Heroic Turkey November 18, 2008

So you’re hosting Thanksgiving. Breathe. It will be okay. No Egrets and I have done this twice, and our relationship, my family, and ourselves survived each time. A few pieces of advice: Clean your house this weekend, and don’t let anyone through the door for the remaining three days before Thanksgiving. Stock up on cookies and drinks. If anyone starts getting cranky ply them with cookies, drinks, or both until they are happy again. Feel free to use this technique on yourself. Cook No Egrets’ beautiful Heroic Turkey. Take to your bed after the guests are gone, and stay there all day. Also read this.

 

Heroic Turkey
5 gallon food grade bucket
Fresh rosemary, thyme, sage
Black peppercorns, sea salt
2 magnums cheap white wine
Butter
Olive oil
Taters, turnips, onion, parsnips, carrots, sweet potatoes
Bread
Chicken stock
Celery
Ground chestnuts
Balsamic vinegar
Garlic
Ginger

 

Get a 5 gallon bucket (that your turkey fits into) from the hardware store
– just a white plastic food-grade bucket.

Stuff your bird into it.

Pour a large bottle of cheap pinot noir or white table wine over it.  Add
1/8 cup sea salt.

In a saucepan, heat 1 stick butter or 1/4 cup olive oil and saute an onion
until soft.  Add rosemary, bay, garlic, ginger, and 1/4 cup black
peppercorns to the oil.  Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, let
cool, and put in blender until it looks like salad dressing.  Pour into
bucket.  Cover with ice.

Put the bucket someplace cold for 24 hours.  If you don’t have a cold place
– a beer fridge or something — you can freeze the marinade and keep the
bucket on ice in a cooler (or outside if it is cold enough).

Grease the bottom of your roasting pan with olive oil.  Add cubes of potato,
parsnip, carrot, sweet potato, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper — make a
bed of starchy veggies.  Lay the bird on the bed.  Drain and discard all
liquid — it will look bloody and nasty.

Rub the skin of the bird with butter.  Take sprigs of rosemary and poke them
through the skin of the breast.  You can do this any way that looks nice –
just pull the skin away from the meat of the breast, and pack herbs under
there, or pierce the twigs of rosemary through.  To really make it
beautiful, I lace some thin-sliced bacon across the top, latticed with
rosemary twigs and bits of fresh thyme.  Fresh sage is a good one for
turkey, too — you need it in the stuffing.  Get some garlic and ginger
under the skin, too, or at least under the bacon.

 

Now, you need stuffing.

Heat 2 cups of Chicken stock in a stock pot, and let it reduce.  In a pan,
brown 1/2 lb. sausage in 1/4 stick of butter. Sautee chopped onion, celery,
black pepper, sage, garlic, rosemary and thyme.  Pour all of this over 6-8
cups of toasted bread cubes.  Add broth until everything is coated, but
don’t overmix — you don’t want it all to disintegrate, though it’s ok if it
turns to meaty pudding, too.

I like ground nuts (chestnuts are great) in mine as well.  Walnuts and
pecans are great…pistachios….about 1/2 - 3/4 cup.

Pack the cavity of the bird right before it goes in the oven.  Never pack
the cavity the night before.

Corn bread stuffing works the same way — bake your cornbread ahead of time,
let it sit for a couple of days to dry out, and then toast it on a cookie
sheet before mixing the stuffing.

 

Follow Julia Child’s slow-roasting guidelines.

 

Don’t time your roast — use a meat thermometer.  They cost $10 at Bed Bath
& Beyond.

Good luck!

-goldlentil and no egrets

Drinking Locally November 10, 2008

(photo from capeannbrewing.com by captjoe06)

Maybe the Eat Local Challenge has given you new resources for eating locally whenever possible. Maybe, like me, you did not participate in the Eat Local Challenge, but were inspired by other people’s hard work to find new ways to eat locally. We’re fortunate to live in Massachusetts, and not just because gay people can get married here.

 

It’s easy to sneer at the Alice Waters crowd: “Sure, eating locally all year round is a piece of cake when you live in Northern California; but what about March in New England when you haven’t seen a green vegetable in months and are beginning to worry about scurvy?!?” Although we can’t find local avocadoes sold for 10 for a dollar along the roadside, we can at least drink away the winter months in local style! (And gay people can’t get married anymore in California. Don’t get me started.). Last night, inspired by a challenge by No Egrets to find him a local milk stout, I did some research:

 

Beer is probably one of Massachusetts’ better local products. My favorite is the Berkshire Brewing Company’s line of delicious fresh beers. They are in South Deerfield, Mass., just down the road from Yankee Candles. They have 8 year-round ales ranging from Steel Rail IPA to Drayman’s Porter and 7 seasonal ales, such as Cabin Fever Ale, Raspberry Barley Wine, and Hefeweizen. The Coffeehouse Porter, my favorite beer ever as it combines dark beer with real coffee, is made with Dean’s Beans, a fair trade coffee roaster in Orange, Mass.

