Rounding up the roundups:

5. WaPo's "Best and Worst Dishes of 2011." I totally agree with Yonan on El Centro D.F. Worst. Tacos. Ever.

4. Washingtonian's "Top 10 Dining-World Dramas of 2011," complete with a gracious nod to Y&H. Hey, thanks for the plug!

3. HuffPo's top 6 suburban Chinese spots (and two in D.C.) to spend Christmas if you're Jewish (or just hungry)

2. Burger Days' "2011 Burgers of the Year," complete with several glossy, virtually pornographic close-ups of all the juicy beefy glory.

1. Bitches Who Brunch's "2011 Brunches: The Best, The Worst." I simply can't say enough about the bitching.

How many of you have been there? You've spent hours — no, make that days — working on the perfect Thanksgiving turkey. Then you pull it out of the oven and butcher it to death. Here's how to carve your bird.

Video courtesy of Epicurious

Yes, I realize it's a little after-the-fact to tell you about pysanky, the Ukrainian-style Easter eggs that make those PAAS kit wannabes look like child's play (which, come to think of it, they are).

A few years ago, our friend, Gina, introduced Carrie and I to the joys of hardcore hanky-pysanky. Yes, that sounds dirty, and the batik process of creating a pysanka (singular) is indeed a messy business. Your hands will get stained for hours. But the kistka-oriented process is so much more fun, and the results more satisfying when you finally wipe off those layers of wax, than your traditional Easter egg dye kit.

These eggs above were our first, fumbling attempts. Take a look at the complex design work of a real pysanky artist. Next year, we will not make the mistake of thinking we can pysanky in just an hour or two before dinner. This is an afternoon-long project.

By the way, finding the pysanky kits are not easy. Carrie bought this one on eBay:

Oh, why not? Have some fun. It's not like green dye will ruin your Bud Light anyway.

So how did they fare?

Mr. and Mrs. Y&H went to two different Valentine dinners, and there was a common denominator to both: It was hard as hell to get there and/or park.

Friday night we hit 2941 at my urging. After a long week of shoveling snow, working late, and dodging icicles outside our front door, Carrie and I deserved a luxurious Valentine's dinner. And if anyone could do a prix-fixe V-Day menu right, I thought, it had to be  chef Bertrand Chemel, the former chef de cuisine at Cafe Boulud.

2941's price point certainly gave me the impression the restaurant was taking the greeting-card holiday seriously. The five-course meal was selling for $125 per person, with the option of wine pairings for another $75 per. That's two Benjamins each for dinner, which proves, once again, that love ain't cheap.

The meal was a mixed experience. Chemel's lobster bisque, a luxuriant liquid in which several sections of (slightly) rubbery crustacean lounged, was shot through with the creeping heat of piquillo peppers, as if the chef were playing up the dish's ancient (possibly Spanish) roots as a spicy preparation. This was bisque that proudly flew a Spanish pirate flag, and I saluted it.

The chef's burrata ravioli was equally rich though conceptually flawed;  the fresh Italian cheese was entombed in pasta, swimming in butter sauce, and sprinkled with shavings of black truffle. I think the Napolitano government officially filed charges against the dish for crimes against burrata, which should never be subjected to any treatment harsher than a drizzle of olive oil and some fresh cracked pepper.

The best of the savory dishes was Chemel's inspired combination of veal, sweetbreads, roasted artichokes, potato gnocchi, and rosemary jus. The entree was low to the ground, almost earthy in its wintry savoriness, but it was comfortable there, never crying out for a golden burst of acid to lift its flavors.

But my favorite dish of the evening had to be pastry chef Anthony Chavez's rose water bavarois with chocolate-lychee ganache, raspberry jelly, and a quenelle of white chocolate ice cream. The dessert was almost too pretty to eat, its stack of jellied custard, ice cream, and garnish as balanced as its sweet-tart-chocolate flavors.

Equally impressive was sommelier Stefano Cappelli's wine pairings, which ranged across Europe during the meal, from a 2007 Terredora Dipaolo Fiano di Avellino from Campania, Spain Italy (which was paired with the ravioli) to a 2007 Chateauneuf-du-Pape (whose producer is lost to my slurry memory but whose qualities matched perfectly with the veal).

Two days later Carrie searched forever to find a parking spot in Cleveland (Non)Park, so we could catch a movie and V-Day dinner at Dino. Like at 2941, the multi-course repast was a mixed bag.

