This is the first diary of several, in which you get to hear about me and cooking on food stamps.
True, I could have volunteered to do a couple of the cheaper side dishes for the local hobby group's Thanksgiving meal. But I jumped on doing the turkey.
For one thing, not to sound arrogant, I can cook it so that it's not dried out and nasty. I have eaten a lot of dry turkey that was pretty to look at but failed miserably in the taste department. And I like my food to taste good, damn it.
Secondly, it meant I got to keep the carcass and the leftovers.
A turkey carcass is a precious thing to me. That's several quarts of broth, which will turn into quite a few meals. Let's follow that evolution.
First, Roasting The Bird.
Now, I don't worry about what my bird looks like. It is far easier to take a nice pan full of meat to the party than it is to take a bird and carve it where people are watching me perform. Therefore, I do a very wet technique that is closer to a braise than a roast, and which is my normal treatment of a whole chicken. Bed on coarsely chopped onion, garlic, carrots, and celery, lemon in the cavity, place breast-down, pour a split of wine (for a chicken) or a full bottle of wine (for a turkey) over the thing, put a tight lid on it, and roast til the legs are loose. I stuck the giblets in the crock pot with the same veggies and a splash of the wine.
I was out of food stamps by the time I had to do this, but I'd got the turkey in advance, and only had to roll pennies for the lemon. The carrots and celery were not perhaps at their first freshness, but they were okay for the purpose at hand. I had the wine. One of the hobbies I had when we lost all our income was winemaking, so I still have a bit of a stock to use at times like these, and have the equipment, too.
Well, the turkey must be done, the legs fell off. Remove to a plate, and strain the pan juices off. They are aromatic and wonderful at this point. Off they go into a bowl in the freezer to set up so I can defat them. Same thing with the giblets in the slow cooker.
I carved the turkey while the broth set up. The cooking method loosened things enough I could literally slide my hand under the breast and take it off whole to carve into pretty slices. The bones went into a bag. Just before we left for the party, I took my defatted turkey broth and my reserved turkey fat and made a roux based gravy.
First, of course, there is The Thanksgiving Dinner. The six people there ate all the breast meat and a negligible part of the dark meat. But I took the rest of the turkey and the gravy home with me.
I have plans for that turkey carcass! First, we shall make stock from it, introducing it in my stockpot to cold water, leftover celery tops and carrot trimmings, an onion, two cloves of garlic, and slow heat for quite a few hours. Strain, discard vegetables, and cool stock. (When I cut up celery and carrots I save the parts I don't use in stirfry in the freezer; they are still good for stock.)
Then I get to cook with it. The stock is brought to a simmer in a large pot, and my husband makes dumplings. The little flakes of white meat from wings and dark meat from the smaller muscles are just the right size to go with them when done, and they're already in gravy; I just heat up the gravy and meat combo and add part of it to the dumplings. This makes us about six or eight portions, which is three to four meals or so. Bear can eat chicken (or turkey)and dumplings for several meals in a row quite happily, too, so that isn't a problem.
Of course, there's still turkey in gravy and turkey broth. I measure out the remaining broth and add pearl barley in suitable quantity. Also, I have a half an onion that I chop, add some garlic powder, and some dried parsley and tarragon. A can of mushrooms would be a good idea, I think. Towards the end of cooking I add some peas, and there's about two inches of smoked sausage left over from the other night, already grilled. I chop that up and throw that in too, what the hell. This is a rather freeform sort of dish, which includes whatever scraps of meat I have in the fridge and various vegetables, and usually mushrooms, cause I like them. When it's pretty much done, I stir in an appropriate amount of the turkey gravy and turkey shreds. I suppose if I added more water it would be soup, but I spill soup badly. I prefer a stew thickened to pottage point. It's easier to eat. This is my "food to eat constantly", and I probably have another six to eight portions in here.
Of course, we still have turkey gravy and turkey, but not so much to really do anything with. Bear has woken hungry and wants something solid to eat. There are leftover mashed potatoes in the fridge. I heat the gravy and turkey, and make a turkey manhattan for him. Slice of bread, the turkey scooped from the gravy with a slotted spoon, more bread, a little gravy on that, and a dollop of mashed potatoes atop it, with the remaining gravy poured over. It is comfort food, and helps him feel better, even though the ibuprofen isn't doing much against the effects of his arthritis at the moment. And it used up the scraps, which is always nice.
So when people wonder why I'm so happy about getting the leftovers, I look at an afternoon spent playing in the kitchen and seventeen portions of delicious food that I managed to get out of scraps, combined with a few vegetables, two eggs, a little flour, and a couple cups of barley.
This, however, wouldn't be possible to me without some real advantages. For one, I have a real kitchen, albeit in a tiny house (700 square feet). For another, I was brought up to cook, and cook well. And for another, my spice cupboard was pretty well stocked when we got our food stamps. I own a lot of expensive kitchen gadgets still, which is fortunate; I have fibromyalgia, and some things just wouldn't be doable without me mechanizing the process. I also genuinely enjoy cooking.
On the down side, he and I both have food restrictions. If he eats the wrong thing, he'll cramp and shit blood and be sick for two days. If I eat the wrong thing, I'll spend about five days where my gut alternately binds up and runs too fast, with lots of cramping. We both assiduously avoid eating the wrong things, as defined by the fiat of our bodies. I also try to avoid temper tantrums and weeping fits due to low blood sugar, or migraines induced by eating the wrong thing.
One must eat; why not make it a good thing?