 

There are two breweries on the North Shore: Cape Ann Brewing Company and Mercury Brewing. Cape Ann Brewing Company based in downtown Gloucester. They make four beers: Fisherman’s Brew, Fisherman’s IPA, Fisherman’s Ale, and Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout. There are a few other beers that are forthcoming or available at the tasting room only. Fisherman’s Brew is a great medium ale and the Pumpkin Stout is subtle and tasty. Their brew pub should be open very soon (check them out at 27 Commercial St.). Also available is Fisherman’s Brew bread at Virgilio’s on Main St.

 

I drank Mercury Brewing Company’s Ipswich Ale in Cambridge when I first moved to New England and didn’t even know the North Shore existed (sorry, but it’s true!). You can find Ipswich Ale all around the Boston area. Their best product, in my mind, is their winter ale, which is light (but not too light!) and spicy, sure to keep you warm. Mercury Brewing Company also makes an impressive array of sodas in amazing flavors.

 

No local milk stout yet, but stay tuned for local spirits, and I don’t mean of the Salem variety.

-goldlentil

Voting and other things you can do to improve the world November 3, 2008

(photo from gilgatelamb.co.uk)

Nov 4: Election day.  Perhaps the one day every four years where most
(ok, many) American citizens actively engage in our political system.
Your participation matters: the President sets the agenda, picks the
advisors, and influences the funding, application and even creation of
laws and the rules that enforce them.  So, please VOTE.

But you can engage beyond voting.  I’m sure some of you have called or
written your Reps and Senators about a bill– check out the websites
for the House and the Senate if you haven’t.  The most underused
system is commenting on proposed rules.  So what’s a rule?  And why do
they matter?

A rule is the method by which agencies interpret laws for action–
whether it is creating a program, ending a program, enforcing a ban,
etc.  Most laws are pretty stretchy (politically easier to pass), so
the rules are where political agendas can be acted out relativley
unseen.  But wait, transparency does exist!  You just have to know the
system: rules are required to have a public comment period (posted on
this handy website: regulations.gov) and agencies are required to
respond to each comment and take them into account as they write the
final rule.

Right now, there is a rule about pasture and organic dairy open to
comment.  Some of it is good, some of it is bad (awful, like, what were they
thinking?!). 

Free Range Rootbeer November 2, 2008

We recently discovered ginger brew from Maine Root, a Portland-based soft drink company. If you love the strong ginger candies you get at some Asian restaurants (like Pho Lemongrass in Brookline), this is your drink. Sweetened with fair trade organic sugarcane, this ginger beer achieves the perfect balance of spicy and sweet. The taste leans toward ginger rather than gingerbread. And it’s ethical drinking and almost local. The good folks at Maine Root make their Portland deliveries in a bio-diesel VW pickup. I bought my ginger brew at Green Meadow Farms, but you can probably find them at Whole Paycheck and City Feed as well.

You may be forgiven for thinking I do nothing all day but sit around and drink ginger beer. Posts have slowed, because I have started a new job. However, expect a post from groundcherry very, very soon.

PS Free range rootbeer is a real phenomenon. Check it out!

-goldlentil

The end of farmer’s market season October 25, 2008

It’s a very sad day; we went to the last Marblehead farmers’ market of the season. We stocked up on cheese; feta; red-wine lamb sausage; gala apples; and fougasse (our newest discovery, a circular flat bread with sesame seeds, salt, and pepinas on top that tastes like a distant but infinitely superior relative of the fresh pretzel). We also came home with pea tendrils, dandelion greens, and a jerusalem artichoke. The pea tendrils will go into a stir fry, the dandelion greens will serve as the base for No Egret’s Hot Bacon Salad, and the jerusalem artichoke, which is new to us, will be used in a stew or shephard’s pie later on in the month.

(photo from wikipedia)

 

My apple of the day is the Cameo, which is red-striped over yellow. It has a nice aromatic taste and the apples are small and crunchy, just the way I like ‘em. Cameo is a surprise cultivar from Washington and is thought to be a cross between red delicious and yellow delicious (delicious is quite the euphenism for those bland supermarket apples—it almost moves me to quotation marks).

 

Best of luck to those of you finishing off the Eat Local Challenge.

 

-goldlentil

North Shore Bazaar October 23, 2008

photo by george mulcahey

Have you noticed that churches have taken up the fight for fair trade products? It makes me happy to see churches using the pulpit to preach fair labor and livable wages, rather than throwing their moral weight around trying to keep people who love each other from getting married.

