Let's Get It Out Of The Way, The Thanksgiving Rant

  I'm going to write about Thanksgiving and wine, but that's a tricky subject, and I'll actually have to put some thought into it, which requires some working up to. Thinking isn't easy you know. Ask anybody who thinks about stuff and they'll tell you it's hard. Food is easier to write about.

  Ignoring the absurd, absolutely wrong pilgrim-indian nicey nice story we seem to STILL teach our children, Thanksgiving is still a valid holiday. It's all about being thankful and counting our blessings and spending the day with loved ones. What better reason for a holiday? Well, there IS the food. It's a memory kind of holiday, mostly about remembered tastes and smells of special foods from our childhood.

 Curiously, instead of honoring these foods by carefully and lovingly preparing them in a way that preserves the essence of each of the key dishes in a Thanksgiving feast, today they're mostly done like an elaborate fast food buffet, with lots of short cuts and ready made ingredients. Here are my rules for Thanksgiving dinner. There aren't many, but they are inviolable.
Non-food Rules:
1. There is only one non-food rule. The television should be off. All day, until everybody goes home. Tivo is your friend.

Food Rules:
1. Regarding sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes or yams, take your pick, are tasty and healthful and need minimal preparation. What's done to them on Thanksgiving should be at least a misdemeanor offense. Marshmallows do not belong on real food. The best thing to do with a marshmallow is throw it INTO the campfire. The little ones make amusing cat toys. Canned pineapple rings are useful for making upside down cake and NOTHING else. Sweet taters should be fresh, not canned, and steamed and skinned, then mashed or sliced and dressed minimally with a bit of brown sugar, salt and pepper, butter and a splash of orange juice and baked. Toasted pecans or a few ounces of bourbon can dress them up a bit but are not required.

2. Regarding green beans. "Green bean casserole" reminds me of tuna surprise. You're surprised you're actually eating it. It's like people want to fix green beans so they don't actually taste like green beans. Canned mushroom soup tastes like school glue, don't ask me how I know. Open a can of those nasty fried onions people put on top of their casseroles and taste one by itself, essence of stale, salty grease vaguely onion flavored. Buy real green beans, string them. Fry good cut up bacon and diced onion in the bottom of the pan. Add the beans, cook until done. Add fresh ground pepper during cooking. Tiny redskin potatoes can be added but are not necessary.

3. Regarding cranberries. Use real cranberries, please. It's not hard. Ever go to somebody's house for Thanksgiving and have a CAN SHAPED lump of "cranberries" passed to you? mmmmmm!

4. On bread. Real bread should be served at Thanksgiving. The best thing to do with Parker House Rolls is save them for the post-prandial food fight if your family still practices that ancient custom. Hoarding them in your lap is allowed.

5. On gravy. Making gravy is not rocket science and I'm not going to give lessons here. Ersatz gravy mixes and jarred gravy concentrates might save 10 minutes on the day's food prep, but they are nasty tasting, expensive and contain unpronounceable ingredients. No thanks.

6. On dessert. Real pie is made by real people, not machines. Real pie does not come from a box. Pumpkin pie made from real pumpkins is best, but is not for the faint of heart and leaves much room for failure. Canned pumpkin, believe it or not, is consistently good and simple to use. Buy the unseasoned kind and be creative. It's pure pumpkin, nothing else added. Most pre-made crusts come out of the oven like cardboard. Marie Callender's is one possible exception if you don't overcook it, but even those crusts don't hold up to the long baking time required for pumpkin pie. Make your own crust. Use lard. If you hadn't noticed, lard is now officially good for you, or at least it's not officially bad for you. The noble pig is redeemed. And there was much rejoicing....
Sub Rule 6a: On whipped cream. Whipped cream is made by putting very cold cream, sugar, vanilla and a slop of bourbon or brandy into a bowl that's been in the freezer and whipping it with a hand mixer to a desired firmness. It does NOT come from cans, or worse: axle grease tubs of "non dairy whipped topping". The inventor of Cool Whip should be tied to a chair and force-fed his nasty grease like a goose is force-fed corn to make it's liver nice and fat. After that, we'll go get the guys who invented spray can "cheese" and Miracle Whip.....

7. Regarding turkey. There are two reasons why turkey is hard to cook without drying out. First, modern turkeys have been bred to have enormous breasts. It was discovered that we couldn't legally do that for our women folk, and so we decided to do it to our turkeys instead. If you think for one second that I used the phrase "enormous breasts" hoping to attract web searchers to this blog you're absolutely right, er, wrong.

