Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing all of you a happy holiday filled with good food and good company! I am so thankful for the friendships, old and new, I have made via this blog and by getting out into the community and meeting some terrific folks dedicated to raising and preparing good food. This has been a year truly filled with good blogging karma.

Of course, I am especially thankful to have Scout home from his 2-1/2 week walkabout. He has regained the weight he lost, and is actually wanting to go back outdoors, although I have not yet allowed that to happen.

Not wanting to leave him for a long weekend, I'm having a quirky holiday of my own. It started Wednesday night with a quick getaway to Lexington, where I attended Azur Restaurant and Bar's first Chef Series Cooking Class, a spectacular five-course meal created by Chef Jeremy Ashby interspersed with demos by Jeremy and a couple of his local culinary cohorts. I came away with a full stomach and a lot of inspiration! Stay tuned for a full report.

And now I'm headed into the kitchen to whip up a holiday dinner with only one palate to please, taking inspiration from two ingredients I was recently reminded were likely present at the first Thanksgiving, lobster and venison. If my dishes, and photos, turn out worth a hoot, I'll be back with a little report on that as well.

With much gratitude for all your kindnesses,
xoxo,
eggy

DIM SUM SUNDAY - HEART HEALTHY

One of the reasons I decided to start my own blog was so I could participate in Dim Sum Sundays, hosted by Big Shamu of The Karmic Kitchen from time to time. This Sunday's theme is "Heart Healthy," and I had the best of intentions to make a dinner along these lines, until my weekend was overrun by purchasing a new eggy-mobile. Since the DSS "rules" are on the loose side, I'm including two that were inspirations for what I had hoped to make. Maybe they'll inspire you too.

This is the zucchini crudo I made one night on my California vacation. It's a Michael Symon recipe that I was especially inspired to try after reading this post from Joanne at Eats Well With Others. With thin-sliced zucchini (I used yellow summer squash as well), lemon zest, lemon juice, olives, feta, dill, and a wee bit of olive oil, it was a remarkably satisfying dish. Check out Joanne's post for her version of the recipe.

I had in mind to pair it with venison, which is much leaner than most beef. Some may wrinkle their nose at the notion of carpaccio, but venison carpaccio is one of my favorite dishes, and I'm still thinking it would be great to augment it with this zucchini salad, especially since both would be delicious with this Winterhill lemon olive oil I found in CA.

And here's another gem of an idea, which I picked up from fork.heart.knife - a fabulous new local food business that serves up an outstanding brunch (plus dinners Thurs. and Fri. nights) in addition to their catering capers. It's a salad of apple slices, raw beet matchsticks, and sliced celery, lightly dressed in lemon oil. Very refreshing and flavorful - who knew raw beets could be so good? It made for a great side to fhk's brunch strata (which I tried to crop out of the photo for, you know, the purposes of this heart healthy post).

See what the rest of the DSS gang is cooking up by checking the comments over at Shamu's place. And a happy DSS to all!