Pat

According to the retitling of this thread, he's now at IndeBleu

I noticed when I was there this weekend that one can also order goose and capon for Thanksgiving. I recall that the original request said that capon was okay too.

Not to give a blow-by-blow account, but I baked the portion of the dough that survived . It was hard to get the timing right since it was a smaller amount. I think I may have left it in slightly too long, but it's got a nice crust. It looks like a ciabatta with a crusty crust. When I was tapping on it to see if it was done, I managed to poke my thumb through it, and the inside is nice and soft. I think I managed to salvage something from this project. (To get it into the cast iron dutch oven I used, I folded the towel back against itself once to get the dough loosened and then picked up the whole thing and dropped it into the pot. This was the easiest time in the process that I had dealing with the dough. No problem with the stickiness at all.)

I would go with some kind of green salad, just to have that base covered. You don't need anything fancy and can use bottled dressing. Instead of a relish plate (presuming that's for an app), what about a few cheeses and crackers (or bread)? If you have bread for that, you don't need to have rolls with the meal.For Friday, this Martha Stewart recipe for bulgur and mushrooms is really good:

I had thought of using bread flour, but I'm low on that and have lots of APF. I have another bread I'm making soon that requires bread flour specifically, so that's why I opted for all-purpose for this. The next attempt I'll try whole wheat and APF.

Ah. I used all APF. I'll try half whole wheat next time. Thanks for the idea.

Oh, I can top this, and I haven't even tried to put what's left of the dough in the oven yet. The dough seemed to be progressing just fine, but when I made it into a ball, it didn't quite hold together well enough. The transfer from work surface to nearby cornmeal-covered cloth resulted in half the dough flopping onto the edge of the counter and, before I could do anything about it, onto the floor. And our floor is not what you would call, uh, clean. So I have a small mass of dough which is not solid enough to be a ball, rising for the 2 hours. I'll see what happens. I can usually deal ok with fairly wet dough, but this dough is so wet that it's really loose. I'll try again and make sure the cloth is immediately next to the work surface and far back on the (clean) counter.

That's how my mother made stuffing, but she didn't use apple. Giblets were cooked that way but usually went into the gravy. Ok, so it's not exactly the same

Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Instant made me think fast-rising, but that didn't seem to go with the super slow process. This makes more sense. Thanks for the information. I had noticed recipes not calling for proofing but hadn't pieced that together.After seeing fast-rising yeast everywhere for a while, I've been having trouble finding it lately. I'd try 3 or 4 stores a time before I'd find any, and the supply would be almost gone. If anyone else is having this problem (maybe it's just me ), I hit the mother lode at the Shoppers Food at Potomac Yards. I've got enough to last me quite a while now.

My silly question is, when the recipe calls for instant yeast, does that mean regular granulated yeast in a foil packet (as opposed to a yeast cake)? I figured that, since the point is a slow rise, instant doesn't mean fast-rising.

Aha! We had mussels with butter, garlic, white wine, lemon, and parsley for dinner last night, along with garlic bread made from a baguette, and a frisee salad with radishes and cucumbers. (No dessert, though.)

I used Great Country Farms this year and was quite satisfied. I picked up because they deliver but not to where I am. I'm not sure if they come to your area or not. (It was a loony idea on my part to drive out there every week, but my schedule was pretty open this summer and I'm glad I did it.)http://www.greatcountryfarms.com/

The Marvelous Market location across from Eastern Market is now open. I got coffee there a bit ago, and they couldn't get the cash register open . Still working out the kinks, I guess. They've got a few tables set up outside. Today would be a nice day for picking up some food inside and sitting out there.

goldfish crackers, cheddar (why have they started putting penguins in with the goldfish? )

I think they're fairly popular--or at least they've previously been introduced--in the UK. I first heard about this on a mailing list with a lot of non-USAians. Interesting concepts

We're usually away at Thanksgiving, so I don't generally order one there, but Market Poultry (202-543-7470) at Eastern Market on Capitol Hill has wonderful poultry at reasonable prices. That's where I buy most of my poultry, and that's where I would go if I were looking to acquire a Thanksgiving bird. They also have other poultry besides turkey. I checked and they said most of their Thanksgiving turkeys come from Hillside Farms. The deadline for pre-ordering through them is November 19th.

I don't know that store. I venture periodically to the Le Creuset factory outlet store at Leesburg Premium Outlets. They have a twice (?) annual big sale, but there are often other specials in the store, including an automatic discount if you buy more than X$ dollar amount of merchandise. I've made some good purchases there, maybe too many .

Thanks. I'll have to see what's still there. My recollection was that the short-lived auto racing facillity and baseball had cut into the space they had or shut them down completely. Maybe in the off season with the racing gone, it's back to being a real market.

