Mike Shanahan's decision-making on Sunday may have been a bitter pill to swallow, but we're here today to rinse the nasty taste out of your mouth. Straight to the food news:

• A new Tryst-type spot called Bistro 18 will be opening up where Oya's Mini Bazaar and African Art used to be at 2420 18th St. NW. (Prince of Petworth)
• Businessman David Von Storch, who owns Capital City Brewing Company, signed a lease last week for his newest location, 901 Restaurant at 901 9th St. NW. (TBD)
• The folks over at Thrillist have a sneak peek at CapMac, the gourmet macaroni and cheese truck planning to roll out sometime next week. (Thrillist)

• Do you and your significant other have the noses of bloodhounds? Can you sniff out a truffle like a pig? Well, there's a casting call 'til 5 p.m. today for a new TV cooking game show for couples in Silver Spring. (Girl Meets Food)
• Tweet news: Bobby Flay is scouting locations for a burger joint in the area. (Nycci Nellis via Metrocurean)
• Hong Kong-style dim sum. A Slow Food feast. Bordeaux blends from New Zealand. You can learn about these foods and drinks at one of the many events scheduled this week. (Washingtonian)
• It's kind of like National Treasure without Nicolas Cage and with a whole lot of food instead. Here's the scoop on the DC Supper Club, a secret underground feast. (Borderstan)
• Jon Stewart who? The big news this weekend came from the Iota Club & Cafe in Arlington which announced it has expanded its draft system to 12 lines! (DC Beer)
• The Halloween Candy Buy Back program is a guilt trip to get kids (and adults) to turn their treats over to support the troops. (DCist)
• Just because your jack-o-lantern is rotting away doesn't mean pumpkin season is over. Here's your guide to everything pumpkin. (Northern Virginia magazine)
• Why people who deep-fry their Thanksgiving turkeys suck. (Serious Eats)
• Former New York Times dining critic Frank Bruni discovered the crude realities of drinking the infamous Four Loko. After knocking back three different flavors, Bruni concluded that the alcoholic energy beverage was "malt liquor in confectionary drag." (Eater)
• Zpizza plans to open a location in Rosslyn. Try to contain your excitement. (Washington Business Journal)
• News from the Twitter world is that Red Hook Lobster Pound is looking to add a second truck to its fleet. (Metrocurean)

Photo by Matthew Wade Davis (m.  treatzone) via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

I have to admit that few issues reveal my hypocrisy on flesh eating like dog meat. No doubt because Carrie and I dote on this little creature at home. I feel some sympathy for the Chinese who enjoy their dog meat and must now consider going, alas, cold turkey. Don't get me wrong. I don't think I could eat dog meat myself, but I cannot attack another culture's meat-eating habits when I, myself, regularly eat (and savor) an animal considered holy in another culture.

I have no doubt that if I befriended a pig or cow or chicken (though likely not a turkey, the mean bastards), I'd never want to eat pork or beef or fried chicken again. This is why I never plan to befriend a pig or cow or chicken.

So where do you stand on the consumption of dog meat?

Honestly, I don't know how we live with ourselves.

Here's what you clicked on most during this short Thanksgiving week:

1. Flying Ham Hits Paula Deen in the Snout
2. High Time for Low-Brow Beer (*)
3. Beer-Conscious Adams Morgan Bars Stick It to the Man
4. How to Brine a Turkey
5. Former Top Chef Contestant Blais to Open Flip Burger in D.C.

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a Top 5 item, but we’ve stopped counting it.

As we head into 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. But it’s not easy.

With all the arguments about fresh vs. frozen, heritage vs. broad-breast white, free-range vs. barn-raised, it’s often hard to know where to turn for a quality turkey.

Politics and environment aside, you must know your own palate. Do you prefer white meat that tastes slightly sweet? Then stick with commercial broad-breast whites, which are breed and often chemically enhanced for those characteristics. But if you want a genuine taste of turkey, with the kind of deep, natural (and even gamey) flavors that the birds had before the giant food companies got a hold of them, go to Maple Lawn Farms in Fulton, Md., and buy one of its fresh, free-range toms or hens.

It'll require some effort, yes. Maple Lawn is no longer taking orders over the phone or online for Thanksgiving turkeys,  but you can still pick one up at the farm. Employees will try to get you the size of bird you want. After Thanksgiving, you can once again e-mail a request to Maple Lawn.

Adventures in Shaw has a much longer list of turkey suppliers here.  Y&H also checked with Ecofriendly Foods about its supply of after-Thanksgiving birds. Here's what a spokesman wrote back to Y&H:

We will have plenty of extra birds in the weeks following Thanksgiving, both our heritage birds and our hybrid/cross. (I can give you a better description of them if you need although they're pretty well defined on our website at ecofriendly.com.) While we're distributing fresh birds for Thanksgiving, it's likely that buyers later in the year will be offered frozen birds. We expect to have plenty at the markets and they're available on a first come, first served basis until we run out. If someone does want to actually reserve a particular type of bird or size of bird to ensure they get what they want, they can send a $40 deposit payment for each turkey they want via Paypal to feedback@ecofriendly.com. When they leave the deposit they'll need to let us know:

• Their first and last name
• Telephone number
• Email address
• The type of bird (breed) they wish to purchase
• The approximate weight or weight range of the turkey they would like to reserve
• The specific market and date they will pick up the turkey(s), either Saturday in Arlington Courthouse or Sunday at Dupont Circle.
• Note:  If you reserve online and you want it for the upcoming weekend, you must place your online order by 7PM Tuesday of that week. That's the only way we can make sure we have the order with enough advance notice to make sure it gets on the truck for delivery to DC for the upcoming weekend.

You can place an order in person at the market for a specific bird to be reserved and delivered the following week.

It's also important to note that during the holidays, Ecofriendly is not always at the farmers markets so our staff can be with their families on the weekends following the holidays. So during December, the only dates we'll be at the markets for people to get turkeys will be December 5/6, 12/13, and 19/20.

Finally, remember: Don’t buy a fresh turkey more than a day or two before you plan to cook it. Otherwise, you might have, shall we say, a Food Safety Issue. Not a good thing for the holidays.

Photo by Alan Vernon. via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

Y&H salutes Chow.com for this smart, straight-forward video on how to brine your turkey. Brining, of course, is a terrific way to avoid dry, tasteless, and under-seasoned birds that require a gallon of gravy to make them palatable.

But as chef Michael Chiarello from Bottega in Yountville, Calif., points out, brining is no insurance against inferior turkey. Plenty of things can go wrong with this preparation, too. Take a look and then learn how to brine the right way.

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.