degrees! It was done, but dry. Thankfully, my mom had made a good amount of gravy!

The trial run was to try out some things and to see how long it would take a bird to smoke on the big smoker. Continue reading →