As we all get ready to sit down to a belly-bulging turkey dinner this Thursday with the ones we love, it's also time to remember the holiday is about giving thanks.
But during these tough economic times, many people will get their meals this holiday season from food banks and soup kitchens. Volunteering to charitable causes in a time of abundance gives others a reason to give back.
A North Carolina town, an hour north of the beach where the Wright Brothers completed their first flight, is using thousands of chocolate bars to cultivate a new generation of aviators.
Next week in Elizabeth City, Ret. Air Force Col. Gail Halvorsen will re-enact the famed Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, during which he dropped chocolates wrapped in handkerchiefs to children waiting below. Just as he did last year, the 90-year old flier will release locally-made candy bars affixed to miniature parachutes from a restored 1954 Douglas C-54.
(Unlike last year, the receiving students will be segregated by age: "We found that some of the little kids were disadvantaged by bigger kids who trampled them," says Wayne Harris, director of the Albemarle Economic Development Commission.)
Like a bad community college class, two weeks of "Chef Academy" -- Bravo's latest experiment in food-competition/sexed-up reality show -- is starting to make us wonder why we signed up in the first place.
Actually, make that a bad community college class in L.A., where everyone seems like he or she is permanently out on an audition. Whether it's their "candid" confessions to the camera, their home lives or their googly eyed reaction shots, Jean Christophe Novelli's nine would-be culinary students all seem so practiced, so rehearsed, there's nothing left to chance, and even less at risk.
Case in point: Emmanuel Delcour, the Mick Jagger-with-a-six-pack Frenchman who sauntered onto the set last week, demanding to be given a shot in this would-be rarefied kitchen on the basis of his sheer "passion" for food. On this week's episode, he was revealed to be a recovering porn star named Jean Val Jean. (Any reference to the lead character of "Les Misérables" is purely intentional, we think.)
We love giving the extra nod to seasonal cooking by serving dishes in an edible container, be it stuffed squash, tomatoes, bell peppers, or, in this case, an artichoke. Not only is the result visually pleasing, but its flavor benefits from added depth and complexity.
In the pictured Walnut, Bacon and Rice-Stuffed Artichoke, the Eddybles blogger sautéed a base of onion, garlic and double-smoked bacon with tomatoes and lemon juice before adding rice, Parmesan and basil. But, as she writes, the dish is in fact a "two chapter meal." After enjoying the warmed salad, you reach the meaty artichoke petals, saturated with the drippings of the sautée. The best part is thus saved for last, when you deconstruct the artichoke bowl and savor the richness of each seasoned petal.
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As far as the boys behind Scotland's rabble-rousing BrewDog are concerned, U.K. beer is as tasty as tepid tea.
Most breweries make "bland, lightly hopped and mildly malty beer," complains Martin Dickie, who co-founded BrewDog in 2007 along with James Watt. Compelled to "make the beers we want to drink ourselves," BrewDog took inspiration from boundary-busting American microbreweries, turning out the hoppy Punk IPA, the whiskey-cask-aged Paradox stout and the Zephyr, a double IPA aged with strawberries in wooden barrels.
"We are raising the bar of beer produced in the U.K.," Dickie explains.
From stuffing to pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving's traditional dishes are rich and heavy. To complement these big flavors, the wines you choose should be full-bodied and tinged with acidic and fruit-forward notes.
As far as whites go, you'll want heavy wines with legs and complexity that can dance with Thanksgiving sides such as sweet potatoes. Reds are fair game too as long as you choose pairings that partner up with each dish.
Here are some of our $10-and-under favorites with their Thanksgiving dish match-ups.
She was helping unload hams for Hosea Feed the Hungry in Atlanta on Monday, when she was hit in the face with a flying pork product.
"Oh, I didn't know it was being thrown," she says in the video.
Deen is no stranger to public humiliation. Earlier this year, her pants fell down during a demonstration at the Food Network South Beach Wine and Food Festival.
But like Miami mooning incident, Deen has quickly moved beyond Monday's pork fracas.
Still, depending on whose statistics you trust, there are at least 10 million Americans making reservations for their Thanksgiving dinners this year, which means at least that many food and beverage workers will be spending their holidays away from home too.
