Praising God and Practicing Gratitude!

Thanksgiving is a great time to practice gratitude!  Doing that here, whilst Joining up with Deb Nance of Readerbuzz for her Sunday Salon.

We are celebrating many things!  Family, friends, good food, fruit from our trees, and this week a report of over 9,000 shoebox gifts  collected at our Operation Christmas Child Hilo Drop Off location! The boxes go to hurting and impoverished children in Third World countries and other places, wherever folks are going through various disasters, to orphanages, etc. This is the second and final container.

Turkey Paté Chinois or Pilgrims' Pie

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Sometimes known as Shepherds' Pie or Cottage Pie, aka Paté Chinois, a name I was completely unfamiliar with, albeit quite familiar with the dish itself in its many guises, a veritable staple in the use of left-overs.

Our Daring Cooks’ December 2012 Hostess is Andy of Today’s the Day and Today’s the Day I Cook! Andy is sharing with us a traditional French Canadian classic the Paté Chinois, also known as Shepherd’s pie for many of us, and if one dish says comfort food.. this one is it!

According to Andy, the name for this dish, Paté Chinois, "translates from French as Chinese Pie. It’s an odd name for a French Canadian dish that doesn’t have any connection to Chinese food. The history of the name has been traced back to the Chinese cooks who worked at the camps for the railway builders in the late 19th century. Ground beef and potatoes were cheap and a dish could be spread out to feed many people."

My inspiration for this round of Daring Cooks' was turkey and breadfruit.  Using what's on hand being the main idea behind a Cottage Pie.  I was stumped on what to call it though.  Post Thanksgiving Pie?  Paté Pilgrim?  Of course, it would be the Pilgrims to Hawaii.  A later period in time.  Oh well.

Turkey Tales

He's letting that skull dry on top of the bread oven.

Our intrepid grandson has been out hunting with a family friend over the holidays.  He comes home with carcasses of various sorts, sheep-goat (apparently there is such a creature), pig, erkel, turkey, quail, etc.(thankfully cleaned and gutted), puts said meat into plastic supermarket shopping bags, then throws it in the freezer.  I have only just noticed this practice, as it was not occurring at my house.  Offering to deal with a turkey was what brought me into contact with a freezer burnt, sad looking bird.  Probably should just have chucked the poor, wild thing.  But, fixed as I was on brining something, figured maybe this would be an appropriate test.   For more information, and the science of why it works, than you probably want or need on brining, check here.

First off, I let the bird thaw in its shopping bags, then got out Michael Ruhlman's Ratio book, for the brine formula, to which I added a few herbs and some cracked pepper, as he also suggests.  Here's the recipe if you want to give it a try:

Basic Brine
80 ounces water (10 cups) - I used 8 cups and the remainder in ice to cool it down
4 ounces kosher salt (about 1/2 cup Morton's)
And, my additions:
about 10 bruised peppercorns
2 sprigs rosemary
bunch of sage leaves
1 bruised clove garlic

Combine the ingredients in a pan over high heat, stirring until the salt is dissolved.  Remove from the heat, and let it cool to room temperature (at which point I added my ice), then refrigerate until cold.  When completely chilled, put  your rinsed bird in a 2 gal. freezer bag (set in a large bowl for support) and pour in the brine solution, removing as much air as possible.  Seal the bag, then refrigerate 8 to 12 hours, or until needed.

The brine not only results in meat that's juicier, it carries the flavors of your aromatics into the muscle, and since it is also a preservative, the meat will keep fresh longer.  All this per Mr. Ruhlman.  The only question I had was, will this at all help a slightly freezer burnt turkey?  If you are a vegetarian (and even if you're not) you may want to skip this next photo.

OK.  It was at this point (I'm a tad unobservant I guess) that it occurred to me, this is the scrawniest, turkey I've ever seen.  And, some major parts seemed to be missing??  I weighed the guy and he came to a total of 3 lbs., as you can see, mostly skin and bones.  I asked Isaiah, "Did Mike take the breasts home for dinner and leave the rest for you?"  He just laughed and said, "No, they got blown off."  He aimed a bit low, apparently.  Bless his heart.  So, turkey soup.  And, his mother can do it.  You don't need another recipe for turkey soup here.

Yes, Butter's Better

Real actual butter.  Accept no substitutes.

This is my smug butter post.  Feeling proud of myself for always being highly suspicious of margarine.  That stuff people, in the olden days, would  squeeze food coloring into themselves (before colored margarine was legal), and which is supposed to stand in for butter.

Recently I got an email (apparently this has been in circulation since June 2003), which I'm going to pass along, just because it confirms everything I believe about the subject anyway.  My favorite kind of information.  Self confirming, and self affirming.  Besides which, it is very timely, mentioning the word "turkeys", several times.  Actually, it was a lot more fun before I had to eliminate the turkeys and a few other unproven statements, thanks to truthorfiction.com  However, there's enough material left here to totally keep me away from the can't believe it stuff.  I will be basting my turkey with butter, thank you.

Pass The Butter .. Please.

Do you know the difference between margarine and butter?

Both have the same amount of calories.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams; compared to 5 grams for margarine.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53%, over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent  Harvard Medical Study.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and only  because they are added!

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.

Butter  has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .

And now, for Margarine..

Very High in Trans fatty acids. ( My note: All food labels must now disclose how much Trans fat a product contains and it has been eliminated from some margarine products).

Increases  total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)

Lowers quality of breast milk.

Decreases immune response.

Decreases  insulin response.

These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life, and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the  substance).

You can try this little experiment yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded area.  Within a couple of days you will notice a few things:

  *  no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)

  *  it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value; nothing will grow on it.  Even those teeny weeny  (a scientific term), microorganisms will not a find a home to grow.

I am recommending my grandchildren do the experiment for a science project.  Scopes has also reported on this internet forward.