Tag Archives: holidays

So, you want to give a coffee gift…

Hi there, all. Bill here. I don’t have much to say on the blog these days, but Tasha asked me to make this post. I’ve had a few people ask me recently about gifting coffee stuff to people in their lives, and I wrote a pretty long email to one of them recently that contained my thoughts. Here’s an edited version thereof.

So, a couple of caveats before I start: I assume the person you’re purchasing for is into schmancy coffee to some degree. Someone who just likes a basic cup of coffee may not appreciate a bunch of this, but who knows? You might just start them onto a new hobby and some better coffee to drink. Also, I have no idea what your budget is: I’ll mention roughly how expensive things are, but that’s all you get.… Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Menu & Cooking

Back before Thanksgiving, I was going to post my planned menu. I was going to ask for tips, tricks, and suggestions. I had a blogging plan.

Of course, I also had a turkey plan, and you guys see how well that went. I also had this plan that I’d do a bunch of cooking Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. That went about as well as you might expect.

The not cooking very early? That was totally my fault. Monday and Tuesday rolled around, and I realized my menu was small enough that I wasn’t sure it was worth any possible degradation in quality to cook so early. Though, to try to make sure it set, I think I made the cranberry sauce Tuesday. I may have made it Wednesday morning.… Continue reading →

[97] Boneless Prime Rib for a Small Crowd

How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

Bill and I have two farms we tend to buy meat from at “Green City Market.”:http://www.greencitymarket.org/index.asp One I’ve mentioned in passing several times, is “Meadow Haven Farm.”:http://www.meadowhavenfarm.com/ While they have beef, we tend to purchase from them mostly poultry and pork. In fact, I think we’ve never purchased beef from Meadow Haven.

The farm we get our beef from, generally, is “Heartland Meats.”:http://www.heartlandmeats.com/ Now, we don’t buy it explicitly because it tastes better. We have, in fact, not tried most of the other vendors’ beef. We end up buying it from Heartland because it is pretty darn good, and because we managed to form a relationship with them, albeit “just” buyer and seller, long before we connected with any of the other farmers.… Continue reading →