01.06.09
Turkey Giblets
For all of those who keep looking for the answer, NO, it is not dangerous to leave the giblets in the turkey. I don’t recommend it, because they look kind of gross when you take them out of the cavity. Even the little plastic wrapper can be just tossed after cooking. It won’t poison the turkey – or you. We all do it at least once in our turkey cooking lives.
12.31.08
Post-Christmas Cooking Disaster
I made the casserole, and it sure looked good when I checked it about fifteen minutes before planning to serve it. I have some frozen petit pois in the freezer, and the youngies and I were going to sit down to a cozy, home-style meal. They went out for a few minutes to get something from the store, and I decided while they were gone that I would put the dogs out on their leads.
The crafty and footloose beagle decided to take that opportunity to explore the neighborhood and beyond. I heard her go, as she pulled the lead clasp loose and it hit the porch step. By the time I got outside, the pug right behind me, the beagle was across the street and headed for the hills. I fastened the pug on the lead and headed after the beagle, in the cold and dark, in apron, cardigan and wooden clogs. Around the block, down the street about half a block, and she disappeared behind the church. I decided to head back and change into boots and a coat, and enlist the kids to help.
In the meantime, pug had gotten off the broken lead, but decided the wise course was not to head into the street where I was calling and clapping and threatening. He went back to the porch and waited patiently for his beloved owner, my niece, to return. Good pug. Bad beagle.
The kids came out with me, the niece on foot, her fiance in the truck. We searched. We shone flashlights into backyards. We called. After almost an hour, niece was worn out and cold, and it was starting to sleet. She jumped in the truck and the kids kept looking. So did I. I circled wider, checking the waterfront, the park, behind the convenience store. I climbed the hill and checked the wooded path. Dog prints here and there, fresh ones, about beagle size, but the snow either turned to sodden grass or ice. Finally, I though I might be closing in because I found a lot of criss-crossing prints in the snowbank behind the Girl Guides building. I headed down the street, and was about a block from home when the kids caught up with me in the the truck.
“We found her. She was headed home, so I just jumped out of the truck door right on her. She’s in her crate.”
Back home, my sister-in-law was waiting, perplexed. She missed all the excitement by being at work. “Well, that turned out all right.” (I didn’t think minor frostbite of my earlobes was all right.) Then she asked the Big Question: “What’s for supper?”
The turkey casserole, abandoned in a warm oven (I had turned it down) for almost three hours. I pulled it out. The biscuits looked like wood chips. The gravy was a shiny paste. I probed a little. “It’s ruined,” I pronounced. “No, it’ll be all right. We’ll just take the biscuits off.” ”No, it’s ruined.”
A quick consultation between the youngies. “We’re going out.” “Oh, it’s late. I’ll make something else.” “No, no, get your coat.”
So the turkey casserole became fish and chips, a bit late, but solid comfort food, and compensation for my stinging earlobes.
It’s good to have family.
11.24.08
Drug-free Sleep
I have been plagued with insomnia all my life. It is an unusual night if I’m not awake between 2 am and dawn. I simply can’t take most over-the-counter sleep nostrums because of sensitivity to a key ingredient (acetaminophen) and constant chemical bombardment of your body is not a healthy thing, anyway. Why I don’t sleep, I’m not sure. It’s just how I’m wired, maybe. I’m a busy person who waits until things are quiet to do the heavy thnking, and that means at night. So part of the sleeplessness is anxiety and part is fatigue, which should mean I could sleep better. Physical pain contributes to some of the exhaustion.
I have used quite a few natural remedies, but often they are just substitutes for pharmaceutical solutions. Tinctures of valerian, passionflower, California poppy, hops, and skullcap have all helped, but I began to feel medicated. Friends referrred to the “potions” I concocted every night. And it got expensive.
I had to seriously work on my sleep disorder. This seems to be the best solution so far:
Have natural, freshmade oatmeal in the morning instead of sugary cereals, donuts or fatty bacon and eggs. Add honey, real maple syrup, and fresh fruit. I flavour it with nutmeg and cinnamon. Don’t use instant sugared oatmeal. Oats have principles that sooth the digestive tract and the nerves.
Avoid caffeine after noon. I like coffee, but I can’t have more than two cups. Likewise, I have to avoid chocolate in the evening. It’s probably the combination of a small amount of stimulant and a lot of sugar.
Don’t drink much alcohol, and limit it to the supper hour or early evening. It’s tempting to have that glass of wine, or bottle of beer (with the effect of the hops) to unwind and feel relaxed, but it is counter-productive because the alcohol takes water from your body and you wake up somewhat dehydrated.
