A mini-Thanksgiving feast

I had to work this past Thanksgiving long weekend. (Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving a month earlier than Americans--I don't know why, maybe it's because the cold weather arrives sooner here.) So instead of a big traditional turkey feast, I made a quicker, smaller version using a cornish hen.

This cornish hen was stuffed with an apricot, sage, and mushroom bread stuffing. I served it with a baked butternut squash seasoned with salt and pepper and rosemary.

To round out this hearty Fall meal, I opened a bottle of the Silver Sage 2003 Sage Grand Reserve.

This is a truly unique wine. It's a Gewurztraminer fermented with wild sage leaves, so it has a semi-sweet crisp taste with aromas of sage and spice. It paired very well with the cornish hen.

Yesterday I attended a screening of Our Daily Bread at the Vancouver International Film Festival. This is a documentary that reveals the process of high-tech, mass production agriculture. There is no dialogue, only the camera follows workers at huge greenhouses, fields, and slaughterhouses. Some of it was quite disturbing to watch, but as a cook I feel that it's important for me to know where our food comes from. We are so far removed from any direct knowledge of food production--this documentary brings us face-to-face with our relationship to food, the earth and the mechanization of agriculture.