Friday Quickies #38: Appetite Stimulus Dinners, RED Event, My Thanksgiving Meal

This week has been pretty exciting in the food blogging and media world, with quite a few articles / posts that seemed to stir up a whole slew of comments from both camps. Including 1) LA Time's S. Irene Virbila's well-intentioned, but not-as-well executed editorial to rally the general populace to continue restaurant patronage in the economic downturn, 2) KevinEat's blogpost on his meal at The Bazaar's grand opening night, which opened up a can of worms on EaterLA about bloggers' roles in the food and drink discourse (though that also provoked Mattatouille to write a lovely piece on foodbloggers too!) and 3) Humor writer Jessi Klein's piece slamming on foodies in general, which, again, led to considerable wankage.

But moving onto other topics:

My Thanksgiving Menu: As is tradition here, I'm pretty much getting a heat 'n serve meal, this time with HomeBistro.com (whose meals I've had with pretty good results in the past). I am getting their maple cured ham dinner (perfect size for my fam of three!) and their bourbon pecan pie, and I'll probably whip up an extra side just to say I've spent time in the kitchen. We'll see how that goes next week!

Cube introduces Aperitivo: Taking place from 4-7p everyday, Cube will be serving a variety of tasty pre-dinner bites at $5 each and a $10 flight of wine. The items rotate each week, and so far the foods offered sounds tasty (scallop crudo with keffir lime, gorgonzola picante cheesecake with balsamic vinegar) so seems like it's worth a checkout, esp. if you are planning to dine at or around Cube anyways.

LearnAboutWine's RED Event on Dec. 3: Great for oenophiles and beef-lovers, LearnAboutWine partnered with Breadbar to put together a unique tasting event with eight different beef dishes (all made from different cuts of the cow -- featuring everything from pickled tongue salad to ox tail soup with shallots) paired with eight different wines from small California producers. So moove over and get your rezzie ($69) quick before the price goes up to $80 at the door.

And finally, I've been meaning to blog my Citrus @ Social foodventure by today but, alas, didn't have enough time. But I will say it was a superb Appetite Stimulus dinner (almost-caramelized onion tart with creme fraiche and bacon; 72 hour melt-in-your-mouth short rib; a crazy meringue-ice cream dessert with pistachio creme anglaise) and you actually get to try four courses instead of three for $35, so definitely worth checking out! As for myself, tonight I'm hanging out with bloggers Kats9Lives, I Nom Things and Rumdood at Leatherby's Cafe Rouge, here's hoping for another awesome appetizing meal (though the company alone makes it worth it)!