Stop eating with the evening meal, and eat early. Your body doesn’t really want to lie down and digest. If you eat refined sugar, do so earlier rather than later. The big bowl of ice cream is merely comfort food for your inner child, not nourishment for your adult body, and it will definitely remind you of its presence in the middle of the night. Sweeten foods with honey, preferably natural, unheated, local honey. This is real food.
Check for food allergies and lactose intolerance. Are you eating something which you really shouldn’t have? My husband had an unsuspected corn allergy. Cut corn products from his diet, and he feels more active and energetic, and doesn’t have unpleasant gastric symptoms (which he thought were from overeating, or eating fats.) I have a long-standing lactose intolerance, and have to watch the amount of milk product I ingest. Need I say that most processed snack food is full of weird, unexpected ingredients?
Get active. I really need at least a full hour of exercise outdoors to feel a healthy drowsiness in the evening. Again, early is better than later. Active people who take sit-down jobs often suffer insomnia; I raised sheep for ten years, and usually after a full day of work and farmcare, I was just the right kind of tired. In these sedentary years, I have more trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.
Make the home a haven. Your home is your sanctuary from strife and anxiety. If it isn’t, then start to change it. If you have to drive a lot, work with the public, or make snap decisions all day, you’ve had enough stress. Don’t let the household become another point of tension (as so often it is.) I will write more on this later. At least, your bedroom should be free of clutter, anxiety provoking projects, and arguments.
Make the bedroom dark – curtains, shutters, blankets over the windows and a rolled towel against the gap at the bottom of the door – and avoid LED and LCD displays and nightlights. You are wired to start waking with light stimulation – in the natural world we call that dawn. Most municipalities are in a perpetual daylight state. Our last apartment was next to a parking garage that was lighted with – get this – a huge floodlight on a seven-story building. The light shone directly into our windows. It was like living in a maximum security environment. Nothing would keep out that intense blue light except plywood over the windows. We moved.
Stengthen your immune system with natural products. Use echinacea for 2-3 weeks, then stop for the same period of time. (It works better if not used continuously.) Eat lots of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables, preferably locally grown. (Vitamin content goes down when produce is shipped and stored, or it was never developed because the food was picked green and ripened artificially.) Best picks: dark vegetables and bright colours. Eat less meat and fat, and eat more whole grains, such as brown rice.
These are tea formulas to help you relax and to strengthen the body with vitamins and minerals.
Peaceful tea:In equal parts, or in any combination that suits your taste – rose petals, lavender buds, lemon balm (melissa officinalis), catnip (nepeta cataria), green oat tops (avena sativa). Steep in a china teapot, covered, for ten minutes or more. This is very good for shingles, chicken pox, or any herpes-related pain, as well. Use it regularly during the day and evening for a week or more. It’s a very pretty tea, like potpourri. You can get organically grown catnip in a pet store.
Good Sleep tea: My husband calls it knock-out tea. Equal amounts of lemon balm, nettle (urtica diotica – buy it dried), peppermint and chamomile. Add a sprig of fresh rosemary if you have it, or a half-teaspoon of dried rosemary. Steep in a china pot, covered, as above. Have two cups (6-8 oz, each) before bed. This tea will help build healthy nerves if you have been under a lot of stress.
Maybe you have some solutions of your own you would like to share, or you may have some questions. Please use the comments section to let me know!
10.31.08
Multi-Use Kitchen Tools!
It slices, it dices, it chops, mops and minces! Get one today!
I don’t have any gizmos like that, except maybe a knife, which doesn’t do any mopping. Kitchen stores are a vast wasteland of gizmos YOU DON’T NEED. Note the emphasis. Stay out of kitchen stores! They are centers of lust for hoighty-toighty cooks. Yes, I’m trying to shame you. Or myself.
We bought a gadget lately for sharpening knives, since I didn’t keep the high-tech electric knife sharpener and we can’t find the knife steel. It was fine until my husband used it on an axe, and the strongest-man-I-know broke it. We need to find the knife steel. I don’t think he can break that.
Kitchen drawers end up tangled, forlorn places full of gizmos, gadgets and bits. (You know, the twist ties, bag clips, honey dippers, plastic doodads still unidentified as to use.) I have tried to move away from such accumulation and have found multiple uses for ordinary kitchen things.