Apologies if this is addressed somewhere in this long thread, but I didn't find the answer when I searched. Is there still a farmer's market at RFK Stadium on Thursdays and Saturdays? Years ago there was, and I would go occasionally, but I thought it was shut down completely a couple of years ago. When we went to vote this morning, we saw a sign for the farmer's market. I was wondering if it had reopened or if that's just a very old sign.

I decided it best to change my opentable profile to use my fuller name. I don't know if that will take care of it, but it should take care of most instances of it. Otherwise, I'll try not to worry about it. The thing that occurs to me that is especially funny is that my husband has a name that is relatively unfamiliar to most people (though more familiar than it once was) : Liam. For decades now, when we order pizza or give our names to hold a table, he gives the name Pat, since giving his name almost always results in confusion. Even spelling it out is a pain, then whoever calls us later doesn't know how to pronounce it, except for those who decide it's William (so we miss it completely, since he's not a William).

Good, because it turns out they decided to open in the afternoon instead They should be open by now, but maybe give a call and make sure (except I have no idea what the number is).

I will try the baking soda next time. If it gives a better crust, then I might not have the gumminess problem.I don't think there is a toaster oven where we are going (don't remember one, anyway), and it depends on what time we get there whether the oven will be already full. Maybe wrapped in foil in the oven if we can pull that off is the best bet. I think the microwave would definitely made the gumminess worse. Thanks for the answers.

We had dinner at BDT last night. I was looking forward to bratwurst, sauerkraut and fries, and the restaurant did not disappoint. I also got the beet salad, with goat cheese, endive, and pumpkin seeds. It was a nice combination of flavors. Beets and goat cheese are paired fairly often, but the addition of endive and pumpkin seeds really enhanced the salad. One thing I love about this time of year is toasted pumpkin seeds. My husband went for the tavern steak (which I enjoyed a bit of) and more fries I was too full for dessert and was disappointed because I wanted to try the apple pie. Next time, I guess. We each got a Sierra Nevada before the meal and I had a wonderful glass of Acacia Pinot Noir with the meal. There were a few, fairly small, issues that left me a bit The service was generally quite good, enthusiastic and helpful. I knew about the communal serving dishes ahead of time but was still a little bemused by serving myself. It did make it easier to share the steak, but the table seemed cluttered. I liked the delivery system for the fries, though. Biggest grump of the night: the butter for the bread was cold and rock solid . (Let the fact that that was the biggest complaint we had inform the reading of the rest of the post.) Another issue was service-related and it took me until this morning to figure out what really bothered me about it. My husband and I have different last names, so occasionally one of us (usually me) will get called by the other's last name. Throughout the meal, the waiter referred to my husband as Mr. my-last-name. My husband didn't mind, and we kind of shrugged it off. It seemed like an awkward thing to make a point of (and I never realized before we got married how many complications having different names would cause). I make all the restaurant reservations and have an ambiguous name, so it's understandable why it would happen. It was only well after the fact that I realized that the waiter only addressed him by name. He assumed that he was the the person who made the reservation. I could have been his wife, mistress, sister, or anything else, so he didn't have a name to call me. (I understand: How embarrassing to call me Mrs. my-last-name if I turned out not to be his wife.) It left me wondering if I should change my open table account to use more my feminine full first name as opposed to the nickname I always use. I'm not bringing this up to criticize this restaurant, because it has happened before. It's, I guess, a matter of managing to maintain some kind of traditional etiquette and formality in a world where people have ambiguous names. And, in the end, my husband was the one who paid the check. So, I'm throwing this out as a question rather than a criticism: Should I make it more explicit that I am female when I make reservations? Should I use my husband's name? Is it not worth fussing about? Is there a non-awkward way to bring it up with a server when something like this happens? I understand that people in the hospitality business are trying to be as hospitable as possible, and I'm not trying to make it any harder.

A few different staff members have told me it's tomorrow, so maybe you'll be in luck.Edited because I talked to Moe. He said they've been cooking lots of food and are ready to go. He's opening the doors tomorrow at 11 AM (Monday).

I'm trying my hand at baking soft pretzels. When I tried years ago, I didn't have much experience baking bread. This try went much better but still needs work. This is the recipe I used.. My biggest problem was with shaping the pretzels . I managed that in mediocre fashion. Does anyone have pretzel-shaping techniques for the aesthetically impaired? They seemed to come out pretty well and were nice warm from the oven. The next day, however, the cold pretzels had gummy parts, which I think relates to the boiling. Pieces that were near pieces that got folded over got boiled but not baked fully. (That's my best guess.) They look kind of opaque and, well, gummy in spots. Another question would be: How do you reheat these suckers? I'm working on this to take them along with my bread basket at Thanksgiving. Help? Thanks.