Ahhh...one of my favorite bars, the late great Sidebar in Silver Spring, MD, once had a drink called the Russian Bathhouse....basically a vodka martini with the horseradish-infused vodka, garnished with a sprig of dill and a spoonful of caviar. It. Was. Amazing. I miss that place.

It’s like the justification for champagne flutes....”Oh, they keep the champagne from going flat!” Wait...what? WHAT KIND OF PERSON LETS CHAMPAGNE SIT AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO GO FLAT??? What kind of barbarians are we dealing with here?

Golden Delicious are one of the best apples for holding their shape when cooked, so if you’re doing a recipe that needs that, like a tart or something, then go for them.

They do cakewalks in Hell, you know.

Well, it’s in the vein of Gustave Flaubert, who pleasured himself in the corner of the King’s Chamber....at least, according to his memoir of traveling in Egypt.

I’ve been struggling with Christmas all my life, really. I enjoyed it as a kid but my mother is a Christmas maniac who listens to carols in August and is always, always, always thinking of new decorations and stuff and if anyone didn’t show the same excessive spirit she did, especially me, you were dubbed a “Scrooge”…

Soy sauce, salt, and herb blends are favorites for me. Also, Worcestershire sauce for a big hit of umami. I’ve even thrown in an anchovy or two to various dishes to bump things up. Garlie is a big favorite, and if they work, I love inserting mushrooms into a recipe when I can. I once made a Rachael Ray recipe for…

An old hack is to used leftover mashed potatoes as a thickener, especially for the post-Thanksgiving turkey soup you make with the carcass and leftover veggies.

I do “Krampus in the Korner.”

Ooops, I forgot to mention that I froze the ragout. 

The truly GOOD cookbooks will let you know that some dishes keep and reheat well...and in some cases, recommend it. One cookbook I have has a pot roast recipe that basically tells you to not serve it unless you’ve kept it overnight and reheated it. I once made a beef ragout a few weeks before the party, warmed it up…

My ex-boss demanded I both focus and multi-task. I tried to tell him that was not humanly possible, but he refused to accept the reality that they are mutually exclusive concepts. I eventually got fired for BS reasons but I look back on that and shudder. I don’t know if he was an idiot, mentally ill, or just emptily…

Good to know! Maybe I’ll start stashing gravy....heaven knows, I stash so much else....

In “The Way to Cook,” Julia Child cooks turkeys several ways, but one way I’ve always wanted to do is the Reassembled Turkey. The breast is lopped off the carcass and roasted atop a bed of stuffing, while the leg-thighs are also cut off, the thighs boned and seasoned, and roasted separately. The rest can be used for…

Yup. In her cookbook “Beat This!”, which I’ve relied on for many ideas and viewpoints for years, author Ann Hodgeman recommends doing exactly what you’re doing...make stock ahead of time, make gravy with that, and that gives you one less thing to deal with on the big day. She has recipes for turkey and beef gravy. I…

Agreed with others; this could take quite a bit of advance planning. I have done similar...one day I went to the doc to give blood for blood work, which requires fasting for 8 hours. I went first thing in the morning, then had a leisurely breakfast at a local diner, then went in for an exam at my ophthalmologist. (I…

Yeah, I’m from western Maryland farm country. Ham with everything. Also sauerkraut at every holiday meal. (Except Christmas in our household, when we did a seafood blow-out, not for any religious reason or the like, it was simply because we liked it.)

I make turkey year-round as well...half turkey breasts are amazing in the slow cooker.

We always have a plate of cold sliced ham on the table at Thanksgiving. We used to do a country ham until most of the adults in my family were diagnosed with high blood pressure and put on low-fat and low-sodium diets. Then we went with a low-salt ham. In many ways, ham was an everyday food for our family, but it was…

Pyrex pie plates are da BOMB, and I rarely bake pies. I use them for breading, for dredging, for warming up leftovers in the oven or microwave....they have a million and one uses. Always have multiple pie plates on hand for a billion purposes.