Here's my advice for anyone who's cooking a turkey -- but secretly wishes someone else were doing it. 

1. Do not follow the directions on the package and cook your 25 pound turkey for 2 and a half hours per 5 pounds for a grand total that equals waking up at 5 A.M. to get the overgrown bird in the oven for a 3 P.M. dinner. No turkey, no matter how over-fed, over-stuffed, or just plain fat, needs to cook for 12 hours. Really. You've got to trust me on this. All you need is 175 F. on the thickest part of the thigh and you're good to go. (Ideally, the breast won't get this hot -- you want your breast more like 160 F.) Get an instant-read thermometer or cut into the thigh. If the juices run clear, you're good. And you're welcome to your extra sleep, too. Let's say, for a 25 pound bird cooked at 350 F. and put in the oven close to room temp, you'll be in and out of the oven in 3 hours -- 3 and a half tops. (I have fought this battle many times and never, ever, have we eaten at midnight. Truly.)

2. Don't cook an ice cold bird. Like any meat, putting 20 pounds of 36 F. meat in the oven will almost certainly result in an overcooked exterior (read: dry) and an undercooked thigh. It will also take longer. Give the bird an hour on the counter, at least, while you putter around with your stuffing and think about where to seat your ancient aunt so she hears just enough of what she needs to hear.

3. Flip the bird. That is, start the bird roasting with its breast up (missionary position) at 400 F. to brown it up, then get in there and kiss some of your old oven mitts good-bye as you turn the bird breast side down (never mind). Turn the oven down to 350 F. and let it cook -- for another 3 hours, at the very most. Upside down, the thighs are up in the heat and the breast is gaining from the fat and juices dripping down from them while shielded from the most intense heat in the depths of pan. This method works even if it mars the beauty of that lovely brown skin covering the breast. You can't have a perfectly cooked bird for nothing.

4. Be sure to let your stuffing come to 160 F. before you eat it. Don't pack it in. Instead, fill the cavity loosely and then scoop the remainder into a gratin pan, cover it with foil and let it cook in with the bird. Take the foil off to brown it for the final half hour, depending on how fatty it is (the fattier, the tastier it will be for browning; skinny stuffing -- if there is such a thing -- might dry out).

5. Don't put flour in your gravy. I know, that's what everyone does. But drippings are a lovely thing and heavy cream is their deserving pair -- not flour. If you must use flour, cook it up with equal parts turkey fat so it browns into a lovely roux, then add the drippings and the cognac and the liver and the gizzards and....

6. Do brine the bird 24 hours before you cook it. I find brining gives the meat a level of seasoning that makes every bite delicious -- even without the gravy. Just get a giant bucket, put the bird in, fill it with fresh water and add a handful of kosher salt along with juniper berries, star anise, pepper, fennel seed, fresh herbs -- whatever you have on hand. Truth is, it's really about the salt.

7. Be sure to rest the bird for 20-30 minutes before you carve it. To do this, tent the bird very loosely with foil and let it sit on a platter while you work on your gravy and the rest of million things you have failed to do on time. The rest-the-bird hiatus takes no effort when you're in charge of a sit-down meal for 25 with 15 sides to deal with. Half the dishes need time in the oven after the bird cedes its place there. Let the bird rest and get the sides hot, hot, hot.

8. Don't neglect to warm your plates. I know this sounds at once obvious and picky. But by the time all the food and people are sitting down most of the sides will no longer be hot, hot, hot -- if they ever were. Putting that imperfectly hot food on an ice cold plate is the worst thing you can do to it. If you're the cook, you worked hard to put the meal together. But cold food is hard to love. Warm the plates as a favor to yourself. I'm sure you deserve it.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

 *PHOTO: Turkey race, Thanksgiving Day, Star Tribune Nov.25, 1955. Photo courtesy of the MN Historical Society. See Malcolm Richards, Environmental Studies Project on the history of Thanksgiving.

Why do a milk tasting? Aside from the irresistible fun of bubbling milk through your teeth like you're experiencing an 1979 Chateau Margaux, if you're like me you're tired of paying nearly $5 for a half-gallon of just so-so organic milk at the grocery store. I also wanted to find out if the more local, non-organic milk might actually taste better than the organic milk I buy. Why? The organic milk, with the exception of the venerable Ronnybrook, is not just homogenized but ultra-pasteurized. That means the carton I buy today will go sour sometime around the time I plan to be nursing a major hangover from the fabulous News Year's party I've yet to be invited to. Let's face it, something has to be lost (flavor, enzymes) when milk is heated to such a high temperature that the date stamped on it actually invites me to leave it in my dented refrigerator until the first week of 2009.