 Somewhere along the line the factory meat producers got the notion that Americans wanted mostly white meat, and so they started developing mutant birds that have now become what most people picture when they think of turkeys. White meat is naturally lower in fat than the dark portions, so it dries out quicker.

  This changes the cooking paradigm. There are many ways to correctly cook a turkey. Dunking it in boiling oil "cajun" style is not one of those. It comes out tasting like gigantic fried chicken. Why not just fry chicken and reduce the risk of setting your garage or children on fire when the grease boils over or explodes?
  The best way to keep modern poultry moist is to avoid overcooking it, use a good digital thermometer with a temperature alarm on it, and brine it overnight first. Brining a big turkey requires a giant pot, lots of ice or a spare refrigerator and 12-18 hours. No big deal. There are lots of instructions out there. Google is your friend. It's worth the trouble.

  The second reason it's hard to end up with moist turkey is for some unfathomable reason, Americans don't mind spending hundreds of dollars on Thanksgiving side dishes, but want to get their main course FREE. We've all fallen for the grocery store ads; "Spend a hundred bucks and get your turkey for 49 cents a pound! Spend TWO hundred and get one FREE!!" Don't people realize that all the sides they're buying are overpriced, and ultimately they're paying for a "free" turkey that was slaughtered over a year ago?

  "They want almost three dollars a pound for fresh turkeys, IMAGINE!!" You've heard this, you may have even said it yourself. Admit it. Every day of the year, people pay 2 bucks a pound for ground "beef" that comes in 10 pound sausage shaped chubbies that you can't see through. They happily feed this fetid slurry to their kids, patting themselves on the back for the bargain they got. Meat made from worn out dairy cows who can't stand up anymore. Meat that has from time to time poisoned hundreds. Come on, it's Thanksgiving, get a good, fresh turkey that hasn't been frozen since last year. Look for a local producer, maybe someone who raises heirloom breeds. You'll still spend enough and get the free one, which you can use for interesting science experiments at home.

8. Regarding vegans, dieters, the "lactose intolerant" and those with "food allergies". These people are often petulant and self-absorbed. Unless they are beloved friends and relatives whose absence will seriously detract from your day, they should eat someplace else. Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Festival at The Farm

I've been curious about The Farm At South Mountain for a long time. Back in the 1920's Dwight B. Heard, most well known as the benefactor of the Heard Museum , bought and then split up a large tract of land between Southern Avenue and Baseline Road in south central Phoenix. Heard was more than just a rich land baron. He had the crazy notion that people could live self-sufficiently on a couple of acres of desert. Projects to bring cheap water to the valley were going gangbusters in those days, the nearby Salt River was still an actual river with real water in it, and with your purchase of 2 acres for about 1100 bucks, old Dwight threw in a cow and fifty chickens to sweeten the deal.

Many of these properties still exist in the area. It's pretty neat to be a few minutes from downtown Phoenix and be able to drive down shady streets and see well tended pastures with big gardens and livestock. Kinda makes you feel like all's not lost after all.

  A retired cow puncher named Skeeter Coverdale got hold of 10 of these acres somewhere along the line and planted them in Pecan trees. He took care of that grove for 40 years or so and then decided watching trees grow and picking pee-cons once a year was just too much work and what he really wanted to do was re-retire to Punkin Center where he could "swat flies and drink beer". I think I woulda liked old Skeeter. Anyhow, he sold the place to a guy named A. Wayne Smith.

  I don't generally trust people whose first name is an initial, but Mr. Smith has really got a good thing going with The Farm. He's preserved the grove, Skeeter's cabin, the original buildings, and added several businesses that are under separate proprietorships. There are several restaurants, including Quiessence , where you'll pay a minimum of 75 bucks a head before drinks, dessert and gratuity for the privilege of having an entirely local, seasonal, organic feast prepared by chef Greg La Prad. This place has won numerous awards, including a very prestigious Zagat top 5 restaurants in Arizona.

  The Farm also has a breakfast place, a place to grab a sandwich, an onsite artisan bakery as well as the required "therapy" place where you can get accupunctured, inhale flower essences and presumably get your palm read and your chakras aligned, or tuned up, or irrigated or whatever it is they do to chakras.

