How to (roughly) joint a turkey...

Our preferred regional grocer, Hy-Vee, had a deal going on last week where you bought a smoked ham and you got a free 8-10 lb turkey.  Since we actually went grocery shopping that day, we went ahead and got in on it.  We got about $10 worth of free turkey.  We don't really have the space in our house to invite over more than 3 or 4 visitors or prepare a large gathering meal, I decided to thaw it and dismantle it.  With poultry, this is sometimes referred to as jointing.

Here's a prep shot.  I know from messing with whole chickens that once they've been frozen and injected with saline that they will continue to leak and leak fluids no matter how many paper towels you have to pat them dry, so I decided to use a pair of plastic platters as cutting boards.  I also have a bag for putting the random extra bits in for stock.  You should always save poultry skin and bones for stock because its so incredibly easy to make stock at home!

And here's the turkey exactly how it came from the store:

Here's the turkey just unwrapped.  Despite days of thawing, there was ice in the folds and the entire center of the bird.  This is a trouble I regularly have when trying to thaw any kind of meat in my refrigerator.  I also had trouble removing the wire holder from around the legs and vent (the turkey's rear) there.  The popup thermometer came out pretty easily for having a barbed end.

The giblet package was in the neck skin area and the neck was shoved up the vent.  Here's a shot after I took that out and used shears to remove the skin.

The next step was to cut down the middle of the breast bone and separate the two breast portions from each other.  This was a relatively difficult step in a turkey compared to a chicken, but I found that I was able to get pretty good leverage with the poultry shears.  Next, you fold open the turkey "like a book."

Pretty gross, I know.  I usually take a moment to clean up anything the processing people might have left behind up in here.  Next, flip over the turkey and press down on the backbone (snap!) to free it up from the surrounding meat.

Then flip it back over and cut down from neck to vent on both sides of the backbone to remove it.  I found that I had to use the shears for leverage again.  Seems my boning and carving knives could use a sharpening.  They didn't even want to cut through the skin.  Now you have 2 turkey halves.

 I decided to cut the halves into quarters: breast, thigh, leg, and wing.  You could just halve it or you could just leave the wing on the breast.  Turkey wings are less meaty and way more full of skin than chicken wings.  You could take most of the wing off and put it in the stock bag.   I put a few red lines on this pic to show roughly where the parts separate at.

Cutting the turkey into quarters goes pretty easily if you start by separating the thigh from the breast first. If you lift up the drumstick, you can easily see the separation between the two to cut through.  Next I separated the wing by lifting it up and finding the joint.  Separating the drumstick from the thigh can be tricky because you have a huge bone at the joint, which might be a good excuse to leave them attached.

I put them into 3 freezer bags: wings & legs, thighs, and breasts.  I put the first two bags into the freezer but will likely put the breasts into the crock pot today or tomorrow.  I want to cook them and then shred the meat to use in meals since one breast could probably feed both of us.

Normally, I would prefer not to thaw and refreeze something this much, but it was done using the safest thaw method and more processed turkey can actually be frozen and thawed multiple times before it gets to your house (and still costs you more because of labor!)  And also, I was right about that whole leaking fluids thing...

Final step: disinfect.  Seriously... use bleach.  Turkeys are filthy.

Current craftiness: infused alcohols!

Mary Margaret McBride

Other than asking my grandmother, I suspect nobody will recognize the name in the title of this post.  This name, however, was located on the spine of a cookbook that my mother decided I should have.

It is: Mary Margaret McBride - Encyclopedia of Cooking - Deluxe Illustrated Edition (Regular Hard Cover Binding).  The book was published in 1959 with over 1500 pages.  It was apparently released in several forms, including a multi-book, truly encyclopedic version.  I suspect the editor, Anne London, did most of the work on this because Mary Margaret McBride was a very well known radio show host.  Anne London also did a large cookbook of Jewish American recipes.

Though my copy is missing a cover and all of the copyright pages (it starts at the useless table of contents) as well as horribly stained, it contains an amazingly valuable amount of recipes and food knowledge.  It does, however, contain the suspected weird 1950s food items that could make your stomach turn.  For example, aspic, mousses made from meat, loafs and molds of various mixed food items, and more tongue recipes than you knew existed.
As I was pondering the possibility of actually trying some of these oddities, I considered the reasons why people made these things in the late 50s.  Radio was still big but TV was booming.  Air travel was just overtaking boats for oversea voyages.  The space race was fully on.  People had refrigeration, but not so much in terms of microwaves (they existed but were still being perfected).  The economy was more local.
Several sections of the book are dedicated to what to do with cake mix, biscuit mix, and hot roll mix.  Food was switching from classic methods of preparation and preservation (like aspic) to the new modern conveniences.

