In my world, Thanksgiving is all about the side dishes.  For produce people, there is significance to just about every season.  But there is a special place in our hearts for the fall and Thanksgiving, which are the biggest times of the year for us!  It’s all about abundance, freshness and making that extra effort to provide everything our customers (and we ourselves) need to make an exceptional family meal. This is no small feat because for produce, this is also a time when local farms shut down for the season and our produce teams become more reliant on product grown further away. The holiday is steeped in tradition and many of the items we traditionally serve are truly at their seasonal best, but a few others have been added over the years and are not exactly in season. Regardless, Thanksgiving is about celebrating the bounty of Mother Nature in ways we know and maybe don’t know.

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The third Thursday of November has always been the first day where the new vintage can be tasted in the form of Beaujolais Nouveau! Beyond the first taste of the year’s quality, Nouveau is more about celebration. Celebration of the harvest, celebration of the first revenue from a year of hard labor, and celebration of another year past all the way through the holidays.

Best enjoyed fresh, or before spring returns, Nouveau is a terrific compliment to the rich, earthy and spicy flavors that come across the holiday table. The crazy complex flavors of roasts, game, mushrooms, squash, root vegetables and flavorings such as sage, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, peppers, and the like are perfectly complemented by Nouveau’s grapey flavor and refreshing acidity.

In order to get Nouveau on the third Thursday of November, it is flown around the world to restaurants, bars and parties. Historically, fuel was low cost and the environment not foremost of consideration, so the carbon footprint wasn’t an issue. But with the environment ever more important to an increasing number of wine drinkers, the cost and fuel required to fly wine bottled in heavy glass around the globe has caused wineries to reconsider how this fun and eventful wine is distributed.

Whole Foods Market is proud to present the first ever bottling of Nouveau in plastic bottles! This lowers the carbon footprint of getting this wine to your table. Just think, less guilt while enjoying wine with friends! And it lowers the cost for you to get it to the table too. Just imagine sitting on a fatter wallet while you’re enjoying the same exact delicious wine with friends! It’s more than delicious. It’s a new way to enjoy this traditional regional wine.

Worried about how plastic changes the way a wine may taste? Well don’t be. Nouveau is for near term drinking. This wine should be in your belly before either plastic or oxygen has the time to impact the fresh juicy character of this wine.

Nouveau drinkers can rejoice with a lower priced and greener wine in 2008. If you’re not a Nouveau drinker, then there is no better year to join the celebration.

Erez Klein, our Wine Buyer for the Pacific Northwest Region of Whole Foods Market, began a passion for food and wine when travelling the world during his childhood. In college, his studies in political economy were waylaid by a course in wine appreciation and he found himself reading (and drinking) everything he could get hold of regarding wine and history. Before joining Whole Foods Market, Erez worked in Napa Valley with famed wine centric restaurateur Joyce Goldstein at Square One Restaurant and at The Auberge du Soleil Resort as Wine Director.

Hello to all the cheese lovers out there! During the holiday season, we always get a lot of questions about how to select cheese and pair it with wines for entertaining this time of year. Our team members are always available to help you out in the stores, but we also put together this short video about choosing and serving soft-ripened cheese, like brie. Check it out and if you are inspired, try out our awesome exclusive brie from Isigny Ste. Mère, a co-operative of 700 farmers in Normandy, France. This holiday Brie is unique because it contains 60% butterfat, a formula customized especially for Whole Foods Market. Let us know what you think about it!

Welcome to the Holidays at Whole Foods Market!  We’ve put together this little video guide to help you plan your holiday party or gathering.  It highlights some of our favorite holiday tips including easy and elegant decor and how to pair our Top Ten Wines with the right cheese.

For more info, check out our Holiday Entertaining Guide.  Enjoy!

Entertaining

As you make your merry way
Through this season of giving,
Don’t get so wrapped up
That you skip joyous living.

Indulge! We’ve tasted and tested
With care just for you.
We’re loaded with goodies,
Gifts, tips and recipes, too.

Let your mantra be “Lovely,
Delicious and fine.”
We offer delight
And our gift…peace of mind.

Good food brings family and friends together — especially at Thanksgiving. Are you thinking about how to share your table this year while not blowing your budget? In this podcast we talk to nutritionist and natural foods chef Alana Sugar to get ideas for feasting well without breaking the bank (‘cause those banks don’t need any help breaking about now!).

Don’t forget to check out our huge collection of holiday recipes. Whether you are planning a traditional feast or want to venture outside the norm this Thanksgiving, we’ve got you covered. What dish do you absolutely have to have for it to be a perfect Thanksgiving? Let us know!

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Steve Taron is a Wine Specialist in our Glendale, California store.

It’s time for the Holiday Edition of our Top Ten Wines!  In case you’re not familiar with the Whole Foods Market Top Ten wine event, a few times a year our national wine buyers select their favorite wines for exceptionally good values. Stylistically, the wines tend to be a fairly eclectic bunch, ranging from rustic to more refined. And, as is usually the case, there are more then 10 of them (12 this time ‘round). Why be limited by a number when you have a lot of good wines to choose from? Here is a short review of three of the Top Ten Holiday Wines that I believe deserve a little personal attention.

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In preparation for Thanksgiving, we’ve put together a winner of a stuffing recipe using this week’s secret ingredient, Whole Foods Market Fresh Chicken Sausage. Made in-house with the finest cuts of chicken and a blend of herbs, spices and seasonings, our chicken sausage adds a special touch to our recipe for Southern-Style Chicken Sausage and Buttermilk Cornbread Stuffing. We’ve also included a recipe for Buttermilk Cornbread that’s perfect for our stuffing recipe and even better when paired with steaming bowls of chili or eaten on its own with a pat of butter and a drizzle of honey.

Get the Recipe: Southern-Style Chicken Sausage and Buttermilk Cornbread Stuffing

Get the Recipe: Buttermilk Cornbread

The Koch Family has been raising turkeys on 60 acres of land in the Lewiston Valley of Pennsylvania for three generations. Duane Koch runs Koch’s Turkey Farm with the help of his three sisters, and together they raise free-range turkeys using an all-vegetarian diet of locally grown corn and roasted soybean.  With the feed mill, turkey houses and processing facility all located on the family property near Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, the turkeys are able to live their entire lives on the same land.

Note: Our Farm to Market slide shows currently feature farmers and producers from our South and MidAtlantic Regions. We hope to expand to others in the future.

In this episode we’ll explore various holiday traditions, talk about fresh nuts and provide some tips on Hanukkah recipes.

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Now that the turkey has been recycled into leftovers, we turn our attention to the gift giving frenzy on the horizon. Real Simple magazine reports, “Household waste increases 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. In the United States, trash from wrapping paper and shopping bags totals 4 million tons.”

Cindy in Minneapolis suggests: “For holiday gift giving, we make cloth re-usable gift bags from festive material. Most of it is recycled — the non-stained part of a holiday table cloth, mismatched cloth napkins, etc. Some of the fabric we got at a thrift shop, which makes for some great retro gift bags. I make them in all sizes and sew in a drawstring so they can be tied tightly until it’s time to open them. If you’re not a sewer, you could make them with no-sew fabric glue or iron-on hem tape. No paper is wasted and gift wrapping is FAST! Even faster because my young kids can help wrap too.”

What steps will you be taking to green your gift giving this holiday season? Get those creative juices flowing by checking out Environmental Defense’s Annual Roundup of Earth-Friendly Gifts.