The bird is the word – and with Thanksgiving less than a month away, it’s time to start planning your Nov. 22 feast:

At Whole Foods Market throughout the month of November, you can taste food from the store’s Thanksgiving menu that can be preordered online or in the store for pickup. The free tastings will feature dishes such as rosemary chestnut stuffing, green beans with caramelized garlic and chocolate bourbon Georgia pecan pie. Tasting dates and times are:
• Saturday, Nov. 3 from noon-2 p.m.
• Sunday, Nov. 4 from 4-6 p.m.
• Saturday, Nov. 10 from 4-6 p.m.
• Sunday, Nov. 11 from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m.

Culinard Catering is taking orders for their Thanksgiving/holiday dinners. From now until Nov. 19, you can place full dinner orders via phone. Each holiday order will serve eight to 10 people and will contain various traditional Thanksgiving dishes such as oven roasted turkey (12-14 pounds); honey glazed ham (12-14 pounds); cornbread dressing; brown turkey gravy; mashed potatoes; green bean casserole; sweet potato casserole; butter beans with applewood-smoked bacon, and pumpkin or apple pie. Dinners are $89 plus tax for orders with one pie, and $99 plus tax for orders with two pies.

Additional items such as dinner rolls, baguettes, sourdough bread, honey wheat bread, raisin walnut bread or pumpkin bread can be purchased for an additional $2.59 to $6 per order.

All orders must be placed by Nov. 19 and picked up at the Bakery at Culinard on Wednesday, Nov. 21. Warming instructions will accompany each dinner. Payment is due in advance. To place your Thanksgiving order, call Brooke Gillis at 271-8231.

At Tria Market in Homewood, you can order a variety of items from a Thanksgiving menu. You can choose from several sizes of all-natural, herb-roasted turkeys; Cajun-fried turkey; herb-roasted turkey breast; glazed hams (brown-sugar maple or apricot-sage chutney); fall vegetable gratin, sautéed fall vegetables; sautéed asparagus; garlic-mashed potatoes; sweet potato casserole; cornbread dressing (with chicken or oysters); three cheese macaroni; sautéed French beans; giblet gravy; mushroom gravy; cranberry sauce; breads; chocolate, key lime, pecan, pumpkin or apple pie; chocolate or pumpkin roulade; pumpkin chiffon cake; pumpkin cheesecake; and red velvet cake. Orders must be placed by Saturday, Nov. 19 at 6 p.m. and picked up by Wednesday, Nov. 21 at 3 p.m.

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DEAD BUT NOT GONE: That’s the best way to think of your dearly departed, particularly if you plan to attend the fifth annual Dia de los Muertos celebration at Bare Hands Gallery. This week’s cover story offers some history of the local celebration of the Mexican holiday known as the Day of the Dead.

In fact, we’ve got cross-cultural offerings aplenty in and around the ‘Ham this week – the Jewish Food Festival at the Levite Jewish Community Center, the Russian Food Festival in Brookside, Ala., the Taste of Asian Cultural Festival near George Ward Park and Deepawali at Taj India.

If you eat, drink and make merry in half-a-dozen different languages, it might be enough to take your mind off the fact that a charity with connections to Birmingham mayor-elect Larry Langford is under investigation by the FBI and that Daylight Savings Time makes no sense. J’Mel Davidson’s stories of clowns and magicians don’t make a lot of sense either but we like them, particularly the one about Uncanny Alfie.

Oh, and the Steeldogs are done and gone. You can read about the way they were here.

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT AND READ Or rather, what you eat can affect what you read, particularly if you’re a resident of Vestavia Hills. This month’s Local Dish tasting presented by Birmingham Weekly and hosted by Whole Foods Market is a fundraiser for the Vestavia Hills Library. A panel of chefs including Haller Magee of Satterfield’s, Jeremy Downey of City Hall Diner and Antony Osborne of Culinard will lead the tasting with an Oktoberfest theme, sampling sausages, seasonal mustards, beer and wine. All proceeds will go to the library building fund, helping to establish the first library in Alabama that’s “LEED-certified.” LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and the rating designates structures built according to a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for high-performance sustainable architecture. You can learn more about the project at www.libraryintheforest.org. To learn more about the tasting and other events at Whole Foods, call 912-8400 or visit www.wholefoodsmarket.com.

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MONDAYS HAVE A CERTAIN MAGIC Particularly Magic City Mondays at Whole Foods Market. The in-store brasserie offers a wine-and-cheese special particularly suited to connoisseurs who can’t stand for the weekend to end. For $6.99, you can sample a flight of wine, with each vintage paired with an artisanal cheese. The curds and vino come from around the world and all are available for purchase at the store. For a complete schedule of food and wine events at Whole Foods, go to www.wholefoodsmarket.com.

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THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW that says no self-respecting publication in the city of Birmingham can ever put Vulcan on the cover again. Don’t get us wrong – we love that big guy and appreciate all the nuanced metaphorical implications of having him as the symbol of our city. Still, as far as putting him on the cover, it’s been done a time or 10,000. We opted to do it again this week to highlight our story on the world premiere of Miss Vulcan 1939, which opens this Saturday at the Red Mountain Theatre. The play is a dramatic reimagining of a once-in-a-lifetime Birmingham pageant (not to be confused with the political beauty contest in which Larry Langford is a perennial candidate).

Speaking of pageantry, as of 12:01 a.m. today, there’s a fella born in Sheffield, Ala., running for president. The Republicans had their movie actor president in Reagan, their puppet president in George W. Bush and now are angling for a TV ham candidate in Fred Thompson. If anything about having a Law & Order president makes you feel safe, take a minute to ponder what you were doing six years ago this Tuesday. Then take an hour to ponder that while there’s no proof that Osama bin Laden is dead, there’s plenty to verify that nearly 4,000 of your compatriots are.

Such truths try men souls, making comedy necessary – special yuks in the offing this week come from Doug Stanhope and J. Michael McCall, as well as the steady funny J’Mel Davidson. Other worthwile diversions include Georgia wineries, Artwalk or the movies (although Halloween is evidently best avoided).

Finally, start counting – only a month until the release of the 2007-2008 Menu of Menus and only a week until Jeremy Harper reaches a million.

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Could the next Napa Valley be in the state of Georgia? Not likely, but there are some wineries in our neighboring state producing notable wines. In this week’s “New Worlds of Wine,” contributing writer Stephen Humphreys visits a few vineyards and sips a few vintages. If you’d like to make a road trip of your own, here’s a list of wineries within a day’s drive from Birmingham:

TIGER MOUNTAIN VINEYARDS
2592 Old Highway 441
Tiger, GA 30576
(706) 782-4777
www.tigerwine.com

Dr. John Ezzard started planting grapes in 1995 on the 100-acre farm at Tiger Mountain where he was born. With his wife Martha, he selected varieties of grapes suited to the climate of southern Blue Ridge Mountains, including the American Norton, and the vinifera red grapes of the Loire and Rhone River valleys of France: Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Tannat, Mourvedre and the white Viognier, as well as the Portuguese Touriga Nacional and Tinta Cao.

Winery hours:
April - November - 7 days per week
Sunday - Friday 1-5 p.m.
Saturday - 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

December - March
Friday – 1-5 p.m.
Saturday - 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Read the full story

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