What are you cooking for Thanksgiving?

Is it too early to start planning our menus? I don't think so. The newspaper food sections this week were about Thanksgiving, and Julie and I are making a trial run today, cooking for family we won't get to see on the actual holiday. Yesterday I was listening to a favorite new podcast, Lynne Rossetto Casper's "The Splendid Table" (which is a public radio program), and it really got me into the mood for cooking today. On the episode I heard, Randall Grahm, the winemaker at California's Bonny Doon Vineyards, talked about how much he can't stand Australian shiraz, which he described as a fruit bomb without real personality -- this, versus what the French do with the syrah grape. I found myself agreeing with him without knowing much at all about the French style -- this, as someone who drank lots of Aussie shiraz years ago, but eventually found it too overpowering for pleasure. Grahm spoke of Aussie shiraz as a wine that has had too much done to it -- meaning that it's been manipulated too much to be a natural expression of the grape (his description of the overengineered wine reminded me of what industrial chicken factories do to breed unnaturally fat-breasted chickens for the mass market). Grahm said these wines are almost always drinkable, but rarely "haunting" -- meaning you never finish one thinking, "What was that? I have to drink that again."

I'll tell you what is haunting: the Grenache from Dobra Zemlja Vineyards in the Sacramento area. They do pretty great things with their Syrah too, but I keep thinking mostly about their Grenache.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is not really a time to have haunting wines, but crowd-pleasing ones. In my experience, you can't go wrong with a Beaujolais Villages, which is inexpensive and accessible to people who don't drink much wine, but which is also usually pleasing to more experienced wine drinkers. It's red, of course, but I've found it goes well enough with turkey, and doesn't overpower it. But with our turkey today(storebought this time; we don't have time to roast one from scratch this weekend), I've laid in a few dry German Rieslings, a wine I rarely drink but am excited to sample today, as well as a couple of bottles of Hermit Crab, a pleasing blend of Viognier and Marsanne from Australia. I never would have thought to have bought a bottle of the Hermit Crab, but last month, Jennifer, the wine manager at the Central Market in our part of Dallas, put me onto it, and boy, I'm glad she did. (This is why it's important to develop a relationship with a wine store sales person whose judgment you trust; Jennifer has steered me into so many good wines I wouldn't have found on my own.)

We're also serving the cornbread dressing we always make from Christopher Kimball's recipe. The secret is fresh sage and thyme, but I think deglazing the pan with bourbon and pouring it into the dressing is a nice touch. I'm cooking a recipe for brussels sprouts with chorizo, and Julie's going to do mashed sweet potatoes with Thai red curry paste and coconut milk. Julie's making a tarte Tatin for dessert, but I also bought a Brie en croute, with cranberries, for baking.

This is a warm-up for the actual Thanksgiving, the menu of which we're just starting to think about. The only thing we're definitely serving on the big day is that spectacular Chris Kimball dressing. Oh, that, and real cranberry sauce, with lemon zest, not the canned stuff, which is of the Devil.

So: Thanksgiving. What are you cooking? What do you like? Dislike? What does your family like and dislike? Which wines do you find are crowd-pleasers at the Thanksgiving table. And so forth. Let's talk. Do check out "The Splendid Table" via iTunes, too -- something nice to listen to as you cook, if you don't have anybody fun to talk to. I'm pleased to have you post links to recipes, but keep in mind that putting a link into a post often means it'll be caught by the spam filter, and I almost always am not made aware of it (even though it says your post is being held for approval) unless you tell me.