Chef/owner Dean Gold had prepared a special menu di San Valentino, a four-course prix-fixe (for $59 each) in which everyone started with a bowl of cream of tomato soup. Which sounds like a cruel joke on lovers, right? But Gold had reserved a batch of his heirloom tomato sauce for the holiday, a little creamy/tart taste of summer for those connected by the heart.

Gold's mushroom cannelloni with buffalo ricotta was a study in subtlety, both in texture and flavor (well, once we could actually eat the molten hot pasta), while his duck-neck sausage was arguably sweeter than the last time I sampled the dish, perhaps due to the thick application of tangerine mostarda, which often dominated the patties. My biggest disappointment, however, was the scallop entree. The meaty mollusks were overcooked, to the point of caramelizing their exteriors into leather. What's more, the accompanying saffron-infused potatoes proved an odd plate-mate, creating a starchy counterpoint to a protein that begs for something more acidic or bitter.

I quickly sought comfort in the form of the double-cut Frenched lamb chop, served rosy pink and paired with a pitch-perfect salsa verde. I could have sat next to my loved one all night long, devouring that entree with a glass of surprisingly pungent Brunello, content with the world around me. Well, I could have if that leftover scallop still weren't staring me in the face.

Now it's your turn: Where did you eat during Valentine's Day? Was it crowded? How was the menu? The wine pairings? The ambiance? And most important: How long did it take you to find a parking spot? E-mail me with your stories. I'll run the best ones on the blog.

Photo by 2941

Raise your hand: Who among you was relegated to the kids' table during Thanksgiving? Y&H was.

I didn't care, either. As a kid, I didn't get Thanksgiving, at least the gathering around the table for hours and doing nothing but eating. I was an active little snot and didn't like sitting among the adults, as they drunkenly shared stories, their faces turning redder and their voices louder as the empty wine bottles continued to stack up. It seemed boring to me. I'd rather be outside. Or watching television.

What can I say? I was a kid. I had big contradictions and little interest in eating rituals.

So the kids' table provided all the freedom I needed. I could flee the long dinner with little or no detection. I could pretend to eat the dried-out turkey by stuffing the nasty meat into my cheeks like a chipmunk — and then spitting out the foul stuff later in the toilet.

I always got to the pumpkin pie much faster than the adults, which was one of my main goals. The other? To flee the scene before Uncle Jack started bitching at Aunt Mary about a minor kitchen infraction. Or some variation on that theme. There was always an argument at Thanksgiving. Always.

How 'bout you? What are your kids' table stories?

This is both creepy and cute. But you'd think the animator could have at least bought a pumpkin pie without a dent in the tin.

As we head toward Thanksgiving, Y&H wants to help you eat like a pilgrim (a Native American, too, because we’re all about equal opportunity eating here). In other words, we want to help you eat locally for the holiday. Almost 400 years ago, the pilgrims had no choice but to eat local. These days, we do. It’s not easy.

You want options with your first drink at Thanksgiving, and apple cider gives you exactly that.

Now let me say this: The apple cider from Twin Springs Fruit Farm, based in Orrtanna, Pa., may be the best I’ve ever had. Buy lots of it, because your guests will drink the stuff as if it were water in the desert. Twin Springs sells its cider at farmers markets around the area, from Dupont Circle to Arlington. You can serve the juice any number of ways: straight up; mulled with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger and/or nutmeg and served warm; or stirred over ice with a good bourbon to make a holiday cocktail, perfect for surviving even the most tedious of family gatherings.

Photo by Phillie Casablanca via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

Some of you may already know about my dislike for the standard roast turkey, an often juice-less and/or gamey bite of bird that requires a small vat of gravy to make it palatable. Unless that turkey comes smoked, brined, deep-fried, or Judy-fied, I'll take a roasted lamb over a roasted turkey any day, particularly the holi-days.

I say that as prelude to this: I don't feel a ton of sympathy for vegetarians during the turkey-heavy holidays. Frankly, they're not missing much, particularly if their families produced the same dried-out birds mine did over the years. My gaze becomes much more sympathetic, however, when I think about gravy, that savory soup of pan-drippings, thickener, seasonings, and, if you're lucky, giblets. How you can eat mashed potatoes without that brown gold is beyond my limited imagination.

There are, of course, a number of good veg-friendly gravies out there, like this one. This recipe includes a number of strong flavoring agents, including soy sauce, sage, and both garlic and onions, those two delicious bulbs of the allium family. The only strange thing about the recipe its is lack of specificity over "broth." I'd recommend a mushroom broth, which will give you a deep, woodsy flavor.

All together, I think the gravy will go a long way toward making you forget about your heathen, meat-eating brothers and sisters and cousins — and how much more fun they're having at the dinner table than you.