Here are the results of four brands of whole milk I renently put to the test, along with some friends.

1. Crowley. My top pick for flavor. rSBT free, sold in cartons (not in plastic), and not ultra-pasteurized (their website says only their white and chocolate milk come from farmers who have pledged not to use rSBT). I found this milk creamy and considerably sweeter than any of the other milks on the table. *At $2.09 for a half gallon carton at my local grocery store, it's a bargain. 

2. Organic Cow from Vermont. A close second and a first place for two testers. Creamy. Flavorful. And you can feel good about contributing toward organic agriculture and small Vermont dairy farmers. *Around $4.50 at my local grocery store. The best choice for ethical consumption and taste -- if you can spend the extra $2.50.

3. Ronnybrook. Everyone agreed this milk's flavor is much more pronounced than the others. Easily identified as "grassy" and slightly "earthy,"which translates into what some would call real "flavor." But is this what most of us today think of as the right flavor of milk? Not really. We're used to a cleaner, blander product. *If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

4. Garelick. Disadvantaged by a plastic container (perhaps), this milk was the clear loser. "Thin," "off flavor" and "chemical" were some of the ways it was described. I missed it if this milk declares itself to be rSBT free right on the label -- the website says it is. *Cheap.  

 *Thomas Nast drawing (1876) from History Matters: The U.S. History Survey Course on the Web.

So what to do? When I ran a baking business -- without access to Cisco or any other big delivery wholesale source -- I bought some of my butter at Sam's Club. It was wrapped in foil and tasted pretty clean. Problem is, as I discovered later, it doesn't just contain "cream" and maybe "salt" it contains "other natural flavorings." No thanks! 

Butter, butter, butter. If you bake a lot, as I do, you don't just want great butter you want clean, rich, high butterfat butter with flavor at a price that won't destroy you. For the table, I love Kerry Gold, Kate's, and the very yummy Vermont Butter & Cheese Company butter, but I can't afford to cook with any of them. I don't mind Whole Foods 365 Butter. It's affordable, non-rBST, and has a decent taste for the price. But I don't live anywhere near a Whole Foods. 

I want cheap butter that doesn't taste cheap. Get a cow you say? I may just do that.

When I'm feeling cheap and desperate, I'm happy to fish in the junky Halloween candy bowl. I go for the hardworking Snickers, with its slightly salty-caramel-peanut-chocolate combo. Next in line, the venerable Twix which mixes the crispy cookie with caramel and a thicker-than-most chocolate shell with reasonably satisfying results (nice shiny wrapper, too). I also reach for the Three Musketeers because I like its airy, ridiculous center -- eating it is like swallowing nothing so much as sugary air.  

Candy, candy, candy. If you love it like I do, make your own candy apples and forget the garbage, as free and easy as it is come the end of October. Fresh NY state apples with homemade caramel full of butter, cream and sugar is where it's at.  Dip the apples, lick the spoon, smell the air, and weep.

1- They're smell-free. The rest of the people in the car don't really want to enjoy your "fragrant" Moos Shoo Pork for over an hour when they aren't eating it themselves -- much less smell it on their clothes two hours later.

2-They're neat. Soup, burritos, and over-stuffed sandwiches have a tendency to find their way greasy way onto my city clothes and to appear in unsightly blotches on whatever section of the New York Times I happen to be wrestling with.

3 --They don't fill me up. When I'm lugging bags of goodies to cook up when I get home, all I really want for the train is a bite -- something to get my energy and taste buds geared up for the kitchen work to come.

Today the advertisement of such opulence is, at the very least -- with the market crashing 800 points in a day and 1000s of people losing their jobs and houses every minute -- in poor taste. 

For 80-100 K this person "may prepare salads" and "luncheon" (these people don't eat "lunch"). Know your arugula from your mache, certified butlers of the world! Oh, and "the silver service" must be "kept clean and intact." In other words: don't mix it with the plate or the stainless -- and keep it from the sticky hands of the rest of the "help." Study your Martinis, Gimlets, and Darjeeling varieties for you'll be making cocktails, tea (?!) and performing "other services as requested" (in these dark times it's wise to leave the job description with a little wiggle room -- you never know when you may need someone to iron the linen sheets). 

