[1] Finally Ginger artisan cookies are available in [2] gift tins and [3] snack packs (all photos courtesy Love From Cleveland).

What a joy: delicious ginger cookies we didn’t have to bake at home.

Cookies freshly-baked just for us, because they’re baked to order.

Cookies with sugar and spice and everything nice. With three kinds of ginger: crystallized ginger, ginger root and ground ginger.
 
Ginger cookies baked in five delicious flavors that will sizzle on your palate:

 
All are delicious and very special. Who’d have thought that a classic ginger cookie, popular since the Middle Ages, could be improved?
Options include:

 
The tins are great for storing tea when the cookies are gone.

Head to FinallyGinger.com to place your order.
 
DIFFERENT TYPES OF GINGER COOKIES & HISTORY

While Finally Ginger calls itself a ginger cookie, it is a hybrid—a hard cookie with a snap, with a textured surface dotted with sparkling sugar.

We receive lots of hot sauce samples. Most of them are fine, but not special.

Enter the special: Horseshoe Brand hot sauce, developed by two entrepreneurs in New York State’s food mecca, the Hudson Valley.

All natural, made in small batches, you can’t help but say, “This is good stuff!”

Why? The hot sauces are made from scratch using fresh chiles. Many hot sauces use extracts that provide heat, but not flavor. Macerating fresh chiles provides a lively, fresh-tasting hot sauce that is a delight.

The current line-up includes:

Head to HorsehoeBrand.com and load up!
  

[1] Everyone will gobble up these crudités (photo Pinterest). [2] More elaborate: cold cuts—here summer sausage with different cheeses—do the Turkey Trot*.

With Thanksgiving a week away, you have license to lay out any Thanksgiving-styled food right now. Don’t wait for the Big Day, because the day after that it’s…the Christmas rush.

We found these photos on Pinterest, and regret that we couldn’t find the original sources (if it’s you, let us know).

Just head to Pinterest.com and search for “turkey vegetable platter” and you’ll be dazzled by dozens of options.

Thanks to the creative cooks who designed them, the crudités plates are very, very easy. Just buy the ingredients and lay them out the same way.

WHAT ARE CRUDITÉS?

Crudités (croo-dih-TAY) is the French term for a traditional appetizer, a platter of raw vegetables usually served with a vinaigrette or other dipping sauce.

It can include asparagus, bell peppers, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, fennel, radishes, and anything else that appeals.

In the U.S., hummus has become a popular accompaniment.

The crudité plate is a relative of the American relish tray, a “delicacy” served from the 1700s and still popular up to the 1970s.

According to Salon.com, it was once considered the most special part of the meal, and a must-have at Thanksgiving dinner.

Our Nana’s relish tray offered carrot and celery sticks, radishes carved into flowers, black and green olives (the latter pimento-stuffed) and sweet gherkins. She served it in an oblong cut-crystal dish. We loved it!

Among other steps, dancers hopped first on one leg, then the other: “fast trotting actions with abrupt stops.”

Watch this video, with a contemporary dance teacher breaking down the steps so you can follow (fast forward past the inaudible opening comments).

The Turkey Trot was denounced by the Vatican for “offensively suggestive” positions. Conservative adults tried to get it banned at public functions for promoting “immorality.” Dancers were fined for disorderly conduct.

All of this only served to increase the dance’s popularity.

But by 1914, the fad was over. The foxtrot, a conservative dance based on the waltz, ascended. Here’s more on the Turkey Trot.

WANT TO TURKEY TROT ON THANKSGIVING?

Watch the video and put on some ragtime music.

You’ll wonder what the Vatican was so concerned about (well, there is one brief moment of booty-flaunting).

And, a round of Turkey Trot can distract from the anticipation of waiting for the food to be ready.
 
  

What kind of tacos are right for the season? Pumpkin tacos! Or at least, butternut squash tacos.
 
 
PUMPKIN: AN ALL-AMERICAN

Pumpkins and all other squash species originated in Central America more than 7,500 years ago. The oldest domesticated pumpkin seeds found to date are from the Oaxaca Highlands in southwest Mexico.

The original pumpkins bore little resemblance to today’s large, bright orange, sweet variety. They were small and bitter.

Domestication and breeding produced the pumpkins we know today. Brought to North America, pumpkins were a welcome food for the winter. Their thick skin and solid flesh were ideal for storing and consumption during months of scarcity.

