Thanksgiving: A Memorable Feast with Charlotte Shay

Thanksgiving: A Memorable Feast. That's the theme for this year.


Turkey Day (or Tofurkey Day, depending on your animal-eating persuasion) is right around the corner! Every year I enjoy cooking and baking for the holidays, with the exception of last year, when I was in lovely Rochechouart, France. Nancy's parents are both gourmet chefs and they took some serious care of us while we visited them for 15 days over the Thanksgiving 2007 holiday. They invited 11 of their wonderful friends to their home and cooked up a memorable feast for all. I helped with the prep, naturally, but Les and Connie did most of the work. All the detail that even went into the place settings, presentation, and fun cracker gifts (hence the paper crowns!) was fantastic.





Well this year, Thanksgiving is at my boyfriend Shane's house. I often cook with his sister and mum (and he, occasionally), and T-Day will be no different. I'm sure we'll be working all day Thursday, and I prepared a deluxe dessert ahead of time to bring with me and serve after the memorable feast. I'm no Rachael Ray, but you can call me Charlotte Shay over the next couple days if you wish.

You, too can make this delectable chocolate delight in under an hour, and I'm sharing this fairly simple recipe for...

Chocolate Hazelnut Terrine with Raspberry Sauce

This little piece of chocolatey heaven (and no, I don't mean myself) has two rich layers of chocolate and is served in a pool of raspberry sauce.

For this, you will need the following:

Dark chocolate layer:
* 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels (I chose
Ghirardelli because their quality is obviously superior to Nestle)
* 1/3 cup butter
* 1/4 cup hazelnut liqueur (you can also use
Kahlua, Frangelico, or any similar substitute)
* 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Milk chocolate layer:
* 1 3/4 cups (11.5-oz. pkg.) Milk Chocolate Morsels
* 1/3 cup butter

Raspberry sauce:
* 1 pkg. (10 oz.) frozen raspberries in syrup, thawed and puréed
* 1/2 cup water
* 1 tablespoon cornstarch
* 1 teaspoon granulated sugar

Directions:

Line 9 x 5-inch loaf pan with plastic wrap or foil.

FOR DARK CHOCOLATE LAYER:
Microwave semi-sweet morsels and 1/3 cup butter in medium, uncovered, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH (100%) power for 1 minute; STIR.

Morsels may retain some of their original shape. If necessary, microwave at additional 10- to 15-second intervals, stirring just until morsels are melted. Stir in liqueur; cool to room temperature.

Note: For this next step, be sure to use whipping cream,

as opposed to whipped cream,

which should be reserved for licking off of your lover's body. ;)

Back to the cooking. Whip cream in small mixer bowl. It'll get nice and thick.

Fold 2 cups whipped cream into chocolate mixture, and spoon it into the prepared loaf pan.

Refrigerate the remaining whipped whipping cream. Save the actual whipped cream licking for later...Don't be tempted to lick the whipped whipping cream like I was; it tastes like nothing.

FOR MILK CHOCOLATE LAYER:
Repeat the process above, except with the milk chocolate morsels.

Nuke the chocolate/butter mix, stir remaining whipped cream into chocolate mixture and blend.

Wait for the mixture to cool to room temperature, and spread this over the dark chocolate layer.

Cover; refrigerate for at least 2 hours or until firm.

Easy enough so far, right?

FOR RASPBERRY SAUCE:

Your raspberries will come in a frozen package that looks like this.

After they thaw, puree them (you can save a couple berries to use as garnish later if you wish), and strain the seeds if you so desire.

Cook raspberry puree, water,


cornstarch and sugar over medium heat,

stirring constantly,


until mixture comes to a boil; boil for 1 minute.

Cover; refrigerate.

TO SERVE:

Invert terrine onto serving platter; remove plastic or foil wrap. Cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices; serve in pool of Raspberry Sauce.


Your finished product should look like this:

Voila!

My Best Friend's Wedding: Part 1 - Scenester Meets Barbie

Oh. My. God.

My best friend is engaged.

I mean, we always knew it would happen. They've been together for six years, have lived together for most of them; they're domestic partners as it is.

But something about the words, "I'm engaged!" evoke such ridiculous emotion when it's actually happening. Like whoa.

Waiting for my bus on a cold November afternoon, I returned Allie's phone call from half an hour ago. At the first attempt to speak, someone lost signal and the call was dropped, but I had heard her say amid giggles, "Charlotte...I have to tell you something." And I knew. But then I heard, "Hello?...Char..?"

I called her back, she said those magic two words, and I think I squealed at the frequency of a dog whistle for about nine minutes straight and said "Oh, my God" at least 48 times. In the middle of a crowded bus stop, nonetheless.

I love Allison Theresa Brewster, probably more than anyone but Tommy Constantino.

*Flashback* June 2004. I walked into Sam Ash Music for my first day of work, probably with my studded belt, home-dyed pink bangs and peekaboo highlights, and button-encrusted messenger bag. I saw this gleaming, radiant, overly tan, too pretty blonde girl sitting at the front desk, and she greeted me with the biggest smile. "Yay!" She probably said. (Honestly, the first few months I worked there, I was greeted with applause and cheering whenever I walked in the door. I loved that place.)