  The Arizona Wine Grower's Association has held their annual fete at The Farm At South Mountain for a couple of years, and I can't think of a better place to do it. Spread out with lots of room among the ancient Pecan trees, everything was absolutely first cabin. Even the Port-O-Sans were plush. Not the plastic kind of outdoor johns that you normally get, the kind where you feel like you're inside a garbage bin, no sir. These had running water, AC, flushable toilets, mirrors and even little vases of flowers.

  Of course, it should have been nice. These folks, and there were LOTS of them, paid 65 bucks a pop for unlimited tastings, wine seminars and lunch. I kept thinking "WHAT RECESSION??"
  The day began at noon, with an hour devoted to trade only samplers. Wine retailers, chefs, restaurant buyers and sommeliers came thru to sample and place orders. Business was brisk and these folks are dying to get Arizona wines into their dining rooms and onto their shelves.

  Thinking ahead, we decided to use our lunch vouchers and eat before the public was admitted. My sack lunch consisted of an amazing sandwich of grilled portobello mushrooms and peppers and gorgonzola on the best slices of Pane Toscano bread I've ever tasted. All grown and baked on the premises. The toasted pecan balsamic dressed pasta salad side would have been great all by itself. The Sedona Wine festival could learn a thing or two rom these folks about the food they provide next year. I can still taste the dirty socks flavor of the cold, greasy flatbreads I paid 7 bucks for from the Hilton's booth there. But I digress....

  The rabble was allowed in at 1, and that's when it got REALLY busy. We had people 4 to 6 deep all day. I had the pleasure of working with Amy, who is a chemist-biologist person in the Page Springs Cellars actual cellar, Justin, who handles outside events for the winery, and Eric Glomski, owner/winemaker. It was the first time I'd met Eric and I have to say, he's just a regular, scruffy kind of guy who I think is probably a lot older than he looks. I think some people (who hadn't seen "Blood Into Wine" anyway) assumed I was some kind of boss as I was clearly the oldest one at the table. To their great surprise I kept having to ask Eric and Justin the answers to their questions. "How many cases of El Serrano were produced?" "How much Syrah is in the MSGp?" One lady asked "So Eric works for you as your winemaker?" Uh, no, I answered. WE all work for Eric. He's the boss. He makes the wine and owns the place. Eric is THE MAN. That's the kind of guy he is. Self effacing, a bit reticent and ever complimentary about everyone.

  Friday night there had been a judging of all the wines by some poo-bahs of the wine world. Arizona Stronghold, Eric's partnership with He Who Must Not Be Named (M.J.K.) did well, but Caduceus really hauled away the trophies. If and when I can get a link to the results I'll post them later. Page Springs Cellars didn't win any awards this year, and Justin was somewhat non-plussed about that. I used a goat show analogy to make him feel better. I said, "look, I can take my best doe in milk into a three ring show and she'll place in three different positions before three different judges. One judge might be a Nubian breeder and have a prejudice against Swiss breeds, whether he's aware of it or not. Another judge might like my goat over another for some hard to define reason. It's all personal taste, one individual show doesn't mean squat, it's got to be the same whether you're judging wine, livestock or flower arrangements." I think he liked that.

  In the final analysis, Eric did well no matter how you slice it. Consider: Arizona Stronghold is now arguably the 800 lb. gorilla of Arizona Wines. They have more acreage than anyone else. Their wines are now for sale in 32 states and two Canadian provinces. They sell excess grapes and bulk wine to lots of the smaller wineries who are still waiting for their plantings to mature. M.J.K. may have had the money, time, drive and creative energy necessary to start Merkin and Caduceus, but ERIC taught him how to grow grapes and make wine. Eric works as a consultant winemaker for quite a few of the smaller wineries. I'll bet, conservatively, two thirds of the wineries represented at this show had been in some way affected by Eric Glomski's expertise. I couldn't help but marvel at his cool after about the 20th time somebody asked him "so what's it like working with Maynard?" I wonder if anyone's ever asked Maynard "what would you have done without Eric?"

  I promised myself I wasn't going to comment on the preponderance of tatoos, piercings and dark clothing on the tasters standing 6 deep all day at the Caduceus table, so I won't. There. I didn't. M. J. K. was not in attendance, you'd think these people would figure that out. He never shows. Puscifer was playing a sold out show that night in Phoenix though, so maybe he was lurking around disguised as somebody else. I do kinda like their version of Rocket Man, click the link to listen to it and see all the weird stuff on their website.

