While wine shopping for Thanksgiving I discovered a new beer named Ommegang produced in Cooperstown, New York State.
It is part of the Duvel family of beers.
Pour slowly and enjoy their belgian style Abbey Ale ('Dubbel Ale') without the monks.
As the weather gets more wintry this Thanksgiving week, reading about the slow pace of Trancoso, located 300 miles south of Salvador de Bahia makes one feel like planning for a quick escape.
Visit Trancosobahia Facebook Page and and you get treated to a vision of heavenly beaches, nearby tropical forest and life in slowlane.
( 'Trancoso, Bahia Church photo from Trancosobahia Facebook page)
While reading a recent entry from Om Malik , we discovered Coupa Cafe located in Palo Alto (California). Coupa Cafe is the flagship store of the Arabica Coffee Company based in Caracas, Venezuela. Its aim is to showcase premium coffee and chocolate from Venezuela. The chocolates come from Chuao Chocolatier (Carlsbad, California) named after the Chuao region of central Venezuela that produces famous cacao. We look forward to a future trip to California for a chance to sample Coupa Cafe's tropical fares.
I recently signed up for InBubbleWrap, a daily offering by people of 800 CEO Read of 25 copies of one book. Today's selection is "The Ape in the Corner Office" by Richard Conniff.
It rekindled memories of situations where I have found myself and I am sure you have as well, I call that the domino effect or sometimes the hammer. I am not sure that laughing off the situation will always go down well but it might be healthier.
I more or less finished my food shopping today for Thanksgiving, including a Whole Foods free range turkey. As for the wine I am not sure if it will be a California Zin or a Red Burgundy. Zinfandel is often considered a natural match for the thanksgiving turkey. Most California Pinot Noirs are too light for my taste, not enough terroir maybe. Two Zins I am considering are Cline 'Ancient Vines' 2002 ($16.00) nice fruit and spice or the Ridge 'Geyserville' 2002 ($25.00) richer and voluptuous. On the burgundy side maybe the 1997 Faiveley Nuits Saint George 1er Cru ($30.00) would do the trick.
In case you are panicking Thursday morning as to what you will be putting on the table for the Thanksgiving Meal here are a few places you can visit for quick ideas and inspiration.
I will start with Elise of Simply Recipes who has a whole selection of choices for main and side dishes.
Then I would suggest Daily Olive which compiled a number of online sources for both wine and food tips.
Last pick is 360 Eats which combines (aggregates) Thanksgiving blog writing from a number of people.
Frederic Vavrille offers us Liveplasma. This is a neat tool that allows you based on Musicians, Directors, Actors you like to find other Artists you might want to discover. Just enter your favorite and visual map appears giving you connections to new choices. I found out about it on Techcrunch today.
Check Sam Parker, a blogger and consultant based in Virginia. He raises a very relevant point as outlined by Creating Customer Evangelists who made us aware of the Blood Drive he got going:"The time to give blood is not when you're strapped to an emergency room gurney. Kudos to Sam for converting words into action". As a result he launched Global BloodSales Drive. It takes place from November 28 to December 2.
New York Times reporter Ian Urbina describes things that tick him (and others) off in his book 'Life's little annoyances'. He will be discussing the book 
on NPR's Week-End Edition in the coming weeks. we will post the date when it happens. I would offer my own pet peeve: why do we need music piped everywhere including restrooms. Are we afraid of a minute or two of calm and silence, noise annoys.
You can buy the book in good local bookstores and online if you cannot find it locally.
It is true Pomegranates 
make for messy eating but how delicious they are, sweet and juicy. I had to read Pomegranates by Elise of Simply Recipes to remember the pleasure of eating them.