How to roast the perfect turkey

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. For 12 years, we’ve hosted Thanksgiving at our house for our phamily. All of us spend Christmas and other holidays with our families-of-birth, but this holiday is spent with friends we made in and after college. Folks come in from out of town, everyone takes a turn cooking, and most of the food is from within 50 miles or so. There are even several things I grow specifically for Thanksgiving dinner: rosemary, sage, potatoes, squash.

Here’s how we handle the bird.

  1. Wednesday: Have dear friend (aka Turkeyfiend) drop off immense free-range, no-drugs, never-frozen hen at your house in cooler of ice.
  2. Thursday morning: roll lazily out of bed, greet houseful of guests, laze around in PJs while nibbling on breakfast. Glance at the schedule which has become a permanent fixture on the fridge and remember that turkey-wrestling begins at 2pm. Remind yourself not to eat the pie yet.
  3. Thursday, 2pm:
    1. Assemble seasonings: a bale of rosemary and sage from the garden, and a small bowl with 2-3Tbl of salt and 3-4 Tbl of ground poultry seasoning.
    2. Rinse out bird, set neck and giblets aside. Place turkey in clean roasting pan.
    3. Slide hand between breast meat and skin, loosening the membranes. Take handfuls of the dry seasonings and rub on meat. Evenly distribute fresh herbs between the meat and skin.
    4. Flip turkey over, cut slit in the skin of the turkey’s “hips,” and repeat the seasoning treatment on each thigh and leg.
    5. Place any remaining seasoning inside the cavity.
    6. Wrestle bird into turkey cooking bag.
  4. Thursday, 2:45pm: place bird in 350 degree oven.
  5. 4pm: First check of bird. Baste, if there are any juices yet.
  6. 5pm: Second check of bird. Use thermometer. You want the thigh to be about 185 degrees; the breast will probably be closer to 165. Don’t baste it any more – the skin should be brown and crispy now.
  7. When the bird it done, set the pan on the counter and start harvesting juices.
  8. 5:30 or 6pm: Eat dinner. Bask in glow of happy Turkeyfiend.
  9. 8:30 or 9pm: Figure you’ve finally got room for that pie.

What to do with the turkey juices:

  1. Siphon them out with a bulb baster, and fill two or three tall, clear glasses. The fat will rise to the top.
  2. Make gravy.
    1. Use some of the fat (enough to cover the bottom of the gravy pan) and an equal amount of flour to make a roux.
    2. Use the bulb baster to pull the juices from the bottom of the glass. For gravy, use roughly equal parts juice and water.
    3. Bring to a boil and allow to thicken.
    4. Adjust seasoning – it might need some salt, but the juices were well-seasoned in the turkey, so it won’t need much.
  3. Make dressing.
    1. Use some of the fat to sautee the onions and celery.
    2. Mix juices with water in a large jar (1 part juice to 3-4 parts water; about a quart all together).
    3. Start adding chunks of stale bread to the onions and celery in the pan.
    4. Drizzle the thinned turkey juice over the bread until it’s soaked through.
    5. Adjust seasonings as needed; some fresh sage, rosemary, and extra salt is nice.
  4. Now siphon off the remaining fat into freezer containers, and use it later to sautee meats or vegetables. (Remember, fat from healthy animals is waaaaaay better for you than fake fats like margarine.)
  5. Put the last of the juices in the freezer, too; a pint of concentrated turkey juice plus water will make a quart or more of stock for homemade soup.

On Friday, break up the carcass and boil it in about 2 gallons of water for 3+ hours with some more salt and a couple bay leaves. Pack leftover meat and trimmings into lunch-sized portions and freeze.

On Saturday, pick the carcass clean, dice it up along with all the meat that hasn’t made it into lunches. Can the meat in pint jars and the stock in quart jars.

Eat the last of the pie.

Pondering, like a pondery thing

I wonder if my work as a “local food advocate” would ever extend to running business operations for small food producers? Maybe I just teach “how to run a food business” classes, or maybe I run the business, they make the food, we all get paid? Would that be too much like sales and marketing? Would I care, since I believe in the food so much? Would there be enough money in it? Would this happen only when local access to food becomes far more important than cash income? Is it even possible to do this without “selling out” and only selling the best, local food to pricey restaurants while folks of more modest means get Wal-Mart factory-farmed food, or none at all?

