Furry Wombat

I am in Cali for Thanksgiving.  For the last three years, H and I have prepared Thanksgiving dinner for his family.  His two sisters live in the same neighborhood of new houses that stretch across the hills east of the East Bay, with large but inadequately equipped kitchens.  Well, inadequate for the likes of us.  We’ll pack the car with half-prepared food, mixers, food processors, and all manner of utensils and head down on Wed.  Last year we taught his two nieces (9 and 12) proper(!)  knife skills chopping cranberries and pecans.  We have word that they are ready to make the cranberry-nut bread again this year.

H is on a sous vide kick this year.  Sous vide is sealing food in a vacuum sealed bag and immersing it in water at the temperature you would like to to reach.  If you want your turkey breast to be 145 degF when it’s done, you don’t cook it in an oven at 325, you cook it in a water bath at 145.  That’s the idea anyway.  So, H has purchased a controller, a immersable thermocouple, some switches, and has disassembled the slow cooker to create… Sousie the SousVider.  Oh my!  We’ll sous vide the breasts, but (after a disappointing attempt at turkey leg confit) we’ll salt rub and roast the legs and thighs.

We went to the Farmer’s Market (and several other markets) on Sunday morning to stock up.  Instead of the university-town, rather expensive farmer’s market in Davis that caters to the locavore crowd on Sat, we went into Sac, where the vendors (some the same) are a bit scrappier (isn’t this $0.75/lb, not a $1/lb?), prices are cheaper, but the produce diverse and plentiful.  We got lots of persimmons, the end of the local grapes, the end of the fresh corn (?! didn’t expect this, but were excited to make a corn pudding or corn souffle), a bunch of kiwi, beets, sweet potatoes, three bunches of rainbow chard, a bag of onions, a spinach-mustard greens cross, apples, and pomegranates.  Whee!  I even got some flowers, including several dark red Gerber daisies, which are my favorite.

H has parted up two turkeys, and I started on turkey stock and the base for gravy this morning.  The house smells of thyme and peppercorns.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 9:46 am and is filed under food, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.