Despite the hectic holiday weekend, it does include a Friday. So even if you’re weary of talking food and making food and eating food, chant Gobble three times and breathe deeply. I promise to keep this short.

 

A family tradition, spending Thanksgiving week-end in Death Valley. We start with our holiday dinner at the old, glorious Inn at Furnace Creek, a four-diamond resort built in 1927. The menu is always ambitious and, this year, Chef Renée outdid himself.

 

My family spent the Thanksgiving week-end in Death Valley National Park, the ancentral homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and the largest American park outside of Alaska. Since DV is located midway between Las Vegas/Henderson, where I live now, and Bishop, California, where my children live, I have either traveled to or through this park for the past eight years. I love everything about it.

I would guess that most of you have never visited DV. Please do. Of the park’s 3.4 million acres, 91% is wilderness. It is world renowned for its colorful, complex geology and its elevation extremes. Besides being beautiful, it boasts being the hottest, lowest and driest location in the entire country.

 

In deference to me, everyone wears their Sunday best to Thanksgiving dinner. Ever the good sport, Stephen rises to the occasion, wearing his “holiday” tie, to please his mother-in-law.

 

This park gets a bad rap by its name. Today there is very little deathly about it. According to the USPS, it’s home to species of all kinds: 51 mammals, 307 bird, 36 reptile, 2 amphibians, 5 fish and a few Park Rangers. Armed with John McPhee’s 1981 tome, “Basin & Range” and two elementary books on DV geology, I spent two days hiking, focusing on the area’s geologic story. Although I’m very familiar with DV, I’ve never concentrated on its geology – it’s a WoW.

Also a WoW is this week’s FFWD recipe choice, Herbed Olives.

Many of my favorite grocery and speciality stores offer olive bars with its numerous bins loaded with every variety of these little wonders. I cannot remember ever thinking that I should buy the plainest variety of olives possible and season them myself………until this week.

 

Herbed Olives – this week’s FFWD recipe

 

Dorie provides us with the basic proportions of olives to oil and then urges us to go crazy with herbs/spices for flavoring. I made these several days ago, using an orange-flavored olive oil, Olea Farm’s Orange Blush, and adding rosemary, thyme, corriander seeds, peppercorns, garlic cloves, bay leaves, red pepper flakes and orange strips.

Admittedly, these are not your average, grocery store bar-olives. These tangy little gems have a wonderfully pungent taste,  making them a perfect nibble at cocktail hour. Something to try, at least once!!!

 

There is no dress code after Thanksgiving Dinner. The rest of the week-end is devoted to hiking, biking, swimming in the natural spring-fed pool, just hanging out at the Ranch at Furnace Creek. Every the competitive family, we are all still working hard at trying to be humble winners and good sports at losing. (Not quite there yet.)

 

To find the recipe for these delicious morsels, go here. To see what other spices and herbs my colleagues used in this week’s recipe, go to the French Friday with Dorie link.

 

(Note:  If you are interested in the geology of Death Valley, you might enjoy “An Introduction to the Geology of Death Valley” by Michael Collins and “A Trip Through Death Valley’s Geologic Past, The Magnificent Rocks of Death Valley“. Or, better yet, why not go to your closest national park, pick up a few local geology books at its visitors center and learn about how it came into being.)