You can grow lemons indoors!

Ok, I think I know what my winter project is…starting an indoor citrus orchard!

http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/2009/11/grow-your-own-citrus-meyer-lemons.html

Señor Porkus hates me

Well, that was odd. Something about the sausage from this pig makes my heart race! It’s only got pork, black pepper, sage, salt, and brown sugar. Huh. The plain pork is great (and the bacon is out-of-this-world), but the sausage isn’t doing it for me.

Luckily, I have friends who like sausage, especially cheap happy sausage, so hopefully I can convert this into a variety of spicy pig that doesn’t send my heart galloping for the door…

Welcome, Señor Porcus!

Naming our food is a long tradition in my family, starting with Boris the Bull, who I believed would cause my parents’ divorce (do YOU really understand how large a whole steer is? Yeah, us neither…). Last year we bought half a hog and named it Eric. This year’s participant has been dubbed Señor Porcus. No absent referent here!

Half a half hog - sausageWe picked up our 1/2 hog from Old Pine Farm on Oct. 17th. They have a very nice farm – hogs are pastured with some supplemental feed, not confined to a muddy sty. They are slaughtered on-farm and then sent to the butcher, so there’s no travel stress for the pigs. I feel extremely grateful that we have such a farm near us, and that we can afford to buy our food from them.

Looks like we ended up with about 85 lb of meat (for $300, including cutting and smoking, so somewhere around $3.50/lb). Old Pine Farm is unusual in that they charge a flat price for your hog, no matter what size, and they do not charge extra for cutting and smoking. You get to pick how you’d like your meat cut up. Here’s what we got – showing our strong preference for sausage and pulled pork in this house! My only complaint so far is that the meat is wrapped in Saran Wrap, which I find hard to remove from the meat. Hopefully it will fend off freezer burn – since there’s no air inside the wrapping, it should do that. So long as the wrap is thick enough. We’ll see.

    Half a half hog

  • Loin roast: 10lb in 3 large packages. Wonder if we should have gotten this sliced into chops?
  • Shoulder roast: 20+lb in about 10 packages (will become pulled pork)
  • Bulk Sausage: 18 one-pound packages
  • Smoked kielbasa: 10 – two to four links per pkg
  • Ground pork: 6 – 1.5 lb packs
  • Bacon: 5 lb in one-pound blocks
  • Smoked hocks: 8lb in 2 hocks
  • Ribs, pork butt, other misc: 8lb
  • Plus about 5 pounds of soup bones and 5 lb of fat for lard
  • The tail, the bladder, and possibly the squeal for the Cooking with Laura Project, which I will get to in a few weeks

This filled 2 large coolers and a paper grocery bag; it takes up about 2/3 of our tiny 7cu ft chest freezer and close to half the space above the fridge.

I think this was a steal for $300. I think prices are going up for next year, and they will be worth it.

Wish list

Dear Universe,

Please find a way to bring this:
Local Harvest Logo

and this:

iPhoneMap

together and create an iPhone app that shows me the happy-food establishments from the Local Harvest database nearest to my location – and give me directions from my current location to the nearest place to get local, free-range, and organic food.

Will help facilitate with love, cookies, and possibly even money.

Thanks,
Emily

Goat’s milk?

Does anyone know where I can get about 1 gallon a month of goat’s milk (pasteurized or raw) in the Ann Arbor area? The goat shares I’ve found are too far away and give too much milk.

Amazing food work in Ann Arbor: Food Gatherers and Growing Hope

Yes. We Can Grow Turnips!I dropped off my first produce donation to Food Gatherers of the summer (19 lbs of turnips and greens) and got caught up in conversation with Dan, the head gardener for Food Gatherers. We chatted on the edge of a huge garden – or small field – of proto-produce: spinach, peas, 300 tomato plants, with room for hundreds of square feet of winter squash. If the plot was less than an acre, it wasn’t by much. In addition, there’s another plot out back with collards, cauliflower, and other brassicas. They call this the Gathering Farm.