You may have read already of my turkey lifting system (two wooden spoons jammed in undignified places in said turkey). But other items work in other interesting ways! Chopsticks will support an improvised coffee filter cone made of a big funnel, paper filter, and a teapot. The kitchen tongs get called into use in the chapel occasionally to hold the charcoal while lighting it for the thurible (incense burner). And the demitasse spoons no longer used for espresso are perfect for incense dipping. (Espresso is a distant memory of my single life at seminary. We now need coffee in really big cups.)
Once when the power was out and I hadn’t made supper for the kids, I used two bricks set on end, a cork-backed tile under three votive candles, a cookie-cooling rack, and an aluminum pie plate to cook cut-up hot dogs in tomato sauce. They had it on bread. It was good, too. (If you have a fondue pot with fuel, then you have an emergency stove. I know people in areas of poor electric service who keep them just for that. But who makes fondue anymore?)
My big cast iron skillet goes on top of the stove and into the oven as a baking dish. I don’t have a cookie sheet right now since I never bake cookies, anyway. I make pizza in it, too. I roasted a nice piece of beef in it at Thanksgiving this year. (We will eat meat if someone gives it to us.) It was great for that – holding the heat evenly, and the roast potatoes put in with it were perfect. It took a bit of cleaning afterward, but I didn’t ruin the seasoning. Sometimes it doubles as a stove-top oven, when I make skillet bread. This is not cornbread, but yeast-raised wheat bread rolled into small cakes and cooked on both sides. They turn out a bit like crumpets, and were an innovation when we didn’t have a working oven.
I use old-fashioned double-handled cookpots, which are all metal and enamelled. The medium size one with the cover makes a good bean pot. The traditional stoneware beanpot is now a collector’s item, I think, and while great in the woodburning stove, hardly necessary in a modern thermostat regulated oven. The underlying steel is thicker in old pots, by my observation.
The canning kettle is used also for apple butter (when I can get the apples and cider), pot luck sized soups, and as an emergency dishwashing sink. It has also been a bread box and a mouse-proof container for dry beans and grains.
My large cutting board used to double as extra counter space, covering half of the double sink.
Do you have any mother-of-invention ideas using standard kitchen items? Perhaps you would like to share them.
10.29.08
More aprons
I finally got around to making the “new” aprons yesterday. One was harder than I expected, the two others went really fast, so I got all three finished in the afternoon. As I have said before, an apron to me is something that covers a lot. I’m a messy cook and a powerful housekeeper and gardener; little lady-like tea aprons don’t protect my clothes. Not only does the apron need to cover from shoulder to mid-calf, it has to be of a heavy fabric to withstand wash water, tomato and spice stains, garden soil and newborn lambs. (Well, not the last right now. But I have hopes of another flock in the near future, God willing we move to a rural situation.) It doesn’t have to hold up to chlorine bleach, which I rarely use, just a lot of yellow soap and the scrub board!
I looked for all-over aprons on the internet since they are impossible to find in stores. The sort I like are at least US$40, and with the Canadian dollar dropping at this time, I would have to add about fifteen percent. Even the patterns available were a little more than I can afford. But I’m one of those artistic people who can look at something and figure out how it’s constructed, so I started in to make my own. I didn’t want to spend anything on material (another pricey situation right now) but I had three garments I didn’t want to wear anymore. One was a button front denim jumper that had seen better days, the second a denim highwaisted jumper that would fit someone with a less womanly figure, and the third was a khaki canvas button front skirt that didn’t sit well on my waist.
The buttoned jumper was easy. I turned it back to front, trimmed off the buttoning areas (two long strips either side of the front opening), cut the back a little lower to be the front, finished the edges, used the long strips to make a buttoned closure at the upper back, and to make the ties at the waist. It looks really neat and covers a lot, all the way around.
The empire waist jumper had a slit up the back, which was one of the reasons I didn’t like it much. I don’t wear slits unless I can put a full underskirt below. That one I slit up the back, removed the corded drawstring from the waist, finished the raw edges, and using the piece I cut from the hem (it was ankle-length) I made ties for the back and added the same button closure as the first one. It reaches round to the back a bit, but not as much, since it had fit me pretty closely.
The khaki skirt got disassembled, and the back of the skirt became a bib. I cut the buttons off the front and overlapped the button side over the button hole side and stitched it shut. I thought it had too many raw edges inside, so I lined the bib and the top half of the skirt with scraps of an old white sheet. I made ties for the neck and the waist out of the leftover scraps, and put some pleats at the top edge of the bib so that it lies against the collarbone a little better. This took a certain amount of fitting and turning and fidgeting the lining into place, but it has the look of a bib overall kind of jumper, although open in the back. I think it will make a great washday and gardening apron, since it has great big jeans pockets.
