While on my Wisconsin muskie fishing adventure in Vilas County, I had a really unique dining experience that I have to share. There we were, five big fishermen in a little station wagon, driving aimlessly about, looking for the right place to stuff our faces after a day of drinking beer and fishing. We pulled into the parking lot of a bar but decided we wanted something better than a burger. Then we found a nicer restaurant with white tablecloths and black-tie clad servers and decided that it was just a little nicer than what we wanted or were dressed for. We started to feel like the three bears (or five bears). Then we spotted it: a roadside supper club named none other than Pub 'n Prime, and this one was just rightl the name said it all.

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This Fresh Forkin' Friday arrives on a speculative Black Friday. I might go out and support my very local retailers, but if I have to choose between fighting the mall or sitting on my couch with a triple decker turkey sandwich and all six episodes of Star Wars, there's no contest.

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For all my waxing rhapsodies of the beauty of The Feast, of the communal magic of sharing a meal when the theme is gratitude, of the inner peace that comes from crafting with good ingredients, there is one truth that I rarely trumpet: The dinner is really just a vehicle to get me to the next day's turkey sandwich.

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The feast is at hand. If you are simply an eater this week, you're beginning to look forward to your favorite dishes, planning your stomach space management (don't go overboard on the rolls), and plotting your calorie counts in the days leading up. If you are a cooker, then this week holds the potential for a bit more frazzle. But you love it, and you know it. You might even love griping about it, but that's still love. I know your whole family might come undone if you don't slave over the creamed corn, I know. So to you, the apron-wearing, turkey-brining, stuffing/dressing-conjuring magicians of all genders, I raise my glass of bourbon. At the end of the meal, when all the rellies are leaning back and contemplating how far they can push away from the table without actually leaving it, take a silent moment of victory for yourself.

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Last week I went muskie fishing with some friends in Vilas County, in the wilds of northeastern Wisconsin. The fishing method we employed (more on that in a minute) could only be invented by a special breed of Wisconsinite--a breed that appreciates and enjoys the power of food, beer, and camaraderie. The power of this muskie fishing trinity is key when you are bundled up like the Michelin man and battling sub-twenty-degree temperatures, a biting wind, and driving sleet while sitting around trying to hunt for the elusive fish.

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Because I'm about to drop beaucoup bucks on the big feast, any entertaining I do this weekend has to be on the cheap. I usually wouldn't throw a shindig this weekend anyway, but people are coming into town, and it may be our only chance for fun before the families descend. So we play a game inspired by the old Food Network show hosted by sassy Sissy Biggers, Ready Set Cook. Everyone is assigned a meal component (protein, starch, veg1, veg2, sweet), and they must bring it blind, not knowing what everyone else is bringing. We provide the wine, the pantry, and the crafty chef husband who takes all the ingredients and makes us a meal. The best part is the reveal, when we ceremoniously open the bags to find ground lamb, soba noodles, broccolini, squash, and dulce de leche! Will it be a brothy noodle soup with spicy meatballs followed by a caramel mousse? Will it be a lamb potpie with a pesto squash crust followed by sweet caramel crepes? Will the wine hold out before we actually eat? Beyond the sharing of the expense, everyone helps with the chopping, the pouring, the cleaning, and the serving. A deal on so many levels.

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Last night's Top Chef was the second New York episode, with all the attitude and bravado that implies. With two people cut from the first day, it looked like they were all waking up to the seriousness of the competition, all except Ariane.

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How is it that a group of late-thirty/early forty-year-olds, who are self-proclaimed grill and meat wizards, can't identify a great steak from horse meat? I performed a cooking demonstration recently, and I decided to host a discussion (including conversation on the different USDA grades of beef) on how to pick a great steak. To my utter surprise and disbelief, not one of these carnivore captains could quantify what constitutes great beef. 

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If you're not hosting the Great Feast next week, maybe you should peruse Open Table's list of Thanksgiving-friendly restaurants and grab your perfect circle of friends for a mess-free night out.

What would my perfect Thanksgiving table look like? Who would be seated among my relatives, swaying the conversation away from scintillating topics such as my father-in-law's last surgery, my sister's overachieving child, my aunt's upcoming community theater debut? If I could have anybody, dead or alive, here's who'd be eating my Brussels sprouts:

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There is a long-running debate between my wife and I about traditional oyster stew. Just so you have the facts, I am an oyster-lover, which means I eat the heck out of raw, cooked, baked, Rockerfellered, and fried. Gimme a po' boy and beer, and I am in heaven. Gimme a glass of champagne and a dozen on the half shell, and I am in seventh heaven. But one oyster dish I usually find useless and worthless is the oyster stew.

