Wow, already? Yup, Thanksgiving is already here and we have been practicing and planning to bring you our best. Ordering ahead of Wednesday will help us and you will be sure to get your favorite foods.

Being a bread person, the stuffing plays a major role in the dinner. We use a mix of most of our breads which gives the stuffing a complexity of flavor that will wake up your taste buds after all those years of eating stuffing made with only white bread. We slice the bread into cubes, which creates a huge mess, and then we dry it in the oven so that it will keep practically forever. The seasonings are in a separate little Ziploc bag so you can use them if you wish, or you can use your own favorite mix of seasonings. There is a recipe on the bag.

Next to stuffing, Cranberries are a critical element of my Thanksgiving dinner. First of all their distinctive red color is beautiful and welcome on a relatively dowdy, brown plate. The turkey and the gravy are wonderfully rich and deeply flavored so they need a bright tart contrast to accent and grab our taste buds. The cranberries alone are too tart to eat so we balance them with sugar. All too often for my taste, we over sweeten them (e.g. that quaking red cylinder that has been pushed out of a can with both ends removed) so they become cloying. Ta-da, Sarkozy Bakery Cranberry Chutney to the rescue!

We also have Cranberry Walnut bread and a wonderful Cranberry Orange quick bread that Alec and I are addicted to. The combination of the Cranberries and Orange Juice brightened by the Orange Zest creates a clean, open taste augmented with slight caramelization.

We have lots of other goodies: six kinds of dinner rolls, Bourbon Pecan Galettes, classic Russian Tea cakes (aka Mexican wedding cookies, Snowballs, or Butterballs).

You may have been thinking that I had forgotten about Chocolate! Well, don't worry. We have Chocolate Rum balls, and we have Chocolate Babka.

So far we have not been able to keep the chocolate Babka in stock, so it would be a very good idea if you place an order pretty soon. If you haven't had a taste of chocolate Babka, you need to have one very soon. It is a wonderful eggy, citrusy, chocolatey, delicate, beautiful bread. I like to go overboard and lightly toast it and slather it with, you guessed it, butter. It's called Babka after the Polish word for grandmother. Traditionally it was made in a pan roughly in the shape of an angel food cake pan. That shape turned over represented the long skirt of a grandmother. It contains just the right amount of butter. Once the dough is mixed, takes about 20 more minutes to add the melted butter little by little, (or actually a lot by a lot).

You can view our complete list of holiday items here. Then you can just give us a call and order what you need. We will not be taking orders on Wednesday. It is too hectic, items will be available but they will be first come first served.

We will be closed on Thursday the 24th through the weekend (our folks will have earned a rest after a couple of hectic weeks). We will re-open on Monday the 28th to begin the run up to Christmas.

Love you,
Judy

Good Food on the Way!