Total expenditure: about two dollars for thread. I used recycled buttons on the two denim aprons.
Old clothes are a good source of recycling. If you are into something a little more colourful, faded blouses and children’s dresses can be patchworked into some neat designs for potholders, placemats, aprons, bags and even floppy sunhats. Men’s shirts when they’ve become too worn at cuff or collar or husband has “outgrown” them, have enough fabric for caps and bonnets or kerchiefs.
Now I have three really useful aprons for kitchen and yard, meaning my dresses will “go” a little further before the wash!
10.23.08
Garlic Wine — for Colds, Flu
This is not what you think it is! It is not wine fermented from garlic. (Perish the thought! Who could live with that smell?)
This is a lot simpler, and has a specific purpose. It is for colds, influenza, and minor throat or ear infections. It is an old, proven recipe known for centuries, but your doctor (MD, that is) will probably roll her eyes and say, “Stop reading junk like that!” Despite your doctor, it will work, usually within two days.
Equipment: Glass or ceramic 1 or 2 cup container, lid for same.
Ingredients: 1 or 2 cloves garlic, bottle of cheap red wine.
Peel the garlic cloves, slice or mash lightly to make more surface area. Put in the container, pour on the red wine to fill the container, cover and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour. Take by two tablespoon doses about once an hour or so. Finish within about four to six hours, or it will get nauseatingly strong. Make a fresh batch the next day if there is no change in symptoms. Usually there is. Have another batch anyway, but I don’t recommend a third day, or your family will start sitting across the room from you since you’ll reek of garlic.
Caution: This not meant to diagnose or prescribe. It is just a suggestion you might want to try. If your symptoms don’t improve or if they get worse, you really must seek medical help. Sometimes a “simple” cold or flu turns out to be something else. Ear infections, especially in children, can turn deadly if left too long. Yes, most infections resolve themselves without any intervention, but be alert.
White Vinegar
I use cider vinegar for canning and cooking, since I know what it’s made from. Apples. I’m not sure about white vinegar. One hears rumours that it is made from petroleum distillates. Augh! But I’m not one to pass stories until I’ve verified them, so I looked for information on white vinegar, and no one will say what it’s made from.
So I went to the Heinz Company, since they market a lot of vinegar, and use a lot of vinegar. They have a consumer enquiries form on their website, and they gave me an answer within 48 hours.
Their white vinegar is made from ethanol distilled from the sugars of beech trees. This, at least, is a vegetable product. I’m not sure why they use beech trees specifically – they must have a vinegar plant near a mill that uses beechwood. And I’m not entirely interested in the whole beech tree in the forest to plastic jug of acetic acid process, anyway. But beech is a better answer than petrochemicals.
10.17.08
Fasting
Fasting wouldn’t seem to have much to do with food, would it? But I thought I’d explain a little about the two kinds of fasting, since Advent is just a few weeks away, and then, of course, there’s Lent…
I really only have experience with Christian fasting, so rather than wander off into other religious fields, I will concentrate on that.
Fasting can mean either total abstinence from food, including sometimes liquids, or it can mean a limited diet for a period of time. Total fasting is rarely required for more than a day (sundown to sundown); a few very pious people in some traditions abstain from water in that time. This is too hard for most of us, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Taking on a fast that is too hard on the body or psyche is just vanity, so know your limits. It’s not even recommended that a “beginner” to fasting try anything that strenuous, just a little extra discipline in the food department, or a sunrise to sundown fast.
Restricted fasting means that one will not consume certain types of food over a period of time, such as meat, fish, eggs, dairy, or fats and sugars. Alcohol is usually restricted or removed. The food consumed is much less than usual, perhaps two small meals a day. Beans, grains, vegetables and raw fruit are the standard fasting fare.
Which isn’t too bad, after all. The seasonal fasts usually start, in most traditions, with a 24 hour total fast (except for water) and then the restricted diet. Some traditions have longer initial fasts. But for most Christians, the one day total fast occasionally is not too hard, even if a bit uncomfortable as the body reminds one that something is missing.
I like the fasting foods, since I have often been a vegetarian for extended periods of time, which is rather like a long-term fast, anyway. Then how do vegetarians fast? They may give up wine and alcohol, or sweets, or olive oil; they may restrict how much they eat. We once came up to a Lenten fast and I said to my husband, “How do we fast? We eat only twice a day, don’t drink or eat sugar, have no animal proteins, and can’t afford butter or olive oil!” So we added a prayer discipline instead.