The Pilgrims (1620) and other Europeans immigrating to America were introduced to pumpkin by Native Americans. The first known pumpkin recipe they made was found in a book from the early 1670s: a side dish made from diced pumpkin, cooked down and blended with butter and spices (as acorn squash, butternut squash and sweet potatoes are prepared today).

During the 17th century, housewives developed an inventory of pumpkin recipes, the most popular of which remains [drum roll…] pumpkin pie.

In the 1800s it became stylish to serve sweetened pumpkin dishes during holiday dinners. The first proclamation for “national days of prayer, humiliation, and thanksgiving” led to an observance on November 28, 1782. Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been an official annual holiday, by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln.

Back to the tacos…
 
 
RECIPE #1: CHICKEN-PUMPKIN TACOS

This recipe was sent to us from Gilt City, which teamed up with Santa Monica-based Taco Teca to create something new for National Taco Day (October 4th). We’ve slightly adapted the recipe.
 
Ingredients Per Taco

 
Preparation

1. HEAT the grill to medium/high heat for 10 minutes prior to grilling. Preheat the oven to 425°F.

[2] A sugar pumpkin and a jack-o-lantern (photo © Baking Bites).

[3] Arbol chiles (photo © Rancho Gordo).

3. CHOP the butternut squash into cubes and place them on a roasting tray. Place in the oven and roast until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

4. CHOP the cooked chicken into bite-size pieces and place them in a saute pan with the salsa. Simmer for 10 minutes.

5. REMOVE the chicken from the saute pan directly onto the center of the tortilla. Top with the butternut squash and queso fresco and garnish with cilantro. Serve with a side of cranberry sauce and a pumpkin ale.
 
 
RECIPE #2: SALSA MULATTO

This recipe is from Mexican-Authentic-Recipes.com.

Mulatto salsa takes just 5 minutes to make. It is quite hot because it is prepared with arbol chiles. If you’d like less heat, use an equivalent weight of aji amarillo or serrano chiles. Check out the heat levels of different chiles on the Scoville Scale.

The texture of the mulatto salsa is soft and oily, unlike the condiment salsas most Americans know.

Ingredients For 1 Cup

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the chiles on a griddle over medium heat and roast for about 40 seconds, turning regularly, until all sides are lightly roasted. Transfer to a blender.

2. ADD the garlic, oil and salt. Blend well.
  

[1] and [2] Buy lots—you’ll love Noosa Mexican Chocolate Yoghurt (photo courtesy Noosa). [3] Actual Mexican chocolate is melted into hot chocolate (photo courtesy Taza Chocolate). In the rear: the roasted cacao beans from which chocolate is made.

Just when you think there’s nothing more to discover in yogurt, you get a surprise:

Noosa Mexican Chocolate Yoghurt (that’s how yogurt is spelled in Australia).

We’ve tried other brands’ attempts at chocolate yogurt, but they had only a hand-shaking acquaintance with chocolatey indulgence. Noosa gets it right.

One of our favorite brands and a Top Pick Of The Week, Noosa is a whole-milk yogurt, which gives it the richness and creaminess of a good dessert.

The new Mexican Chocolate flavor is ¡delicioso! It’s made with Fair Trade cocoa powder, a splash of cinnamon and a dash of cayenne.

It leaves you saying “Mas! Mas! Mas!” and recommending it to every yogurt-eater you know. We promise!

Here’s a store locator.
 
WHY IS IT “MEXICAN” CHOCOLATE?

Cacao was first cultivated in Mesoamerica by the Olmecs, around 1200 B.C.E.; who taught it to the Mayas, who taught it to the conquering Aztecs.

In the New World it was a beverage for the wealthy and elite, an unsweetened beverage, flavored with cinnamon, chiles, cornmeal, musk, peppercorns and vanilla.

The Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in 1527, didn’t like the drink at all. But they brought the beans back to Spain, where chefs “Europeanized” it with milk and sugar, keeping the cinnamon but leaving out the chiles, cornmeal, musk and peppercorns.

In the 19th century, a method for making hard chocolate bars was invented in England. The technique traveled back to the land of origin, where Mexicans flavored their hard chocolate with cinnamon, sugar and almonds.

But, true to tradition, they turned those hard disks back into a beverage: hot chocolate!

Here’s a history of chocolate timeline.

And for true foodies, here’s the full history.
 
ARE YOU A CHOCOLATE LOVER?

Test your knowledge of chocolate in THE NIBBLE’s Chocolate Section.

You might want to start out with our Chocolate Glossary: all the terms you need to know to become a chocolate expert.