Any Time's a Good Time for Turkey

You may be one of those folks who believes eating turkey shall be limited to a few American holiday seasons.  If you are, I'm afraid we may be in some disagreement on that point.

I love turkey dinner. Turkey with fixings like cranberry sauce, pickles and dressing. Turkey with pesto and pasta. Turkey with toasted ciabatta, spinach and garlic mayo. Turkey-juice soaked risotto. Turkey tetrazzini.

If you share my enthusiasm, NOW is the time to stock up. It's at Safeway for 99 cents/lb, Superstore for 96, Walmart for 97... and those are just the prices I scoped out in the flyers this morning. Last night I cooked up an 8-kilo bird and, bless him, he provided us with 10 cups of meat (most of which will be refrozen in small 2 cup bags) and another 10 cups of broth. Total cost: $20.

I'm currently working out a value for that lovely turkey soup-smell wafting through the house...

PS: On the subject of turkeys (and turkey sex), pick up Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle. An easy read that expounds, with hilarious detail, her attempt to raise turkeys for food (and of course her attempts to multiply the flock's numbers). Who'd have thunk you could breed maternal instinct out of an entire species?

PPS: And on the the subject of fall deals, just a reminder that now's the time to pick up pumpkin. For $4 I picked out the largest pumpkin I could carry. Thankfully, it just barely fit in my oven and is currently roasting in its own skin. Check out this post for the process I use to cook and store it.

Finally Here- The Season for BBQ Hamburgers

Sorry to the vegetarian readers out there; some graphic raw meat pictures in today's post! 

Tonight was BBQ Burger Night- our third this week.  Now that it's spring (it is spring, right?), we're giddy with relief that the sun is out. We've spent the last eight days outside, digging compost and battling mosquitoes. BBQ seems like the only appropriate interruption.

So perhaps it seems pretty basic, a post about homemade hamburgers, but its on my mind (and I think more people buy hamburgers than make 'em). Homemade burgers are cheap, have way better flavour and way less creepy filler, than the frozen kind. A pound of beef or elk or bison will make me 9 medium sized burgers or 6 really large ones.  Even with organic, free-range beef that's just under 35 cents per patty! The one down side is cleanup: in my kitchen raw hamburger touches the bowl, the transfer tray from kitchen to BBQ, and thoroughly coats my hands. 

I'm sure there are hundreds of variations of homemade burgers. In ours, I usually add to the thawed meat a jumble of the following ingredients: 

oatmeal

cracker crumbs

shredded carrot

egg

worcestershire sauce

mustard (prepared and powder)

garlic (crushed and powder)

onions

oregano (fresh or dried)

arugula

spinach

Etc. Etc. What goes in yours?

Sap Gum- Yum?

Here I am trying sap gum for the first time since I was seven years old. If you've ever craved the flavour "Christmas Tree", this is it. It's the smell of strong pine captured on my taste buds--- and it's a bit weird. But fun! And free! And sugar free! 

Hiking while on holidays in the Columbia Valley, BC last week, we came upon some crazy sap structures that spread like skirting on half-century old pines. Mat dared me to eat it. While usually I resist this sort of thing, the sunshine and fresh air perhaps made me bold.

I gathered about a tablespoon of hard sap from the pine trees and tossed them in my mouth like tic tacs.

I chewed for about two minutes before it completely softened like store-bought gum. 

I then proceeded to play with my gum. The flavour was strong even after fifteen minutes of hard chewing and stretching. It resisted my attempts to blow bubbles though.

Hummus from the Blender's cheap cheap cheap

I was seven years old at my hippie Sunday School teacher's house when I first tried hummus. It was Passover and I wore a pink dress my mom had made me. Lace bordered the top collar and I worried the strange dip would drip from the warm pita onto my lap.

While it wasn't love-at-first-bite, hummus is now found at most of the parties I host- and its become a staple for many folks wanting a low fat, protein snack. I love it with lots of garlic and lemon. 

Buy it at the store and a small 1 cup container will set you back $3-4. I can make 4 cups for the same price. Here's my recipe:

In a blender or food processor put*: - 2-4 T of lemon juice (fresh or concentrate) - 2-4 t of garlic - 1/4 C of tahini (ground sesame seeds) found cheap at the Italian Centre or Superstore. Substitute peanut butter for an interesting variation.  -1- 2 cans of undrained chickpeas. Substitute black beans for a nice and unique alternative -1- 2 t of cumin *I find that if I put the liquid ingredients in first, the blender has a much easier time blending the beans. Blend everything until smooth. Add lemon juice, oil or water if it's too thick to blend. Add another can of beans if it's too liquidy. Taste and add flavour - cumin, garlic, lemon juice- as you like it. I sometimes will add curry powder or onion powder. Roasted red pepper is also a nice variation. Serve drizzled with olive oil and a couple shakes of paprika. When its the season for parsley or coriander, I'll often chop these up and sprinkle on top; if you want it more liberally flavoured, mix it in. Beautiful, isn't it?

