Wine Wednesday: Turkey on the Brain

I have a love/hate relationship with Thanksgiving. I love the concept--an entire day devoted to gratitude, friends and family --and I love the food...mostly. You see, for me the problem with Thanksgiving is that there's too much food. Don't get me wrong, I love a big family feast, but the modern Thanksgiving meal often seems a little disjointed, a bunch of random dishes made to satisfy one person or another, all piled on a plate, but not always complementary. That makes finding the right Thanksgiving wine as hard as proving what the Pilgrims actually ate. Too bad America's best known historic oenophile Thomas Jefferson never weighed in on the subject.

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Food-Pairing Friday: Tomato Tarts

Gorgeous two-bite-sized tomato tarts. Photo courtesy of White on Rice Couple.

Back in my poetry-writing days I wanted to start a literary journal called celoso, the Spanish word for jealousy. The journal would only publish poetry that was so good that it pissed me off, not for what it said, but for the fact that I had not written it myself. While these days I prefer my poetry bottled ("Day-colored wine, night-colored wine, wine with purple feet or wine with topaz blood, wine, starry child of earth") I still love the concept of celoso. Todd Porter and Diane Cu, better known as White on Rice Couple, have that kind of blog. And if the stories, recipes and mouthwatering photos weren't enough to bring out your little green-eyed monster, their garden will.

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Food-Pairing Friday: Peach Galette

A summery peach galette with vanilla ice cream. Photo and recipe by Gaby from What's Gaby Cooking.

There's little that says summer to me more than the sticky sweet juice of a ripe peach running down my arm, leaving pale yellow streaks like tears from the sun. And there are so many varieties of peaches--and their fuzz-free cousins, nectarines--hundreds, in fact, that you could eat three a day all summer long and still not have tried them all. Their names ring like terms of endearment: August Pride, Honey Babe, Snow Beauty. And while a perfectly ripe peach enjoyed out of hand can easily transport the eater to some mental summer vacation, sometimes we crave something a little more sophisticated from our fruit.

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