  I don't know why Ray Freitas didn't attend. I'd love to have seen how her wines did in the judging. Pillsbury, who markets for her, had a table but I didn't have even a minute to check out the other tables.
I need to talk to them today to get some Ray's Red for Romano Scaturro at Vince's Little Star restaurant in Cornville, so maybe I'll get some information then.

  I really enjoyed this festival. The drive is a piece of cake. Stay on I 17 till it turns into 10, get off on 32nd street, drop down past Broadway, Roeser and Southern and The Farm is on the right just about a block past Southern. It's possible to wander the grove, look at Maya's 2 acre garden and farm and have a pleasant time without spending a dime. Affordable lunches and breakfasts are to be had at the other eateries on the premises too. You don't have to spend a fortune. I'll bet breakfast there this time of year would be pretty special. I'll have to take somebody else's word for that though. Here are a very few shots I had time to take. Salud!

Arizona Wine Week

It's official. Today Governor Brewer will declare November 1-7 "Arizona Wine Week". It's hoped that the Gov will keep her driver working overtime this week.  There are two festivals going on next weekend in the valley. There's the Thunderbird Artists' Carefree Art and Wine Fest Thing, and there's the Arizona Wine Grower's Association Festival at The Farm at South Mountain.

As I said in the previous post, Page Springs Cellars had called me to confirm working for them at Carefree. I've long been curious about the Farm at South Mountain. I've pretty much always had the idea that it's the kind of upscale green business that only Lexus Hybrid drivers could afford, taking smug comfort in the knowledge that their Arugula Salad is grown right on the premises where they're paying 25 bucks to eat it. This event costs 65 bucks a pop to get in and includes lunch at their big deal restaurant and full tastings, plus the presence of virtually every winery in the state and all the actual winemakers, too.
Out of the blue yesterday, the event coordinator from Page Springs Cellars called me and said "you know, instead of Carefree, we'd really like you to be with us out at the Festival at The Farm."
After demurring a bit, making clucking sounds about the extra driving distance, hemming and hawing just the right amount, I jumped on it before he could change his mind.
Johnny M. and I were gabbing the other day and he said "if there's a way you could weasel your way into that Farm Festival, you really ought to try." Well, I didn't have to.
I just hope I don't have to pour the Gov's wine.

Quick Update

I'm still using other than ideal computers these days and so this post will be brief. I've confirmed the next two Saturdays pouring wine. November 6th I'll be in the valley at the Carefree Art and Wine Shindig, and the 13th I'll be pouring apparently for Pillsbury AND Javelina Leap at the Cottonwood Walk on Main Street. As the old Firesign Theatre line goes, "how can you be in two places at once when you're really nowhere at all?" Beats me, but I'm sure it'll all work out.
Today The Kid and I are spiffing up the place in advance of the return home of She Who Must Be Obeyed, who yesterday, against the advice of EVERYONE who cares about her, hiked 25 miles and over 10,000 feet in elevation change from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to the South Rim. IN ONE DAY. She and a couple of friends started out from the North Rim at 5 a.m. in the dark and completed the rim to rim, topping out at the Bright Angel trailhead at half past midnight. She's going to be pretty hammered so we're thinking up a good dinner and of course celebratory adult beverages to help soften the aches she'll no doubt have.
I'll be posting more when the laptop gets fixed and the next two festivals get closer. I suppose I should mention Halloween, 3rd place in my list of the top 3 unnecessary and annoying holidays, right after Easter and Valentine's Day. Anyone over the age of 10 who still enjoys these holidays should do some serious soul-searching. There. I mentioned it.

What wine goes with fried hard drives?

