Alton Brown To The Rescue!

I've been sitting here, freaking out over what to make for Thanksgiving dinner. I've never prepared it before and even though it's only going to be for the five of us and my friend C, I was still dithering and chewing my bottom lip and fretting over what to cook. Then, last night, I watched Iron Chef America (I love that show. It's so cheesey. Not as cheesey as the original, but still, high on the cheese scale.) and one of the chefs prepared venison. I thought, "Aha! I could do that!" But alas, the recipes from Iron Chef American are not posted online. At least not online anywhere that I could find. So I started thinking about meals and what constitutes a good holiday meal.

Everyone does turkey. It's been done to death. Besides, I'm allergic to it or something - I get a migraine and I puke whenever I eat it, so since I'm the one fixing the meal, I figure I should at least be able to eat the meat, right? It's only fair. My stove, my meat choice. So nyah.

*ahem*

Anyway. Not doing turkey. What else is there to do? Goose, but I hear that stinks when it's cooking. Duck, which I love but everyone else is sort of meh about. Pork tenderloin, but again...meh. I do those a lot for every day meals. I wanted something special, something that would knock peoples socks off. Then I thought, "Oooh, one of those roasts with the paper hats. And maybe Yorkshire pudding, too. Very Dickensian, very festive. Yes. Ok. That's settled." So I did what I always do - I went to the Food Network website. And I came across a recipe for a Dry Aged Standing Rib Roast with Sage Jus and my mouth watered and I said, "Ooooh, yes, indeed, I'll have that recipe, thank you very much." And it's a recipe from my one of my chef-y crushes, Alton Brown.

He's got that geek-cool thing down to a science. And he's in front of a diner.

Granted, he's no Anthony Bourdain....

But does Anthony Bourdain have a KitchenAid mixer that has hot rod flames on it? Huh? I bet he doesn't.

So, anyway. Now that I have my chef fix for the day...I have my Thanksgiving Day dinner sorted, all thanks to Alton Brown.

Here's the menu:

Butternut squash soup (laced with cream, apples and cider - yum)
Standing Rib Roast
Roasted garlic mashed potatoes
Pan roasted asparagus
Cranberry sauce (home made, not that crap from a can)
Apple streusel
and the obligatory pumpkin pie.