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This Fresh Forkin' Friday has me thinking about indulgence. This is the perfect weekend for the Chocolate Extravaganza because I'm ready for just a quick break, a quick sneak away from my family, from the lawn that needs raking still, from needy friends, from trashy leftover Halloween candy, and the rest. I might just go alone because I have very specific chocolate needs: I don't really want to talk about it, I don't want to discuss and deconstruct and weigh out cocoa percentages, I just want to sample and quietly let my brain light up. Maybe that's why I have hidden stashes of the "good" chocolate all over my kitchen.

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Last night was the first episode of the fifth season of Top Chef. Given our new BFF status with Tom Colicchio (that's our Maggie B. with the blue-eyed devil at our Taste event last month), I felt a little more, I don't know, IN I guess. Not that I know what's going to happen, but I bent his ear on a few things, and let's just say that even though he told me nothing, I'm sure he wanted to.

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"God I hope he is wearing his bow tie. That inspires me." The cute, twenty-five-year-old woman breathily confided to her friend as we stood in the serpentine book signing line at Cooks of Crocus Hill in St. Paul. The "he" she was referring to was Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen. We had the pleasure of standing in line with a hundred other cooks while waiting to get books signed by Christopher Kimball and Lynn Rosetto Kasper. After the signing, we were lucky enough (thanks to Carl) to finagle our way into a Q&A/dessert-tasting session upstairs at Cooks.

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Gastro Non Grata was Sunday night. It's Wednesday. But it kicked enough epicurean ass to still be on my mind. Founder Craig Drehmel was pretty pleased, too. "How long did it take us? Seven shows?" he marveled. Sunday's gig at the Triple Rock affirmed a winning formula: local meat, booze, and bands all happening simultaneously among an affable group of people who love to eat, drink, and rock.

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Food Network's Guy Fieri has been all over the Twin Cities this year: Bryant Lake Bowl, The Weinery, Town Talk Diner, Victor's 1959 Café, Emily's Lebanese Deli, The Modern, and, in an episode re-airing Friday at 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., Donatelli's in White Bear Lake. I had heard of Donatelli's, but not in a way which brought any sort of formed image to mind, so Fieri introduced me to a restaurant in my own backyard (or at least on the White Bear-Mahtomedi border).

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By the time I came along in the 1960s, most of my big Jewish family had made it. They started out at the turn of the century as junk dealers, but now they had money, they had leisure, they had enough taste not to seem all that Jewish. But my Aunt Esther and Uncle Abe were different--people of modest means and modest tastes. While my grandmother lived in a beautiful home on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, her sister Esther lived in a rented apartment on California Avenue in Chicago. Esther would call my grandmother every day--one ring, then hang up. My grandmother would call back so her sister did not incur the toll charges to call the suburbs.

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I have hemmed and hawed about commending to you Spain On the Road Again, or as someone quipped to me, Fatty, the Geezer, and the two Hotties. The program (which airs on KTCA Sundays at 6 p.m.) grew on me slowly, and now it's half through its thirteen-week run, and commend I shall because it really reinvents the TV cooking and travel genres while providing a truly in-depth look at the food and landscape of a nation most of us know a lot less well than France, England, or Italy.

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This Fresh Forkin' Friday has me frothy with change and excited about moving on . . . from election brouhaha to Thanksgiving feast planning. Given the nature of nature this weekend, it seems like a perfect time to start workshopping pie. Truly, I need to practice some new crust techniques and work on my pumpkin to spice ratio. The family is so supportive, what with all the end-product hanging out on the cutting boards. Little do they know, this tactic plays into my strategy: When feast day comes, they're so over the pie selection that they have no qualms employing the FHB (Family Hold Back), allowing the rest of the clan to stuff their faces.

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Although we have all heard of the Spaghetti Western, I want to introduce you to the Ramen Western. Not the MSG-riddled ramen I ate from my dorm-room hot plate everyday for six months, but the real thing . . . a beautiful bowl of handmade noodles with perfectly made broth and a variety of vegetables, meats, and/or seafood delicately placed for a truly perfect meal. It is a lot like pho--but different.

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Don't you think today should be a holiday? One where we all get off of work, sit around watching the returns, and have big Election Day feasts? Instead of a big formal feast, it would be a celebration of the common man and the common food: big plates of fried chicken, giant spreads of tacos, pots and pots of chili, thick burgers for days, and a few six-packs here and there.

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The great folks at A to Z Produce & Bakery in Stockholm, Wisconsin, have some news: They are taking the winter off. Most of us know the place as "Pizza A to Z," the weekly Tuesday farmside pizza cookout in the bluff country near Lake Pepin, the only regular farm-to-stomach dining experience in our region.

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For a long time, I have wondered why Korean food does not get the foodie crave-ability respect it deserves. While doing some research for this post I discovered that the government of South Korea has the same issue, and it is doing something about it. According to an article in The Korea Times, the Korean food ministry is planning to budget money for the promotion and opening of Korean restaurants abroad. It wants to see 40,000 Korean restaurants worldwide by 2017. Along with the promotions, the South Korean government will give a stamp of approval for restaurants that meet its criteria for authentic cuisine.

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