The idea is twofold: They’ll distribute some of the goodies directly to clients and to the non-profits Food Gatherers serves. But they’ll also send large shipments of produce to the DeLonis Center, where Food Gatherers runs a kitchen skills training program. The participants there will process the tomatoes and such into tomato sauce and other heat-and-eat foods and freeze them. These products will then be distributed to shelters through the winter, when fresh produce is scarce

They’re also partnering this year with Growing Hope to establish community gardens in Ypsilanti, called the Faith and Food project. The basic idea is that Growing Hope helps churches and other neighborhood institutions with the logistics of turning city lots into vegetable gardens. The gardens are tended by the neighborhood and congregation, and food is shared out among them. But a bunch of that food is also earmarked for Food Gatherers, to be distributed to people who don’t have a garden in their neighborhood.

Man, I’m proud to live in this area. And inspired, too. I’ve been thinking that now that Preserving Traditions is up and running pretty well as far as monthly workshops go (I’m set for topics and presenters through 2009), I will focus more on the community-building side. Specifically, getting the community kitchen up and running. I want folks to come to view the kitchen as an extension of their own kitchen, where they can come and do larger food prep/preservation projects that they may not have the space or equipment for at home.

Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club – Preserving Traditions Benefit!

Tammy Coxen of Tammy’s Tastings is Ann Arbor’s guru of ganache and doyenne of delights both sweet and savory. In addition to creating some of the best handmade truffles I’ve ever eaten – flavors like fresh garden mint, rosemary-lemon, and salt caramel – she’s a fabulous chef of dinner-type foods as well.

Tammy’s begun a new venture for the summer months when it’s too warm for chocolate:  Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club. The idea is that she will peruse the market for the freshest seasonal foods and combine them into a tasting menu for a private dinner for up to eight people. With food that fresh, she won’t be posting menus in advance,  but she lists the following sample menu on her web site:

Wild Mushroom Tartlette
Seared Scallop with Tarragon Leek Sauce
Salad of Baby Greens with Hazelnut Vinaigrette
Lake Perch with Beurre Blanc and Roasted Asparagus
Roasted Quail with Yellow Oyster Mushrooms, Pea Shoots and White Grits
Cheese Plate with Garnishes
Rhubarb Galette and Vanilla Ice Cream
Petit Fours

Dinners will also benefit local food groups, and she’s chosen Preserving Traditions as the first recipient! I will be helping her cook and serve the meal, and will probably say a few words about the group, but don’t worry – I won’t talk your ear off. This is really about the food, and experiencing Tammy’s creative style and exquisite execution.

Please see Tammy’s blog entry Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club for more information and to reserve a spot at the table June 6th.

Gardening and menus

GardenersI am so excited I can hardly express myself. It is February 10th, and I came home from work today and planted seeds. The soil in the greenhouse has thawed, so I think it’s time to give it a shot! I planted kohlrabi, Winter Density lettuce, Pentland Brig kale, and New York onions.

I also cooked dinner, which has been happening far too seldom lately. I drew up a monthly menu last weekend, finally. We’d kind of fallen off the wagon with that. It’s funny; I keep all the menus I type up, and while I have summer menus going back two or three years, in that time there are only 2 menus for winter and early spring months.

This should help with the not-cooking thing; the worst part about cooking after a long day of work (for us, at least) is not cooking; it’s answering “what are we having for dinner.” Favorite restaurant foods come to mind easily, and then you get a taste for it, and it’s hard for us to not feed that taste. Pre-seeding the palate with this week’s options helps us fight the urge to just let someone else cook.

That being said, we had a very nice dinner out last night. I started off asking, as usual, “Anything local on the menu tonight?” and that started a lovely long conversation with our waitress, who said their new chef is really into local food and is rewriting the menu to feature many local and sustainable items! My favorite restaurant in town just got favorite-er!

The RSVP for March’s Preserving Traditions event (wheat and home grain milling, March 8th at 2pm) will be posted in a day or two.

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