November 2007 Archives

Happy Friday! I apologize profusely for not posting anything this week, but reality reared its head in a major way. All good, but I'm looking forward to having a weekend to recuperate...

Here's a shot of my Thanksgiving plate, and a chuckle sent in by Janella.

Have a great weekend! I've managed to get an extra case of the Tibvrtini Olio Novello, if it showed as sold out when you tried to order before, but it will go pretty quickly. Lots of great foodie gift ideas, so check out the Desert Island Foods®.com at your leisure.

Leisure, as in "I don't have to get dressed, take out another mortgage to buy some gas, and take a dozen elbows while racing through a store" kinda way.

Man, I'm full. Still.

Happy Bloated Friday, everyone! I hope everyone gorged themselves on good food and good company. Dan has sent an appropriate Funny to get the weekend going.

While you're out shopping, remember we have a lot of great products that will make anyone smile, especially with the gift of the incredible Tibvrtini Novello olive oil, which will be shipping in the next week or so, we're hearing.

Have a great weekend! Email me some pictures of your Thanksgiving feast.

(Photo: Turkey with Survival Spice® barbecue rub, and stuffed with apples and sweet onion.)

Happy Thanksgiving from Desert Island Foods™.com!

Because having a pair of stretchy sweatpants in the drawer is something to be thankful for, isn't it? We have so much to be thankful for this year, and we hope you have a happy, healthy "I'm so frickin' full I could bust" Thanksgiving.

I'm finally down to a short punch list on our Thanksgiving meal shopping. We're doing a not so traditional menu this year- I'm smoking a 15 lb. turkey and making a Southwestern stuffing with pine nuts, Hatch chiles and maybe some prickly pear if I can find some, with some polenta added for good measure. We're also going to have mac and cheese instead of potatoes.

The only Midwesty tip of the hat to Thanksgiving dinner is the traditional green bean casserole, complete with cream of mushroom soup and those fried onion dealies on top. Gotta have that.

We're making the rounds after our dinner for dessert and whatnot, so it's actually a pretty easy day, considering.

What are you making? Feel free to share menus and commiserate on the incredible amount of work it takes to create the perfect Thanksgiving.

Wecome to another Friday, and we have a gourmet collections sent in by Jerry, thanks!

I hope your weekend is a great one, and you're getting ready for Thanksgiving next week.

Uh, you did remember that Survival Spice® is wonderful on turkey! And ham! And... er, stuff!!!

This is a great beer, and it added a wonderful dimension to the pan sauce I put together last night.

I was determined to keep this as simple as possible, in terms of flavors, so I decided to create an utterly simple pan sauce. Fortunately, I still had some of the "semi-glace" that I try to keep on hand, and that's really all you need, but rather than crust my top sirloin with crushed black peppercorns, ala au poivre, I figured that I could just deglaze the pan with some butter, a few cubes of semi-glace, and some crushed peppercorns.

The steak was simple, too, I used some amazing Hawaiian sea salt on the steak before pan frying it in our Tibvrtini Novello organic olive oil, and some butter. Pulled it once it was medium rare, and let it rest on a plate.

Happily, as it turns out, I didn't have enough sauce to deglaze the size of the pan I used, so I needed to add some more liquid. I was planning on drinking the Ommegang Abbey Dubbel anyway, so I splashed a bit of it in the skillet, swirled to deglaze the fond, and reduced it until it was nappé.

Serving it with the rigatoni and cheese seemed like an unlikely match, but it was great, and the sauce worked really well with the pasta, too.

This was almost unbearably good, and pretty simple to put together. Here's another picture of the finished dish:

Happy crazy Friday! Don has sent in a great laugh for all of us, mighty obliged sir.

Have a great weekend! Obviously I haven't been cooking much, so if you've got a good meal to share, email me.

Nothing new here- the venerable Scaryaki salmon, along with some really good store bought couscous with grilled eggplant, peppers, onion and Kalamata olives. Some quickly roasted asparagus with a drizzle of Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Olive, along with a pat of butter. The whole thing took less than half an hour to whip up, and the combination of flavors was terrific.

Been cooking and want to share? Email me!

For some reason this didn't post on Friday, but don't you need a good joke more on Monday morning anyway?

Thanks to Mark for sending it along.

Whoo hoo!!! Tibvrtini has increased our allocation for their absolutely superb Novello olive oil.

This is the first pressing of the finest organic olives from a family farm outside of Rome, bottled and shipped immediately. A truly special offering that only comes once a year. It's one of the nicest gifts you could ever give someone who appreciates the best in food.

The price has gone up since last year- the rising Euro vs. the dollar being the main culprit- but it's SO worth it.

Order now! So far most of the people that ordered last year are doubling their orders, so it will go fast.