Lambsgiving

Helen and I spent our first Thanksgiving in Ann Arbor together (she was brave enough to come to Wisconsin for the utterly massive Lipscomb/Supanich/Lalich Thanksgiving last year - wine got us both through that one) this year. As I had to "work" the day after, we decided not to do anything crazy with a whole bunch of other folks and just enjoy each other's company and the taste of delicious food. That's not to say that we didn't do anything festive for the most food-centric of all the holidays - look for an upcoming post on our Post-Turkey Day Pie Party (PTDPP).

As some of you may be aware - I've got a pesky little allergy that inhibits my enjoyment of poultry imbued with the signature products of factory farms (hormones and antibiotics). As Thanksgiving was just Helen and I and the limited selection of "enhanced" turkeys, we decided to go with Lamb Shoulder from our favorite (and only) lamb vendor at the farmer's market, Judy. Lamb Shoulder is a wonderfully tasty cut of lamb, but not incredibly easy to work with as it's got a fair number of bones running through it. So, to flavor it, we cut slots in the meat and stuffed cloves of garlic deep into it. I also gave it a nice rub of oil, salt, pepper and homegrown rosemary. Lamb needs nothing other than those flavor enhancers and a bit of time in the oven to bring it to juicy and tender medium rare. The added bonus of cooking lamb shoulder is that we are left with a whole host of bones (and some $1 a pound lambs neck we bought) to make a delicious soup out of.

As winter fast approaches, the produce selections at the Ann Arbor farmers market dwindle rapidly to easily storeable items such as apples, apples, apples, potatoes, more apples, and squash. Neither Helen nor I have a lot of experience with squash, but our buddy Mike has often shared his culinary forays into the smaller, tastier cousins of pumpkin with us, so we decided to grab a nice looking acorn squash to go along with the lamb, and the sauteed beans and turnips (mmm, turnips) we had for veggies. To keep things nice and simple with our first squash, we simply cut it in half, dug out the seeds and such, and put a nice tab of butter with brown sugar in the hollow. As you can see, we ended up with a delicious pool of sugared butter to enjoy our roasted squash with.

When it was all said and done, we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us, that, in my humble opinion was much, much tastier than any Turkey dinner. And, we were able to look forward to an additional night of holiday revelry to come for the PTDPP!

One final note on wine. We seldom mention here if we're consuming these meals with wine or beer, but I'll make an exception here. We enjoyed this meal with a splendid (and cheap!) Spanish Monastrell wine. The Monastrell grape has quickly become one of our favorites due to its incredibly reasonable price and reliable robust flavor. On Thanksgiving, we enjoyed a variety Helen likes to call the Pregnant Cow (thanks to the rather large cow on its label), but its proper name is Este. We also often enjoy the Castano, which should be able to be had for around 7 or 8 dollars at your local wine monger.

P.S. Helen isn't referring to herself in the third person in this post. I (The Marquister, aka Spinach, aka Soup, aka Mark) wrote the post under a post Helen started with the uploaded pictures.