Speaking of hot roll mix, I had no idea that it existed before now.  I thought, perhaps, that it was a product that was no longer around.  Apparently it is still manufactured, primarily by Pillsbury.
  
Basically, it is a mix containing the all of the dry ingredients you need for a basic white yeast dough, with a separate instant yeast package included in the box.  According to their website, it can actually be bought at all of the Hy-Vee stores in the area despite my never ever noticing it before.

I have no idea if the copyright on this cookbook is still valid (copyright law is zany), so I won't be posting any recipes directly, but I will try to post my adventures as a 1959 housewife as soon as I can.  Tim wants to make a bunch of the ickier looking things :-P

Oh, also, there's totally a recipe for avocado ice cream in here.  Not a very new concept then, eh?

Challah! or more adventures in bread.

Tim alerted me to a deal at his store: 1.99 for 2.5 dozen eggs.  We got a pack which brought us up to something like 3 dozen eggs in the house.  So I had to make a sweet egg bread.  I decided on this recipe: Smitten kitchen's best challah.

It uses a total of 5 eggs.

This is a completely milk free recipe.  It uses oil rather than butter.

The recipe noted that this may be a bit much for a standard kitchen aid mixer so I kneaded it by hand.  It did make a sizable lump of dough.  I'd say over 5 lb.



I attempted a 6 stranded braid (the 6 means something in Judaism) but it was kind of more trouble than it was worth.  This recipe had 2 egg washes for extra lovely crust.



They came out pretty well but the bottom of the smaller one really wanted to burn and the larger one stuck a little and ripped.  Should have used parchment paper.



Even prettier than the zopf!  Definately a different flavor of bread.  Kind of almost sour creamish.  I plan on making some nice french toast out of part of it.

Zopf!

Today, I decided I wanted to make some kind of fancy bread.  I had been reading about pulla when I discovered zopf.  After going through a few traditional recipes that called for fresh yeast (hard to find in the USA), I came across this one: http://www.cuisine.com.au/recipe/zopf-swiss-sunday-bread  Apparently they don't have fresh yeast in Australia either.  This one is also a little different because it doesn't have egg in the dough itself, though that wasn't uncommon in the recipes I was finding.



I had to modify the method a bit because I was using my stand mixer.  I started with everything but the milk and then had to use my paddle-scraper to get everything incorporated.  After that I switched to the hook and got the milk mixed in.  I had to scrape the sides down once because the paddle had pushed everything up.  I let the dough double for 30 minutes.



The easiest part of this was the forming of the braid.  Instead of the Swedish technique, which tends to look like a big knot rather than a true braid, I opted to do a four stranded braid.  I also then let the braid rise for 30 minutes after forming it, which isn't in the original recipe.



As you can see, 30 minutes makes it rise a lot, but see how much more even that braid looks?  I then used an egg wash consisting of a whole egg with a splash of milk (the recipe just uses a yolk) and baked for 30 minutes at 425F.



Beautiful!  Now we just have to taste it.

FOCACCIA!

I made focaccia via modifying this recipe.  Here's my version:

2 pkgs (4.5 tsp) active dry yest
1 tsp sugar
1 3/4 c lukewarm water (105-115° F)
1/3 c olive oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
1-2 tsp cracked rosemary (I used 1 tsp but more wouldn't have been overpowering)
4-5 1/2 c flour
olive oil, coarse salt, and rosemary (optional) to top

Warm the bowl of your stand mixer.  Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1 cup of the warm water.  The yeast mixture should thicken and foam within 5 minutes.  Add the remaining water, olive oil, salt, rosemary, and 3 1/2 to 4 cups of the flour.  Attach the bowl to your mixer, fitted with a dough hook, and beat on speed 2 (or your recommended speed for bread) for 1 minute.  Add flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until the dough sticks to the hook and cleans out the side of the bowl.  Beat for an additional 2 minutes at the same speed.
Place the dough in a greased bowl and turn to grease the top of the dough.  Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled, 1 hour.
Punch down the dough and then knead on a lightly floured surface for about 5 minutes.  Roll the dough to fit a jelly roll pan (15.5 x 10.5 inches).  Cover the dough with a moist tea towel for 15 minutes.  Oil your fingers and make dents in the dough about 1 inch apart.  Re-cover and let rise 1 hour.
Heat oven to 400°F.  Drizzle the dough with olive oil (careful: too much will make it soggy and inhibit browning!).  Sprinkle with coarse salt and whole or cracked rosemary.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

