Ed Icionsub

This weekend is when everyone goes to the grocery store and buys everything they need for their big Thanksgiving dinner.Even people who normally do not shop weekly for groceries will be in the stores shopping for the holiday. You will not catch me in the grocery today – I will wait until Tuesday to go buy my turkey and fixings.

It will be a big run on fresh and frozen turkeys, but also a run on prime rib, standing rib roasts, and Honeybaked hams. Not everyone likes turkey and depending upon where you live and what your family traditions might be, you could be serving a totally non turkey based meal this Thursday.

When I lived in San Francisco, the Thanksgiving focus was on Dungeness Crab and fresh oysters. November is the start of Dungeness Crab season and everyone grabs up the first catches of the year. Dungeness Crab season always begins mid-November and runs until June. But, the reality is that 80 percent of the Dungeness Crab is brought in by the end of December. So, there is always this Thanksgiving rush to get the biggest, sweetest, freshest crabs. Makes my mouth water just thinking about those.

I love chocolate as much as my wife does, so it is a very easy gift to buy her for all those special occasions. I always know that she will ove a box of chcolates and I’m a lucky guy who gets to share them with her!

We used to have big discussions about which chocolates were the best tasting. I have to admit that I grew up thinking that Hersheys chocolate bars were the best treat at the grocery store. Also, we used to get a big Whitman’s Sampler box at Christmas – that was one of our family holiday traditions.

Now I have discovered Godiva chocolates and that is the kind that my wife loves the best. I have tried to entice her with Ghiradelli chocolates, but she won’t budge off the Godiva. Thankfully, there is a Godiva shop inside the Opryland Hotel, so it is always close by.

Some well meaning but misguided parent group has decided to make an issue out of school serving chocolate milk in the cafeterias. They say chocolate milk is unhealthy and the schools should stop making it available to children. I say, Bull shit!

This is a prime example of do-gooders doing the wrong thing. I know for a fact that a whole lot of kids won’t drink milk at all if all you offer them is the plain vitamin D enriched white stuff. Studies have shown that overall milk consumption drops by over 30% when you remove the option of flavored milks. So all those kids are not going to get their calcium and other nutritional needs met if you withhold flavored milks.

I don’t care how “healthy” something is for you – you are not going to get the benefit of milk if you do not drink it. For 30% of the kids that refuse plain white milk – and I don’t blame them one bit, I can’t stand the stuff – you are robbing them of their milk by withholding chocolate and strawberry flavored milks. I say let the kids and their parents decide if they want to drink the flavored milks and the rest of you who just want white milk, fine. But keep your noses out of the affairs of me and my kids milk and food choices.

On a whim, I decided to buy a bread machine and start making my own bread. It was delivered to my door a couple of days ago.

I like the idea of making bread on demand and not having to worry about running to the store just for something to make a sandwich out of. I also like the different kinds of breads that you can have alongside dinner instead of just canned biscuits.

There are dozens of really tasty recipes that can be made in the machine. I have tried to make plain white bread twice and it turned out great each time. So now I am going on to the more exotic breads. I’ll let you know which ones I like. If you have a favorite bread machine recipe, please put it in a comment or an email – I am going to be experimenting for a while.

Seems like Pringles have been around my whole life, but I know that is not true. I honestly cannot remember life without them, though. I used to take Pringles in my lunchbox to school and my mom liked to take them with us to the beach because the can was easy to transport and it kept them fresh in spite of the high humidity at the beach.

I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that they were first sold in the U. S. in 1968. PI was surprised to read that Pringles are only 42% potato, and  the rest is  wheat starch and a mixture of potato, corn, and rice flours mixed with vegetable oils and an emulsifier and then fried – not baked.

There are several new flavors now. I still like the green onion flavor the best, but they have been getting really creative with different flavors and I do try them all. My favorite new flavor is the honey mustard. I didn’t think I would like it, but it has turned into my second choice.