As we chatted and she showed me the ropes of the job of security girl (which is essentially to sit at the door, look hot, and flirt with cute musicians all day while pretending to document the serial numbers of their gear), she noticed the pins on my bag. I told her I go to shows, and she was like, "Oh, my boyfriend's in a band!" When she told me it was The Dog and Everything, I told her I'd heard them and some of my friends liked them. "Oh, yay!" Allie exclaimed. "We can totally go to shows together!"

I smiled, but in my head I was thinking, "Uh. Why in the world would I ever hang out with this ditzy Barbie-looking girl?" My friends wore Chuck Taylors and thrift store tees, not American Eagle and Express.

Was I ever in for something...the best relationship of my life.

It didn't take long before we were bonded. Like, a day. On my days off, I would sometimes come in to visit for a minute and ended up clocking in to work for three hours. Not only because I loved my new job at the cool music store (and it WAS bad ass back in the day), but because Allie and I had ridiculous amounts of fun.

We all did.

I can't even tell you what's going on in these photos.

Roaring with laughter..


Let's do cartwheels!


Brian Albertz.


El Dave-o.


The boys!


Mmm...lubey...


Mmm...Blow-up doll.


Mmm...Nut Sauce. Gotta love the green nail polish.




I'd always figured I was a cute enough girl, but after Allie came into my life, my ego exploded in ways I'd never imagined. We started taking pictures EVERY day after work.

This is probably one of the first photos we took together...yes, back in the disposable camera days.


I have at least four photo albums full of prints that look...just like that.


Then when I got a digital camera, it was all over.















If you've ever scrolled through the thousands of photos on my computer and wondered why there's so many pictures of myself, you can blame it on Allie. She taught me everything I knew.

I also learned how to be a vixen and work my 18-year-old girl prowess on the poor guys we worked with, and the ones that patronized our store. There was always some guy from some department hanging out up front with us.

Like this. Oh, Trent. He's a whole 'nother chapter. ;)


Naturally, I had a different crush every damn day, and Allie was my greatest enabler: "Char, I mentioned your name to him and he turned bright red and ran away from me." Chris Insidioso was integral in that as well: "I know someone in that department who liiiiikes you," he'd say. "Do you loooove him?" The three of us were the gossip/drama queens of the customer service desk--no, of the entire store.

Immortalized forever in magazine form:


BFFs at Allie's bowling birthday




Want to place bets on how much gear was stolen from the store while Al and I were posing for pictures, backs turned from the door, being "security?"



Importantly, Allie showed me (in theory, of course) how to use my teenage feminine wiles to manipulate boys and get what I wanted, as all single girls that age do. I mastered the art of coyness. In fact, one relationship started because I got some dude to go out to Walgreen's on his break and buy me contact solution...and all my favorite candy, snacks, and Arizona teas. What a great foundation!

But seriously, every other day it was: "Do I like this Dan or that Dan today?" "Jon and I went out for lunch today..." "Ooh, Mike's kinda cute." "I could maybe date Joe if he weren't so young..." "Why is Sean asking me out in the keyboard room?" Craziness.

With all the male attention and my self-confidence on the rise (I obviously know now you can't base your self-worth on such things), Allie introduced me to the world of modeling. "Me? But...I can't, I'm not hot like you."

She brought it out.

We were such clams.


This is from our first joint photo shoot.



Most of our photos turned out fantastic, especially considering it was my first modeling shoot ever.





See a photographer's directive trend, maybe? ;)

That photoshoot was a whole 'nother story in itself as well. Famed photographer Niva Bringas shot us at Iguana Studios in Chicago. He was a great photog, but was morbidly obese. And he grossed us out. In time, he'd have Allie and I meet him for lunch to pick up the discs with our retouched photos. Seeing chips crumble over his jiggling belly when he laughed...I'll say no more.

Let me tell you--this photo is really airbrushed and this was when he was younger.


Anyhow, at my first shoot, both of us had done a couple of looks when he and the owner of the studio began to insist that we glam it up, put on ridiculous makeup, be extravagant. We kept coming out with additional layers of crap on our face and they'd make us add more. Allie finally drew the line. I, on the other hand, slathered on glitter up to my eyebrows, put on pink feather earrings, my studded belt, my pink aviator sunglasses, and came out of the dressing room looking like this.

There are reasons why photos like THIS never surfaced on the Internet (until now). Good LORD.



I think it was the second time we shot at Iguana, the studio owner (whose name I cannot remember) turned even more creepy; after making us pile on the makeup he tried really, really hard to get us to model in swimsuits. "Oh, but we didn't bring any with us," we told him. He instisted it was all right, and began pulling hideous 80s/90s style bikinis off the racks. Um, no. He eventually got frustrated with us, it escalated into an argument: "What about lingerie? Lacy underwear? BOY shorts?!? SOMETHING?!" ...and we left.

We had done a super classy ebony & ivory shoot; her in a black rhinestone dress and me in a white one. Due to the circumstances under which we left the studio, things were awkward. Niva kept saying he'd send our photos...and then he died three years later (I'm sure due to complications from his weight).

Wap wah.


Workplace antics, modeling fiascos, and narcissistic self-portraits are only the tip of the iceberg...stay tuned for "I don't know states," making college professors puke, and literally rolling around wasted on the floor in the women's restroom....at the Peninsula Hotel in downtown Chicago. Yes, the place that people like Brad Pitt or Will Smith stay when they're in town.

It gets better.