Bread: Take 3

My second bread baking adventure was pretty disastrous.  I got this honey wheatberry bread kit that you were supposed to be able to make artisan no-knead style, but they only had you rise it for like 2 hours when everything else I've seen that is no-knead has to rise overnight.  It was too wet and I ended up with what looked like focaccia rather than the ball shaped loaf I was supposed to get.  Pretty tasty though...
This actually inspired me to find a basic focaccia recipe, which I did in my better homes and gardens prize winning recipes cookbook.  I had everything to do it with, except yeast.  And then I looked at some of my bread recipes in the kitchenaid mixer manual and all I needed to do those was yeast.  So I put a jar of yeast on the grocery list.  Then I convinced Tim that we didn't need to buy bread and I would just bake us bread from now on, which was pretty easy.
That night I prepared some dough using the quick mix, cool rise method.  It was actually a bit easier to get the dough to come together with the recipe because you get a range of flour and can add more or less based on texture.  After it is mixed and kneaded (by my kitchen aid dough hood), it rests for only 20 minutes at regular room temperature and actually puffs up quite a bit before you divide it and form loaves.  Then the loaves get refrigerated for 2-12 hours (I left mine in there from 10pm to 2pm the next day and they were fine) before baking.  I should mention that you use something to the equivalent of 3 packages of yeast.  This is really close to storebought bread in terms of texture because all the little bubbles are very tiny and uniform and its really dense, but it is on a completely different scale in terms of flavor.  You can taste the yeast, salt, and butter so much.  I actually think I might cut back on the salt next batch.  We still have a loaf waiting in the freezer but I think I will also try a rapid rise method on my next day off.  And focaccia is still waiting to be made.

The giant vinyl bag! (Part 2)

My giant vinyl bag is done... its not quite as good as I wanted it to turn out, but it definately is giant....


One piece of liner with makeshift pocket.

For the liner, I chose some sport nylon.  I have another small glitter vinyl purse that uses a similar material as its liner and it works really well.  I did a makeshift pocket on one side for things I need quick access to.  I didn't even measure it...


The liner, finished.

I sewed the liner to mimic the actual shape of the bag, rather than just a big old loose liner.  I have a pet peeve about coins and stuff getting lost in there.


The silver lining?  (it looks so much more metallic with flash on)

My plan, originally, was to put the liner inside the bag, sew around the very top once, and then use a piece of bias or twill tape to cover up the raw edges.  Unfortunately, the liner came out a bit too small, so as I sewed it in, there wasn't enough of it to go around.  I was able to ease it in by sewing the bias tape to the vinyl and then hand sew the liner to the other end of the bias tape.


Finished!  (yes, it is that big compared to the cat litter bucket)

I used the twill tape to sew on some clear plastic handles that also have glitter embedded in them.  I think I will probably add a removable shoulder strap at some point too, but otherwise, I've already got it loaded with all my junk and a sock project and still have tons of room!

The giant vinyl bag! (Part 1)

I decided that I would start carrying a knitting project to work with me all the time a long time ago.  Unfortunately, I picked a purse that would only carry about 1 project.  It would have been ok, but that project always ended up being a sock or something small.  I decided I needed to make a bag that was big enough that I could actually throw an entirely different project bag into... you know, to be able to switch them out... and it would also have to hold all my normal purse stuff too.  My current purse was already the size of a small tote bag, so I had to thing really really big.
A while back, I had ordered some glitter vinyl to make a purse, so I decided my meganormous tote bag would be made from that.


A sea of glitter vinyl.  (or maybe just a yard)

Luckily, the glitter vinyl I ordered from Joann.com is the upholstery type of vinyl.  It is bonded to a cloth backing and its pretty hardy stuff.  I had read it was best to use a leather needle because it leaves a smaller hole and it can stand up to punching through the vinyl, but as I was leaving Hancock Fabric, the cashier girl told me not to use them on vinyl because they could leave a hole.  This reminded me how important it would be to take some scrap bits and sew them all together.