 

Even if, like me, you haven’t darkened the door of a house of worship in years (except for the occasional wedding or bluegrass concert), consider heading over to West Peabody for the North Shore Bazaar at the Community Covenant Church. There will be fair trade products and a local artisan bazaar, as well as educational booths from Boston Faith & Justice Network, The Food Project, and The North Shore Rabbinical Association.

 

More info here.

 

Post update: Did anyone go to the Bazaar? How was it?

 

-goldlentil

What are you drinking? October 20, 2008

Local Ginger Beer

(from ajstephans.com)

Think ginger beer is a sweet, faintly tart drink that you drink at your grandma’s or when your stomach hurts? The difference between ginger ale and a real ginger beer is like the difference between instant coffee and fresh-brewed espresso. Ginger beer lulls you in with sweetness, but its mid-palate (to use my brother-in-law’s wine vocabulary) taste is strong and spicy, with a gentler finish of cloves or cinnamon.

 

Ginger beer (both alcoholic and nonalcoholic) has been brewed in New England since colonial days. It was drunk by the men working the harvest. Both the copious amounts of sugar and the revitalizing ginger helped give them the energy to finish the job. No egrets and I were only harvesting groceries when we picked up a bottle of AJ Stephans’ ginger beer at Crosby’s: official independent chain grocery store of the North Shore. It was nice and strong, and produced in Fall River (previously brewed even closer to home, in Stoneham). Some official tasters thought that it contained too much ginger “flavoring” along with actual ginger, but other tasters were so impressed by the layered flavors that they didn’t notice.

 

All this talk of ginger put us in mind to make some ginger and molasses cookies. Anyone know a source of fair trade molasses?

 

-goldlentil

Community Supported Fisheries October 9, 2008

(photo by Mike Martin)

I can see fishing boats chugging out to sea practically from my window, but in the grocery stores and fish markets, the seafood often is farm-raised or foreign. The question of why we don’t have more local seafood has plagued me, and others I’m sure, as long as I’ve lived on the North Shore. Cathy Huyghe discusses this lack in an article in the Gloucester Times. She also offers an answer: Community Supported Fisheries.

 

Any localvore worth her salt (to mix metaphors) is familiar with Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where the consumer plunks down a small wad of bills in the spring and in return gets weekly boxes of fresh, beautiful produce all summer and into the fall. What if you could plunk down a small wad of bills and receive fresh fish all summer? The fishermen would receive reliable capital and fair-trade prices for their catch and the localvore would eat well and support the local economy.

 

Community Supported Fisheries have received a bit more press since I first mentioned them. A recent issue of Orion discusses them and their benefits and barriers to success and the Gloucester Times is also keeping an eye on them. There’s a CSF in the midcoast of Maine and one in North Carolina. Maine also has a lobster CSF (of course!). The Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance is actively pursuing the establishment of more CSFs. There has been talk of setting up a CSF in Gloucester. I’m looking forward to it.

 

 

-goldlentil

Macoun Apples October 6, 2008

(from nyapplecountry.com)

I bought a big bag of Macoun apples at Connors Farm in Danvers. No egrets and I did not go into the corn maze. We did, however, sample the hot cider donuts, which were way more flavorful than, but not as light as, the ones at Russell Orchard.

 

Macouns are delicious—firm flesh with a tart/sweet flavor—a northern-climate-friendly cross between the McIntosh and the Jersey Black. It is named after W. T. Macoun, who was a Canadian apple breeder and botanist who named 105 apple varieties in the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with helping the popularity of McIntosh apples in Canada, and was a strong proponent of home gardening and gardening in vacant city lots. The Macoun was developed in Geneva, New York, a year before W. T. Macoun’s death in 1933.

 

-goldlentil

On Skills, Economics, and blogs that won’t let me comment October 2, 2008

(photo from Appalachian Farming Systems Research Center)

NPR* has this snazzy little radio show called The Splendid Table, hosted by the grand dame Lynne Rosetto Casper (with a voice like pork cooked with apples, topped by well-buttered biscuits).  About a year ago, she started a local food challenge blog,  which includes posts from people around the country.  I’ve been sporadically following a woman named Autumn, from my home state, West Virginia. 
 
On 9/11, Autumn posted a thoughtful rant about the economic past, present, and future and how that relates to food: growing, eating, preserving, buying, obesity, health, life, the universe, and everything.
 
In short: WV has economic and health problems, which grew out of a history of subsistence lifestyles that were rendered obsolete and not properly replaced with anything else (other than coal—a place I will not go today). This lead to a loss of skills and host of modern health issues, which can be summarized by saying that obesity is bad and prevalent. 
 
Her solution: Rebuild local economies based on meeting basic needs, like food, locally.