The self-importance of this "High Profile" family at their "estate home" requires caps. At least they grant equal puffery to the position they're filling -- "Butler." 

Pull out the Ishiguro and start reading. These times require elegant relief.

From Craig's List:

 1. First I made a genoise cake I plan to serve this Friday.  Nostalgia again got ahold of me and I started dreaming of the taste of the cakes I grew up eating as a restaurant brat: classic French genoise with true buttercream (that means egg yolks!). I haven't made the buttercream yet, but I'm thinking coffee with a little cognac... I find Paula Peck's classic 1961 book, The Art of Fine Baking, the most reliable source for these sorts of classics. (I have a copy of the funky older version with the gorgeous line drawing on the cover, but this is the edition you're more likely to find.) 

2. Next I improvised an apple galette with some MacIntosh apples I had sitting around. The other day I had made a triple batch of pate brisee  and it was time to put it to good use -- or freeze it. I chose to use it, but because it was an afterthought I didn't peel the apples. This always seems like a good idea when you're in a hurry, but it reveals itself as a bad idea when you bite down on the tough skin that, unlike the apple's flesh, hasn't become sweet and soft in the oven. I hate peeling apples. There must be a better way, no?

3. Because I didn't have enough going on, I decided to make some coffeecake dough. I have a jar of rough-cut peach jam that I hadn't so much as canned as stuck in a mason jar and put in the fridge. Its bright summery taste is destined to fill a coffeecake -- peach filling with streusel topping and a drizzle of glaze. Sweet? No question. I can't wait to get out of bed tomorrow morning to a mug of hot, potent coffee and a piece of delicate coffee cake smeared with goat butter --to give it real backbone.

*Image from Israel Flour Mills Association.

The key to the jam? Great plums make incredible jam. I think mine are called Green Gage (I planted the tree almost 9 years ago and I'm not sure any more). In any case, they're not too sweet and come out a gorgeous ruby red when cooked with just a little sugar and a tad of pectin. I plan happily eat all 9 jars of it -- on buttery toast -- over the course of the winter.

The key to mom's irresistible bread? Plenty of yeast, a stick of melted butter, and milk rather than water to make the dough.  A good toaster helps, too.

2. When demonstrating how to make a sauce in front of 30 polite mid-westerners, do not reduce hot peppers in pomegranate juice while cooking on an unfamiliar stove. (Think audience with eyes watering and a sauce that goes from bubbling liquid to hot-pepper-pomegranate candy faster than you can say "chef.") 

3. Ragavan Iyer of 660 Curries, Martha Foose of Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, Laura Werlin of the eponymous Cheese Essentials, Diane Morgan of Grill Every Day, Kim Sunee of Trail of Crumbs, and Lori Lyn Narlock of Small Plates, Perfect Wines  can really put away the wine -- if they can find one they can agree on.

4. Ted Reader of the truck, the massive grills and Everyday Gourmet Grilling  can liven up any kitchen. Ted works harder than anyone else, but he gets his revenge by having more fun, eating more, and drinking more booze than the rest of the cooks combined. His food has the same outsize energy he does. 

5. The talented Martha Foose loves to smoke cigars as much as she loves the charming Cuban men who make them. She also really knows her way around the Detroit Airport -- where to buy fried cheese curds & root beer, where NOT to eat noodle soup and how to pass through security in a flash (use the attached hotel entrance). Martha went to pastry school in France --I'll try not to hate her for this.

6. If you're cooking Gingered Squash for 600, it's good to have a KitchenAid rep handy to loan you a shiny new food processor off the demo stand. As I quickly discovered, the KitchenAid has two design features that make it faster and better than the industry-leading Cuisinart. First, the top, with the plunger locked in place, slides into position in one motion. That means you can get the machine working without removing the plunger every time you remove the top. Bravo! Second, the little hole the blade fits into goes almost all the way to the top of the lid. This means there's no more overflow if you're working with liquid ingredients, so feel free to use the food processor to make anything from gazpacho to strawberry ice cream. 

7. Traverse City has an AMAZING farmers' market. I envy it and will work to emulate it in Cold Spring, NY. More vendors, more variety, great prices, and not a trinket or scented candle in sight. The gorgeous lake sparkling to one side and the friendly, attitude-free vendors don't hurt either.

*Image from marcusuniforms.com