3 Thanksgiving musts for the Cigar Enthusiast:

1. Eat a whole lot of turkey and spend quality time with your family
2. Figure out what you will do with all the leftovers

My guiltiest pleasure with this research, is being sidetracked and veering off in an alternate direction than my expected "woman and the cigar".

Case in point  - my focus with this post was to provide shopping tips and links to cigar accessories and other "Black Friday" cigar gems made with the woman cigar smoker in mind. Search term, after search term brought disappointing results! What I had hoped to find, was a Prada gemmed cigar case, perhaps a Savoy cigar humidor designed with a cigar woman's taste - a feminine approach. Not so much! I did, however, find an empowering article from the Cigar Aficionado's archive written by Shandana Durrani published in the January/February, 1998 edition - excerpts from this article:

Making It in a Man's World
Eight Women Have Defied the Odds to Run Their Own Tobacco shops

"The glass doors open to admit a middle-aged man in a business suit. Setting aside a box of cigars, the tobacco store owner greets the customer effusively and asks him how the family is doing. The customer responds with a smile, regaling the retailer with anecdotes about how his son is tearing up the local Little League.....As the customer leaves, the retailer reaches with her long tapered fingers for her double corona and takes a puff. This is the life, she thinks."

the article goes on...

"...Diana Silvius-Gits of Up Down Tobacco in Chicago. Renowned throughout the industry for her boisterous spirit and tobacco knowledge, Silvius-Gits is the true trailblazer. But she had a long road to travel before she achieved success....

Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Silvius-Gits taught art at Grosse Pointe University-Liggett, a top prep school in suburban Detroit. She moved to Chicago after she married Gerald Gits, a native of the Windy City (they have since divorced). She bought the Gerald Bernard Art Gallery, which exhibited work from up-and-coming local artists. In 1963, she decided to incorporate tobacco into the gallery makeup. It wasn't long before tobacco became an obsession for Silvius-Gits....

In 1977, Silvius-Gits decided to make the business entirely tobacco-related. She hired an architect to build a multilevel store at 1550 North Wells, just down the street from the old location. The 1,650-square-foot store, with its five large walk-in humidors and 13-foot-high ceilings, has been there ever since and is a popular destination for area smokers....."

this is when the article speaks in "real talk".....

"Many tobacco distributors were skeptical and didn't want to provide products for the fledgling store owner. Silvius-Gits attributes it to the fact that she was a woman trying to make it in a man's business, at a time when women held "pink collar" positions such as secretarial jobs.

"They acted like a bunch of rats," Silvius-Gits says, vehemently. But there were exceptions. "Malcolm Flasher [the former managing director of the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America], Donald Gregg [who ran Faber, Coe & Gregg Inc.] and Wally Harris [of Dunhill] were really nice to me. If it hadn't been for those guys, I don't think that I would have been able to buy product because these [other] guys would sabotage you. That was the way that they treated all women. These guys wanted you to fail, and as soon as they found out you were successful, they wanted you out."...."

With perseverance, determination, and guts this successful cigar aficionada created the shrine known as Up Down Cigar, 1550 North Wells Street, Chicago, IL 60610...

Success with a woman's touch...

"Slowly but surely, the business began to thrive; today the store employs 28 workers and it is one of the most successful in the nation."

full article

Ms. Diana, you are a legend, an inspiration and an amazing woman! Thank you for opening the door and for all your hard work!

Sincerely, a modern day "21st Century, Cigar Woman"

Brunswick Stew

• Meat and stock from boiled turkey carcass (you can add other leftover meats to it as well), fat removed
• 1 large can of diced tomatoes, juice included
• 2 cans white corn, juice included
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 2 beef boullion cubes
• 1/3 cup worcestershire sauce
• 5 dashes Louisiana hot sauce
• 3 Tbl Kitchen Bouquet (a gravy enhancer sold in the aisle with either the barbecue sauces or gravy mixes)
• ¼ cup tomato ketchup
• ¼ cup sweet white wine
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together and heat slowly to a boil. Serve with crusty bread and butter. This dish gets better with age and freezes extremely well if you have too much after a couple of meals.

"With any luck, you have gleaned some insight as to what to do with that 20 pound Birdzilla you roasted for the family feast and had mountains of turkey meat left over. Just because it is left over doesn't mean it has to be just 'leftovers'."

 "cigar woman", sure sounds yummy to me"]