Thanksgiving in time: rich and chunky, snappy and smooth

See this video by Beth Dooley at the Minneapolis-St. Paul magazine website, her take on the best bakeries in town. If this doesn't get you in the chowhound mood, I don't know what will. If you're cooking for Thanksgiving, and even if you're not, you should get out soon--tonight!--and pick up some good foodstuffs.

Perhaps this is the year you break tradition. I was very amused when one of my friends told me that she and her husband, the year their only child left for college, baked only a turkey breast and sweet potatoes and ate their simple meal with really good bread and one killer dessert on lap trays, in bed, in their pajamas. Hell yeah, they said!

While I'm out and about, I'm going over to Northeast Minneapolis to Ready Meats on Johnson Street. I know they sell a lot of good meat, but I've heard all about their other products, too: lefse, pickled herring, Swedish potato sausage, homemade pasta and pizza "kits."

Yum.

Awhile back I did the KFAI show, "Good Noise," with Dale Loomer, where I brought my playlist: "Music to Edit By." You'd think it would be nothing more than Miles Davis and Yo-Yo Ma Appalachian Suite and other soothing sounds. But I also included some good rock, like Lenny Kravitz, for the music "To take editing breaks by."

Music to cook Thanksgiving dinner by? Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Their new disc "100 days and 100 nights" is perfect for that pre-night prep over the stove.

"Sharon Jones is a woman-out-of-time, who cares less for what black music is "supposed" to sound like in 2007, and instead makes songs with every ounce of her heart and soul poured into them. She can sing her ass off, belting out notes over rich, chunky grooves of quacking horns, snapping snares, and bluesy guitar riffs by her backing band," writes a reviewer at HipHopSite.com.

The Sassmaster and I grooved to the funk and soul of Jones and the Dap-Kings at the sold-out Friday night show, and the place was so crowded you could feel the groove of the dancing bodies around you, and the refrain of the black man behind me, who said--every time Jones sang how a man needed a woman--he said in a low voice, "That's right, that's right. I do believe that."

Our galley kitchen at home is so small we could recreate that packed First Ave scene quite easily this Thanksgiving, all of us swaying and chopping and stirring to the beat, the husband and wife believing in the power of one big family sit-down. "That's right, that's right. We do believe that."

(photo of cakes at Bellaria bakery, from Minneapolis-St. Paul magazine)