If you'replanning Thanksgiving, this is a weekend of fortification: filling the cupboards, laying out the recipes, coming up with a game plan. Making a meal over the weekend that'll leave you leftovers for the beginning of the week. Cook this weekend the best way you can—with a glass of wine in hand.
There's a song for that, by Jerry Lee Lewis. In fact it's the first he ever performed for money, at the tender age of 14: "Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee," a song written by the blues singer and guitarist Stick McGhee. There was a band playing at the local Ford dealership in Concordia Parish, where Lewis and his family were living at the time, and having recognized the boy's virtuosity in front of a piano, his father managed to get him up on the stage. (He walked away later with $14 from a hat that was passed around.)
"People thought it was cute, letting this boy sit in, and the piano player relinquished his old upright," Rick Bragg wrote in his biography Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story. "Jerry Lee took a breath. They were expecting something country, something gospel, and he looked out across the crowd and hollered 'Wine Spo-dee-o-dee!'" Lewis burst into the song, a propulsive, uncomplicated celebration of—well, drinking wine. It's ideal for listening to while you're shimmying around the kitchen. Thrust your spatula in the air as Lewis lists the various varietals one might consider: Elderberry! Sherry! Blackberry!
Another thing about wine is: you can cook with it, too. (Just hear me out.) Check out theseshort ribs braised in red wine, a stick-to-the-ribs recipe for the colder months that'll perfume the house as it cooks. The meat takes a while to finish—at the end of cooking it should be terribly, terribly tender—so think of a soothing activity you can do while it's in the oven. Nothing strenuous, since you'll have a glass in your hand. A crossword, or something.
Set a little wine aside, though, for dessert—it plays beautifully withdark chocolatein this cake. (A simpler, quicker sweet option, should you desire it, is these red-wine caramel apples.) Come to think of it, you better pick up a couple bottles. Just to be on the safe side. Look, it's been a long year.