Testing tension, got some loop-de-loops.

I used some extra strong upholstery nylon to sew the vinyl.  I think my machine liked it less than the vinyl.  It kept getting jammed in the hook and then I had to take apart the whole hook assembly and oil it.  That made it a bit better but I kept getting those loops and I had to crank the tension up to 7.  I had the stitch length set really wide too because it would leave fewer holes in the vinyl.


Bits o' vinyl.

I decided to use two side pieces and one long piece for the bottom and skinny sides together.  For me, the fewer the seams, the better.  I left a good 1/2 inch seam allowance on them all.  It should actually provide a bit of structure in the finished bag, i hope.


The first seams.

I cut the long piece extra long, so I could cut the sides to an even length at the end.  This mean I had to find the center of the pieces and line them all up.  Amazingly, this worked pretty well.


All the vinyl seams sewn.

On the last two seams, of course, I met with a few problems.  First, the machine decided to jam to the point where I had to remove the bobbin, the hook, and the presser foot before I could get the needle out of the fabric and loose.  Not sure what happened but it seemed to work a bit better after I replaced the hook this time.  Perhaps I had it off the first time and was just getting lucky up until then.  Finally on the last seam I ran out of bobbin thread.  Doh.


The outer shell of my dream bag.

So far, it looks great!  Now that I've rested a bit and posted this, it's time to think about the lining.

my newest knit

I have started a new project, even though I have yet to finish my brother's socks.  (its ok, i'll get back to them when i'm done starting this one)  It is a baby blanket.  I kind of have this rule where I have to knit a baby blanket for people really close to me (except my bff's 3rd baby because i was kind of planning a wedding).

Here's the ravelry link: The next baby blanket

I linked to the actual pattern and everything before but here that is again: New Traditions Baby Blanket

It creates a quilt block style pattern by starting with a knit square and then picking up stitches from the edges and knitting other geometric shapes around them.  It sort of reminds me of entrelac except maybe a bit less cool.  I still need to do an entrelac project someday.

I'm hoping to take pictures as I go to kind of demonstrate the construction process.  I will be putting them up on the ravelry link rather than here, so check it out.

No More Puff Sleeves!

About 3 years ago, almost all button up shirts had puff sleeves. It was trendy right then and there. I think it may have been when Mad Men started airing (which is silly because puff sleeves are more like a '40s thing).

At the time, I thought that I was getting a good deal on a few button up work shirts. However I've gotten very little use out of these because the interior sleeve circumference is about 12.5" (size XL, stretch cotton) which is about my arm circumference right above my elbow where the sleeves sit at first. Farther up my arm, where the sleeves eventually end up as I work, my arm ranges anywhere from 13"-15", especially when flexing. So after about an hour of working, I'll discover that suddenly I can't feel my left hand or its tingling. Then the weather gets cold and I forget that this happens until I can start wearing lighter shirts again. This year, I have determined to fix it.

Here is what the puff sleeve looks like before:



Notice how the sleeve is gathered at the top to begin with? I'm pretty sure that taking the gathered seam off the bottom isn't going to make them any puffier up there.

I tried to take off just the little band of fabric around the bottom with a seam ripper first but the thread they used is tiny and i found myself quickly ripping the crap out of it with the seam ripper. I cut off that band and then straightened it out on the floor and cut them straight. I followed that with a simple one fold edge and then used a liquid stitch reinforcer behind the seam allowance to prevent any fraying.

Clean house?

On Easter, I discovered that my grandma literally lives right next to *the* Thelma Meyer.  That's right.  The one who supposedly wrote this book:  Mrs. Meyer's Clean Home: No-Nonsense Advice that Will Inspire You to CLEAN like the DICKENS and has a huge line of supposedly Eco conscious products. Of course, my grandma only lives next to her when they aren't snow-birding to Arizona...  After a bit of googling, I discovered that one of her daughters is the main influence behind the company, but apparently she wanted to pimp out her mother.  Even though my grandma doesn't appear all too pleased about the 'tales from the neighborhood' she claims are at the end of the book, she bought my mom a copy and got Mrs. Meyer to sign it...  Mom didn't read it, but now I'm thinking I should steal it from her just to see what it says.  The whole thing makes me laugh really hard.

