Hapy Thanksgiving! And a giveaway :-)

UPDATE:  I had to end this giveaway a little early as I am going out of town tomorrow.  Thank you to all 36 entrants!  The random number generated gave me lucky number 6 and Sharon won.  And her favorite part of winter?  

Snow! (But I have to visit to experience it ...I am in the South.)  Summer, I love the tropical flowers!

Thank you everyone and happy holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Americans!  Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday of the year.  I love the whole idea of spending the day with people who are close to you and sharing food (and drink and football).  As I've gotten more and more into cooking over the past few years, too, I've really enjoyed making more and more of Thanksgiving dinner from scratch.  I am still very intimidated by baking bread and making stuffing seems like a lot of work, but everything else this year is homemade, about which I'm very happy!  I've really enjoyed sitting on a kitchen stool in my mom's kitchen, chopping up vegetables, chatting with my mom and sister, and breathing in all the spices.

Does anyone have a fabulous Thanksgiving recipe they'd like to share?  I haven't yet tasted my pumpkin pie, so I don't know how good it is, but I'm a fan of this cranberry sauce I made, which combines the traditional sauce with pineapple and chilies.  I also added in pomegranate, just because we had some and, er, it matched.  Actually, last year I made a very well-received cranberry sauce with wine that I loved.  It's just that I wanted to try something different this year.

And I guess in general, I like to try new things in the kitchen rather than stick with something I already know is a success.  Sure, I like making the same things over again sometimes, but I also think it's fun to switch it up a bit.  So while we have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with the turkey, the stuffing, the sauce, the potatoes and the pie, I like to vary the approach we take with each of those recipes.  For instance, this year, we brined our bird again, but included apple cider in our brine instead of just salt water.  Hopefully that turns out well!

What kind of holiday chef are you?  Do you tend to stick to the tried-and-true, well-loved recipes that everyone spends the whole year looking forward to?  Or do you experiment and try to switch it up?

I hope those who celebrate it have a fabulous Thanksgiving!  As many know, Thanksgiving is the official start of holiday buying season.  I personally go to Black Friday sales every year, even though I don't celebrate Christmas.  I just like the sales :-)

But for those of you who perhaps do not enjoy braving the shopping malls and the crazy drivers and the angry customers, perhaps instead you would like to do your shopping online?  With an $80 gift certificate to CSN Stores?  If so, enter your information in the form below and I'll enter you to win the gift certificate!  This giveaway will be open until next Wednesday, December 1st.  Good luck and happy holidays!

Review: The Outward Room

While I missed blogosphere's NYRB Classics week recently, I did manage to read an NYRB book this past week!  It is the first book I've read since August, so I was pretty thrilled to get through it.  It also was a very nice, quiet read, and I'm excited to tell you all about it!

The Outward Room by Millen Brand starts with a woman locked in a mental institution.  She has been there since her breakdown some years ago, after her beloved older brother's death.  But she is getting tired of the hospital and her life there and one day, she manages to escape.  She goes to New York, taking for herself the name Harriet Demuth (we never learn her real name), pawning her treasured ring and looking for a job.  But it's the Great Depression and no one is hiring.  Hungry and exhausted, Harriet is lucky enough to befriend John, a machine worker who takes her in and shows her true kindness.  The two learn to support and trust each other and discover the city during some of its darkest days.

TSS: How important is PLOT to you?

Hello again, Sunday Salon!  I was in the mood to write a post, and what better way to come back (especially when I haven't actually read anything) than through the Sunday Salon?  I can't think of one :-)

First, I'd just like to share how depressed I was to get on my Google Reader yesterday and realize that I somehow completely missed an entire week of book blogging dedicated to NYRB Classics.  What?!  How did this happen?!  I am a complete evangelist for NYRB Classics.  And I had not even the slightest inkling that this week was taking place.  I know my reaction is probably an exaggerated one and I also know that there is no way I could physically participate in NYRB Classics week, but... really.  It depressed me that I didn't even know about it.

Anyway, moving on.

Oh, wait- shout out to anyone who participated this week and read Wish Her Safe at Home.  Good on you.  To all the myriads of others who read and reviewed The Post-Office Girl and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne- well, those moved up on my TBR list, too, and hopefully I can get to them over Christmas break.  My Thanksgiving break, I hope, will be dedicated to The Outward Room.  Which has been pretty brilliant so far, in the first 20 pages or so.

Anyway, moving on for real now.

I started this "How Important Is..." series some months ago and I have really enjoyed the discussion it fosters, albeit on a very irregular basis.  If you have ideas on other aspects of a novel that are important to your reading experience that you'd like me to explore at some point in the future, please let me know!