Food Like That: Recipes your mouth will like

Thanks first of all to Anthony and Sarah of Farmstead Wines for putting together a wonderful day of cooking, food, fun, and friends.

Now, what was this American Thanksgiving all about? Well, Anthony had invited a select few to join him in an all day cook fest at his home in East Vancouver. Of course to celebrate Thanksgiving (Anthony is originally from the US), but also to enjoy cooking and drink some great Farmstead Wines.

I decided I definitely wanted to participate, so determined to take the entire day off. I met Evan and Monique on Granville Island for breakfast (where "breakfast" == JJ Bean) and we poked around various corners of the building. It was a bit of a tour for Evan: he's got a new live / work space above the Irish Heather that will be the scene of tech + cooking + politics in the future.

We ended up (as I always do when on Granville Island) circling the Oyama Sausage stand. I ended up with two of my favourite non-local cheeses (French Morbier and Spanish 6 year old Manchego), plus this very nice Merlot Grenades, made from local BC pork.

 Yeah, turns out I have no idea what a Merlot Grenades is either, and Google just points me at my own Flickr picture. All I can say is that it is like a not-very-hard salami. The meat is tender, more like in a Landjaeger or a pepperoni stick. And delicious, of course.

That's just the beginning of the day and I'm already running out of steam for this post...

In any case, a round of wine stores asking after Farmstead Wines imported brands (Liberty Wines on Granville Island - no, Kits Wine on 4th - yes, plus a tasting coming up at the beginning of December), and then we were off to Anthony and Sarah's.

I got to do what I haven't done in a very long time: play sous chef to a very accomplished exec chef in the kitchen. I muddled along making my still-to-be-named butternut squash plus yams plus coconut milk dish, while Evan manned the sausage stuffing station...for 4 hours.

We cooked, we drank, we ate, we laughed, and we even talked about Twitter (quite a lot, actually ... turns out wine / food people do the twitter thing). Monique and Karen both have much more complete and picture filled write ups of the food, wine, and etc.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and have to come up with an excuse to take a day off to do nothing but cook more often. Thanks again to Anthony and Sarah for the opportunity.