In other news, I'm considering this as the next baby blanket I make... for my brother and sister-in-law from the Other Mother.  (A nice one, not some creepy Coraline style Other Mother)

This old house...

Since we moved into this house, it has been clear that the bathroom has undergone a lot of bad renovation.  On the surface, it looked like a tiny 1950s 'everything pink' bathroom, but the wall cupboards looked more like something done in the 80s or 90s.  Truthfully, it only seemed big enough for half a person.
The changes started when I tried to replace the toilet seat.  It was wooden, really old, and had lost its sealant.  So basically it smelled like urine all the time in there.  The screws holding it to the toilet were some kind of brass or copper and had totally crusted up and once I got Tim in there to try to help me loosen them, the toilet ended up cracked.  Tim's education in plumbing went pretty quickly there for a while.
Once the plumbing skills were confident enough, he replaced the pink sink that had been leaking and had a really tiny spout with a small white pedestal.  It made a lot more room for, like, walking into the bathroom.  We talked about doing some more stuff but nothing changed for a time until we watched an episode of this old house where they were removing wallpaper.  The bathroom had this pink wallpaper/tile/too high chair rail thing going... and I came home to most of the wallpaper removed one day.  And underneath was like a dark tan.
One of the things that has bothered me about the bathroom from the beginning was the medicine cabinet.  It was huge, old, and the shelves were all wonky.  On one side, the mirror wouldn't latch right.  At one point I lost a very full bottle of essential oil because it rolled down into the sink.  I'm pretty sure thats why we have a tiny chip on one corner of the new sink.  Anyways, yesterday I decided that I'd try to level the shelves by rehanging them, but I quickly discovered they wouldn't come out because they were additionally attached by something coming through the back.
Now, the reason we'd never tried to replace this before was because, first, we hadn't felt like spending much money and, second, there was a strip of vanity lights going across the top.  Ever since I got Tim Wiring Simplified: Based on the 2008 National Electrical Code for Xmas last year, he had learned an awful lot about wiring (whether he actually learned it from the book, I don't know) and had even put in a bunch of stuff in the basement.  This was the moment which decided that the medicine cabinet would finally come down.  We discovered that the only things that attached it to the wall were 4 giant flathead screws, 1 drywall-ish screw, and a thick layer of caulk or something where it attached to the tiles around it.  The latter was bearing most of the weight and doing the best job of holding it up.  It was good we weren't too attached to the tiles because it ripped a bunch off with it.
As you could have guessed with an old bathroom, there was totally a hole in the wall behind this medicine cabinet for a recessed medicine cabinet, but there was a problem... the size of the hole was 20"w x 16" h.  Most modern recessed medicine cabinets completely flip that dimension.  They are taller rather than wider.  There was some talk of getting one and then moving the hinges but then the shelves are the wrong way and stuff, so we decided to build one.  Also, we installed a new cute little light where the electric came through.  We also replaced the overhead light in the bathroom with basically the same fixture (but newer) because it was always losing its connection with the lightbulbs, but it turns out that even the new ones do that so we basically just made it look slightly better.
I just thought I'd blog this so that I can post some pictures later of the finished product (hopefully soon).

Baking bread...

I have never, by myself, baked bread without a bread machine. I really like the taste of something like a wheatberry or multigrain bread but only if it is really fresh and that seems to call for some self baking. But first I wanted to make sure that I could just bake some bread in general. So I picked up a mix that pretty much had everything I need. I'm sure it would be better from scratch with real butter and such, but we're going with process first.

So I decided to use my kitchen aid to do all the mixing because I have sore hands and I GOT TO USE THE DOUGH HOOK! Ahem... according the the stand mixer handbook, the method that this mix used was something called the quick mix method. Basically the yeast goes into most of the dry ingredients first, followed by the wet, and then the rest of the dry. Its supposed to be more foolproof.

The only difficult part in this whole thing was getting the water to be between 120 and 130 F. Our hottest tap water is much hotter than that, but somehow I managed to get it to about 131 and then let it cool down a bit.

And here is the loaf. Rolling it out was about as easy at the kitchen aid manual made it look.

And 40 minutes of rising later, here is the risen loaf! Right there in the lower left hand corner is the spot where I poked it to be sure of the fact that it had indeed doubled. Apparently if it doesn't un-dent it is ready.

And finally, all baked up. It is pretty typical white bread but it is BREAD! I can do it.