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Every week we bring you our favorite cooking and eating from our friends at Serious Eats. This week we were fascinated by this ice cider, the eiswein-esque version of hard cider (which is a popular topic here lately). This plus chocolate peanut butter mousse pie, a ham daiquiri, and how to spatchcock a turkey.

By late next week, most of us will probably be eating cranberries in some form or another. But what about using the pretty red berries in holiday decor?

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When I first asked Rachel Cole about her kitchen, her whole face lit up. "I love my kitchen!" she said with a big smile. Rachel has one of the best jobs in San Francisco for anyone interested in food: she's the Program Director for 18 Reasons, a new style of community center created by Bi-Rite Market where people connect around good food and art. She spends her days dreaming up amazing food-related events and classes like Butterfest 2009 and Peanut Butter & the Pen, a food writing workshop for kids.

We've been talking a lot about Thanksgiving, but now it's your turn to talk. What are your plans for Thanksgiving dinner this year? Are you hosting? Visiting? Cooking? Taking a break? If you're cooking, are you going all-traditional, or mixing it up? And is there anything you're looking for right now to round out your plans: Turkey help? Side dish recipes? A great pie? Table setting ideas?

With so many beautiful and unusual squashes available right now, we can't seem to come home from the market without at least one new variety to try! Happily, stuffed squash is one dish that will work for just about any squash we happen to pick up. We don't really need a recipe - just a few basic steps and dinner almost makes itself!

Thanksgiving and the holiday season call for special sips at parties and dinners. But not everyone drinks alcohol, and it's a little sad to think of drinking water or apple juice with your turkey. Never fear, though — there is a growing space of sophisticated, grown-up, yet alcohol-free drinks that are just as good (really!) as bubbly. Here are our favorites.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, we have been contemplating gratitude not just for the good food in our lives, but also for the farmworkers whose unseen hard labor brings this nourishment to our tables. We just watched a new online documentary on this subject, called Fair Food: Field to Table, and highly recommend it.

We picked up this tip from one of the vendors at the Union Square Greenmarket. We bought a cup of hot cider a few weeks ago and noticed floating slices of apple in our cup. If you already add cloves and cinnamon sticks to jazz up store-bought cider, we highly recommend doing this, too. The soft, sweet chunks of apple are so yummy to slurp up.

One of my go-to dishes is sausage and peppers, because it's so easy to make, requires minimal ingredients, and is versatile. I usually keep some hot Italian sausages in the freezer so I can make this; as long as I have tomato sauce, garlic, onions, and peppers, I'm pretty much all set. You can adjust the recipe to be spicy or not spicy.

It's funny that we've never covered this truffle-studded cheese before. Rich, creamy, and dotted with plenty of specks of the good stuff, Sottocenere is actually pretty easy to find. And with just the right amount of fancy, it'll appeal to the truffle-lover in all of us. (Everyone has one lurking somewhere.)

There are not many things we love more than our Thanksgiving pies — other than a slice of fabulous cake. Something about Thanksgiving always feels a little less structured with mountains of potatoes and rivers of gravy, and a dense and ultra-moist cake can make for a nice contrast. Plus, in praise of holiday cakes, we have a lovely little cake song for you that just may make your day.

Getting the sweetest sweet potatoes isn't about picking out the ripest or most promising potatoes in the bunch. Nope! Rather, a little culinary magic trick will transform your toughest tubers into delicious treats. Here's how!

Thanksgiving is one of the few occasions where we'll actually break out placecards. There will be over 30 people at our Thanksgiving meal (although we're not hosting this year, thank goodness!) and it's fun to find our place and see how the family has been arranged at tables this year. Here are a few handmade placecards that are particularly well-suited to this holiday.

Bakerella strikes again, with awesome cake pops for Sesame Street's 40th birthday. Plus homemade baby biscuits from France and butternut squash couscous from David Lebovitz.