Do the math, and you get 15,000 different combinations—a different cookie for every day for the next 41 years.

First, you start with a choice of an Original, Oatmeal or Peanut Butter cookie dough (what—no chocolate?) or muffin tops in Original or Bran muffin tops.

Then pick 2 or 3 mix-ins:

• Chips: dark chocolate chunks, semi-sweet chocolate chunks, milk chocolate chunks, white chocolate chunks, chocolate mint chips, peanut butter pieces and butterscotch chips, plus sprinkles

Cookies made to order in two minutes.
Photo courtesy Sweet Flour Bake Shop.

• Candy: M&Ms, mini pretzels, snickers, toffee pieces
• Dried Fruit: blueberries, cherries, cranberries, figs, raisins
• Nuts: almonds, macadamias, pecans, pistachios, walnutsIf you’ve in the mood for ganache, have a sandwich cookies in chocolate, peanut butter or shortbread with chocolate, maple, peanut butter, salted caramel or vanilla crème.

   

  OK, we’ll start with a chocolate sandwich cookie with salted caramel ganache; then move onto a bran muffin with dried cherries, figs and pistachio nuts. We’ll be back later for an Original cookie with M&Ms, toffee and snickers.

  How about you?

  And when is a Sweet Flour bakery opening near us?

   

It’s fun to play with your food. Photo
courtesy WorldwideFred.com.

Food face, available with a man’s or woman’s face, is a ceramic plate that gives children (or the child within) free reign to play with his or her food.

The 8-1/2-inch plate is $12 to $13. If you give one to every member of the family, there can be nightly food art competitions. It’s also a fun party activity.

• Buy online at Amazon.com. See WorldwideFred.com for a complete list of online retailers.
• See our entire list of holiday gifts for kids.
• See 10 more holiday gift lists—from Diet Gifts and Kosher Gifts to Stocking Stuffers.

Our favorite, all-natural, flavored waters:

Hint. There are 10 delicious flavors of hint, but Pomegranate-Tangerine and Pear are especially appropriate for the Thanksgiving table. Available in 16-ounce plastic bottles at fine supermarkets and specialty food stores nationwide, they can also be purchased online at DrinkHint.com.

Ayala’s Herbal Water. For more sophisticated palates, there are six varieties of Ayala’s Herbal Water that combine two or three food-friendly flavors. Cloves Cardamom Cinnamon, Cinnamon Orange Peel and Ginger Lemon Peel are our picks for Thanksgiving.

The right flavored waters add panache
to the Thanksgiving table. Photo courtesy
Ayala’s Herbal Water.

If you’re a guest, you can send a case ahead of time as a host(ess) gift.

Both products are NIBBLE Top Picks Of The Week.

• Read our review of Hint.
• Read our review of Ayala’s Herbal Water. 

Have you decided yet how to cook your Thanksgiving turkey? The biggest problem people cite is that the white meat comes out too dry (hence, the need for gravy to moisten it).

Different techniques are used by skilled cooks to ensure a moist bird—from bacon under the skin to brushing with butter to injecting melted butter under the skin. But brining is generally thought to be the best way to go.

In this week’s video, Chef Scott Cutaneo—formerly of Le Petit Chateau in Bernardsville, New Jersey and now at the helm of Equus—shows how to brine a turkey to soften the meat and add flavor.

Ingredients

Measurements courtesy Scott Cutaneo and Howdini.com.

Brining works well with other types of poultry too, as well as pork and even salmon. See our full guide to brining.

NEXT WEEK: How to roast the turkey.

Woodbridge Brut is creamy, yeasty and citrussy with a touch of sweetness that enables it to be paired with desserts as well as savory foods—including the Thanksgiving turkey. Photo courtesy Robert Mondavi.

Champagne has an international fan base for its complex, toasty, yeasty wines. Champagnes have distinctive flavors, unique due to the layers of chalk underneath the region’s soil.* Since there’s a limited amount that can be produced each year on 75,000 acres, the price is accordingly high. The least expensive bottle is around $25.00.

Unless your crowd is full of wine connoisseurs, you can have just as pleasant an experience with other sparkling wines for a third to half of the price of the least expensive bottle of Champagne. Other sparklers at $8.00 to $12.00 a bottle are very satisfying glasses of wine. When mixed into a cocktail, only experts can tell the difference. The complex flavors of pricey Champagne are up covered by mixers, so why overspend?

(Our favorite Champagne/sparkling wine cocktail is a Kir Royale, combining the wine with creme de cassis, blackcurrant liqueur. You can use raspberry, peach or other mixers. Learn more.)

Here are sparkling wine varieties to look for that are $8.00 to $15.00/bottle (prices will vary by retailer):

The region of northern France now called Champagne was settled by the Gauls around 500 B.C.E.

When the Roman legions conquered the area in 56 B.C.E., they bestowed upon the land the name Campania (Champagne) because of the similarity between the rolling hills of that area with the Roman (now Italian) province of Campania (the word campania itself means “open country”).

In the Middle Ages Champagne was a duchy, then a country. In 1284, Champagne was brought under French rule when Jeanne, Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne, Brie and Bigorre married the future King Philippe IV (she was 11 years old!). When Philippe’s father died the following year, Jeanne became Queen of France at age 12.
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*The best grapes in Champagne are grown where a Tertiary period chalk plain overlaps a vast Cretaceous chalk plain that lies underneath the soil layer. It’s the same huge basin that created the White Cliffs of Dover in England. The chalk provides good drainage and reflects the heat from the sun.