Seed Starting 2011- In pictures

Nothing like a four year old in charge of dirt... The aprons were a gift at Christmas, bought by my sister in law from an Etsy shop.

Unfortunately, parts of my fancy 'self-watering' Lee Valley seed starters were food for the winter mice in the garage. I salvaged the tops and placed the capillary mat (that draws water up) in a glass 9x13 pan from the kitchen. This seems to be working. 

Madi is learning to write- and made most of the labels that were taped to the sides of the flats, directly under the designated cells.

Remember when I said I was 'going simple'? I couldn't help myself and ordered, then planted 8 cells, of Goji berries.

I'd love to hear how you organize. I place all my seeds in different bags: "Indoors 12 weeks" (plant before first frost free date. Here in Edmonton that's anywhere between May 7and 31!) "Indoors 8 weeks", "Indoors 4 weeks" and "Outdoors early"and "Outdoors late"

I keep this stuff close: scissors, pens and tape for labels. The green  bulbous spike is for seeding- $4 allows me to drop one seed in each hole at a time (instead of scattering heaps of seeds to later be 'thinned').

My garden book has coils so I can tape extra seed packs in, I also staple in most of my seed and plant orders so I can remember varieties and quantities from year to year.

The calendar allows me to count forward and back from May 7th. I'm an optimist when it comes to frost. I like Lois Hole's advice in her Vegetables book-- 8 out of 10 times you win when you plant a little early- harvesting at least 2 weeks earlier. The risk is that your first sowing of seedlings like carrots and peas die in a late frost but only, according to her math and experience, 2 out of 10 seasons. 

My scratchings.
 Date on top then a rough chart: Row 1: Name of seed. Row 2: Number of cells planted. Row 3: Date planted. Row 4: Date of germination (the first sign of green)

Tell me how you keep track and stay organized! I'd love to know.

Yogurt-- I Finally Made It!

If you were following along with my household dramas in the Fall of 2009, you'll remember my yogurt making experiments- sans a yogurt maker appliance- went bust (see the post here). Three times I followed recipes that failed to produce anything but sour milk and a phlegm like texture.

Its been a year and a half and I finally felt ready to brave the experiment again (Thanks for the inspiration, Evelyn at A Chaotic Lifestyle). 

I'll skip the suspense to announce my final results, in a frenzy of caps lock excitement: THREE TIMES I'VE SUCCESSFULLY, MIRACULOUSLY turned milk to yogurt! 

While the first re-trial came out more like Yop than Yogurt, which I froze as popsicles and no one knew the difference, the second and third were progressively more firm. I've Mother Earth News to thank for the instructions. Find the full article at Mother Earth News. 

For the curious, I simplify the process below. If you decide to try it, reference the full article at MEN.

First, I melted 2 T of honey at bottom of pot to prevent milk scalding at the heat source.

Then on mid-low heat for about 30 minutes, I heated four and a half cups of milk until skin formed on top- with bubble trapped below. Turning off heat, I cooled milk for another 30 minutes until it didn't burn by inner wrist- but it stung (did mention there is some masochism involved in this?)

As the milk heated and cooled, I added a couple tablespoons of raspberry jam to the bottom of 2 of 3 clean, 500 ML jars. I kept one plain so I had starter for next time.

Once the milk was 115 F (hot but not too hot to the touch), I mixed in a couple Tablespoons of 'starter'. The yogurt contained NO gelatin, and ACTIVE bacteria cultures. I also added 3 Tablespoons of skim milk powder.

I then placed the jars in the crock pot and filled it with HOT water. I occasionally and shortly turned the crockpot on low to keep the water warm.  When I headed to bed, I placed the glass covered pot under the cabinet lights. This seemed to keep the water relatively warm. In the morning, I checked how thick the yogurt was (it wasn't quite ready) then kept the yogurt in a warm bath for most of the day. When the yogurt finally seemed thick enough, I refrigerated the jars.

[On another occasion, I put the jars in my dutch oven and placed this into a cooling oven. Along with the oven light on overnight, this provided enough heat to solidify the yogurt.)

The four and a half cups of milk produced the equivalent amount of yogurt: about a tub and a half of the standard 650 g worth about $5- 8 at the store. Homemade it cost me $1.25. After doing it three times, I feel pretty confident that I could do it regularly without much trouble-- most of the time it takes to make involves me sleeping, surfing the net, and working on other things in the kitchen. 

Tonight, I'm happily calculating how many pairs of shoes and Lee Valley garden tools I can buy with my savings. As I do, I'm sucking a raspberry, yogurt popsicle that once was Yop, which before that was milk in my fridge.