I'd say a nice heavily oaked Chardonnay, to match the puckered up face you're already making when your computer takes a serious dump. I bought my laptop from a neighbor friend who had babied it since it's birth in 2003. Pristine in all respects. A 17 inch aluminum Powerbook for next to nothing was too good to pass up. It does everything I need it to do, runs Photoshop, iDVD, iMovie, and burns (cough) "archival" copies of movies that I of COURSE own. The downside risk of course was the fact that Apple had some hard drive issues with these machines when they first came out and ended up replacing so many failed drives that they changed suppliers. This one had it's original drive and I figured that the only reason it'd never failed is because it'd been babied it's entire life and never put under stress. So I bought it knowing there was a possibilty it would soon fail, as I had some serious stressing planned for it. It did. So now, while waiting for a new drive to arrive after I ordered the wrong one this week, I'm forced to use my old frustratingly slow desktop or my wife's Win-Doze netbook with it's teeny tiny itty bitty very small microscopic screen and 3 year old child sized keyboard. Computer use is no longer fun and won't be until I get my new drive and get it into the Powerbook. It'll be next week before I post again I'll bet.
Anyhow, I went to Javelina Leap yesterday and met with owner/winemaker Rod Snapp, who was outside staring at the cloudy skies and fretting about his newest crush, which he had just put to fermentation. Except the yeast wasn't cooperating. It was too cool. Rod does some of his fermentation outside, his production having outgrown his indoor space for vats. He was contemplating a trip to town for heaters and tarps to up the temp on his vats a few degrees. This morning it's even cooler and still cloudy, so I'll be that yeast in those vats is still sleeping soundly, unless it's had a little fire lit under it's butt.
Rod and I had a great chat, it turns out we've some things in common. He's an ex cook too. He worked at the Oak Creek Owl a few years after I worked at Rene at Tlaquepaque. He knows the San Juan River country well, having done several trips on the lower end years ago. He spent several years cooking at the Grand Canyon too.
He's having a staff meeting this weekend and after that he'll have an idea what kind of help he's going to need, so we'll be chatting again in a week or so. He was real pleased to hear that I'd like to work two to four days a week. Apparently he's got several employees who only put in one day a week and he's not happy with that situation. Personally, seems to me like working one day a week you'd almost have to relearn how to do the job every time you came to work. Anyhow, he needs help at The Walk on Main, so I'll need to decide where I'm working that day. Choices choices....

The Cottonwood Airport Thing

As I mentioned previously, I worked this past weekend for Arizona Stronghold and Page Springs Cellars at the wine tent at the Cottonwood AirFest or whatever it was called. I didn't have a great feeling about this one before hand. I'd tried my hardest to find any online advertising for it, and only managed to come up with one little blurb in the Verde Independent. There was a poster down at Cottonwood City Hall, so at least the three ladies who work there knew about it, but they apparently hadn't taken advantage of viral marketing through social network websites and spread the word.

It was an old car old airplane oh yeah and there's a wine tent too kind of affair. Some nice old cars and planes, but the crowd that did show up had clearly come for the motorized portion of the event and walked right past the wine tent. The biggest news of the day was the mid air collision of an ultralight aircraft and a hot air balloon. It's still front page news on the Independent's webpage linked above.

By 2 p.m., the old geezers with the old cars had all gone home for their naps, the planes had stopped buzzing around and H and H barbecue had cleaned out their greasetraps and packed it in. I didn't even get a plate of their tasty burnt ends. We called it quits by 2:30. The wine tent was a new addition and whoever had put on the show hadn't charged the wineries for table space this year, so nobody was really put out for much.

It did give me a lot of schmooze time. One thing that's great about these shows is during down time, the people running the various tables have a chance to visit with others and everyone is happy to pour samples of their best offerings. A very nice perk, you ask me. I had the opportunity to meet with Rod Snapp and his wife Cynthia. Rod needs some help at Javelina Leap and when he found out I could tell excrement from Shinola and had the time and interest, he invited me to come and talk with him this week about possibly working for him. I'll get over there tomorrow or Thursday.
I put a few slides up, they're mostly of cars and planes and a few are of winesellers with few or no customers. I'm looking forward to the Walk on Main, November 8th. I think I'll be working the street booth with Pillsbury, unless Javelina Leap has stolen me away.

Branching Out

The wine community here is a pretty small and pretty clannish bunch it seems. Who's involved with what winery seems to be in a state of constant change. Page Springs Cellars and Arizona Stronghold it turns out contacted Pillsbury looking for staff to work their tables at this Saturday's Cottonwood Airport Airplane-Old Car-Wine event. So, I get to go to Page Springs tomorrow morning and to the Arizona Stronghold tasting room in the afternoon to do homework for their wines. I've been hoping for a way to spread myself around a bit and learn some more wines, so this is a little stroke of good luck. Page Springs is Eric Glomski's enterprise and the Stronghold is a collaboration between Glomski and Keenan, or something like that. Their tables will be together. I don't know if Caduceus is also involved or will be separate. I'll be writing up tomorrow's tastings and the event itself in the coming days. Stay thirsty.