I generally don't mind working on holidays: The festive hubbub of a room filled with revelers is often preferable to spending the evening with squabbling relatives. And the staff camaraderie that makes the indignities of restaurant work bearable is never quite so pronounced as on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
'Venezia: Food and Dreams' Recipes by Tessa Kiros
Photography by Manos Chatzikonstantis Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC - 2009 Buy it on Amazon
If you've had the opportunity to travel to Venice and experience its magic and charm, this book will immediately have you longing for a trip to the famed city on the sea.
Venice, a city known for gondola rides, masked Carnival goers and winding passageways, has captivated tourists for centuries. Between the sidewalk tables set up in St. Mark's Square to the candlelit restaurants hid deep in the city's nooks, the city long known for secrets has its culinary treasures revealed in "Venezia."
See what we tested and find out whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
I love savory hot foods and miso soup is the perfect rainy day dish to fill the tummy and help you shake off the chill. Even if you aren't in the mood for visiting your local sushi bar, you can still make miso at home.
Miso soup is one of those mysterious dishes that might look hard to prepare, but in fact is the easiest thing in the world -- and it just happens to be low in fat and calories. You can find the paste in your local health-food store and as long as you store it in an airtight zipper-lock bag, it will store well for months in the meat drawer of your fridge.
The only downside to miso is the sodium content. Health professionals say to stay under 2,300 milligrams of salt a day, that's 1 teaspoon. In most packaged miso pastes, one tablespoon can contain up to 750 milligrams alone. So, look for the reduced-sodium or light version that still has the rich flavor with a lot less salt. Get my recipe for spicy miso soup after the jump.
When Jeffrey Steingarten
wins an argument, we
all lose. Photo: Food Network.
Last night, the gloves came off in the battle for "Iron Chef" supremacy -- or rather, Jeffrey Steingarten's glasses came off. On the surface, this short, quick season has been building to a mano-a-mano showdown, between polarizing pastry master Jehangir Mehta and whomever rose to challenge him, in this case, ultra nice-guy Jose Garces.
But while they toiled over hot flames, under boiling klieg lights and in the haze of the prerequisite "Iron Chef" fog machine, we were watching the season's real battle come to a head: That's right, the one between behind the judges table, between haughty diva Donatella Arpaia and the toad-like food critic Steingarten.
If you've paid attention over the past few weeks, you've noticed the increasingly bitchy cat fights, the dismissive hand waves, and the incessant eye-rolling -- from both sides. But last night it reached a fever pitch.
If you thought these two could make it through a tuxedo-and-evening-dress finale without going for each other's jugulars, you were wrong. They couldn't even get through the initial round of the critique. It all started with Arpaia taking umbrage at Steingarten's comment that Mehta's buffalo steak in chocolate-wine sauce was too sweet, which in turn prompted a tongue-lashing: "Don't you criticize me!" Steingarten snapped.
When the Detroit Red Wings failed to score hat tricks (three goals by one player in a single game) for parts of two seasons, they weren't only failing to score points. They were disappointing fans who were promised a free box of curly fries from Arby's.
The fast-food chain has kept Detroit-area sports fans satiated with free grub by tying giveaways to sports feats. For Tigers baseball fans, it's a free roast beef sandwich for three or more home-game home runs, says Tina Hering, marketing manager for Arby's in Michigan.
The baseball team was able to achieve that goal 18 times this season. But it's been a waiting game for hockey fans who've dubbed the lack of hat tricks as "the Arby's Curse." The curse was finally lifted last week.
Five men from Papua New Guinea survived more than two months at sea by eating driftwood and coconut shells.
Their horrendous ordeal began when the family of eight's 22-foot boat ran out of fuel on a trip to a nearby island.
Ocean Encounter, a U.S. fishing ship, ended up rescuing the men two months later near the South Pacific island, Nauru. Two of the seven men that were rescued unfortunately passed away from severe malnutrition before the rescue vessel could reach proper medical assistance. The eighth passenger, a 15-year-old boy, drowned before the rescue boat arrived after jumping into the water to recover a shirt that had blown away.
Even though the crust of your pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving turned out flaky and buttery, consider everyone "pie"-ed out. Try these non-pie ways to use up leftover disk of dough.
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