Now, that’s the point. Fasting is no good if it is done with the wrong motive, such as pietism (not just piety, but scrupulousness) or pride. (I can fast more than you can!) Discipline is the idea, a closer relationship with God is the goal. Fasting puts us in the place Jesus went in the wilderness, and brings us closer to Him, because it must be accompanied by prayer. If fasting is impossible because of health or work issues, then prayer becomes the sole discipline, and in some ways, that is harder than going without food!
10.10.08
Aprons
Is this just a girl thing? I don’t think so. The male bakers and cooks I know wear aprons, those bottle shaped, tie in the back kind. Practical, but not for everything.
I am one of the world’s messiest cooks. I get flour everywhere. I don’t worry at all about tidiness as I cook, because that’s too stifling. I recommend that you cook away, then clean up, unless you need something you’ve already used or you need to clear off some counter space. Do clean up, though, because if you eat in the kitchen it is pretty oppressive to sit amongst the dirty pots and onion peels. If you have a separate dining room then you can just close the door and ignore the chaos until later.
I go through aprons pretty quickly. I need to wear one so I’m not constantly dealing with stains and spills on my limited wardrobe. Eventually my daily use aprons turn grim shades of coffee, grease and tomato and need to be decently buried somewhere before they evolve into another life form. Dark aprons only hide the shame.
I like the big “prairie” aprons that cover from shoulder to below the knee, and wrap around the back a bit, but they are spendy, so I need to whip up a few on the Pfaff. I am entirely taken with the maybe-too-retro overall apron I salvaged to use as a pattern. It’s a real Nana apron, if Nana is about ninety-five years old and watched a lot of early episodes of “Coronation Street.” It isn’t an actual pinny, though, that goes over your head. Nicholas has now declared it “cute” from an initial reaction of “Where did you get that?” Note to sisters: It looks like Alice. You would love it.
For washing dishes and laundry I need a heavy apron of duck or something repellent. I hear of lining aprons with vinyl, but the heat factor, especially doing laundry, would be too much for cold-blooded me. This serves as a good gardening apron, too, since I can hold up the bottom and use it as a basket.
For kitchen work, the all-over type in a lighter fabric is useful and not too hot, although tomato sauce will sometimes go right through. Wear work clothes for canning, because no apron can stop some of that concentrated staining power!
Half aprons, the sort that we now associate with hostess occasions, are not useful for all-out, full-scale cooking. They are meant for serving tea. The long pleated ones go over a Plain dress to hold down the points of the cape covering the front. So the cape and the apron serve as a full apron. This traditional modesty solution is also practical for protecting the dress you may need to wear a couple more days.
I have no use for motto or humorous aprons of the “Kiss the Cook” or “bikini figure” type. If you lend me one, I will wear it wrong side out. These are for dilettantes or men at the barbeque (maybe not the bikini figure apron, but there is a male equivalent, which does not bear description.)
10.07.08
Knives and cutting boards
Knives are one of the most important tools a cook can have, so they need to be good ones. (Yeah, a source of heat is also important.) My knives are all old, almost antique. They are carbon steel and look like they’ve been through the wars. But carbon steel holds an edge better than other steel.
I have a Sabatier chef’s knife that is older than me. It has a heavy wooden handle – an important asset in any kitchen knife, as long as the handle is properly riveted to the blade. Preferably, the hilt of the knife blade runs all the way to the bottom of the handle.
I have a long-bladed carving knife, same vintage, same sort of construction. It is perfect for turkeys.
I have a medium-sized utility knife. Same story. I use this for small jobs.
I have a serrated knife for bread and tomatoes. It is the only stainless steel knife I regularly use.
I have an old paring knife with a cast aluminum handle.
I have a hunting knife in a leather sheath for camping and any job where I want to remove the skin from a bird carcass or take a layer of fat off beef. Of course, I don’t do that much any more.
Keep the knives sharp. Learn to sharpen with a steel. A dull knife is dangerous, since it can glance off what you are cutting and gouge you.
Cutting boards: I use only wood. I think synthetics harbour germs. My current cutting board is bamboo. I scald my cutting boards from time to time with boiling water, drain them quickly, and dry with paper towels or a clean dish cloth. They last for decades this way. Glass boards dull your knives and bounce the blades, and I can’t stand the sound.
Just my opinion, and what I do.
