Tag: Thanksgiving

Grateful: Giving Thanks in November

November is the perfect time to give thanks.

I started a separate Gratitude Blog a couple of years ago but I don’t post very often. I figured this month it would be a good to once a day, pause, and feel a moment of gratitude for something wonderful in my life that day or week.

I might not be able to blog every day, but I’m going to set an alarm on my phone for a gratitude moment.

To start off today, I am so very grateful to live in a community with many awesome public libraries that offer free access to as many books that I can handle! I found a new (for me) library in Methuen today, as I was closeby picking up apples at a local farm. The library is beautiful and I found a bunch of wonderful cookbooks to borrow.

Life is good!

Thanksgiving 2011

Yesterday was a day of family, food and fun. I ate lots of yummy sugary goodness too! Probably way too much sugary goodness, but it’s okay. Today, I’m back on track, and life is good!

So this year, we didn’t have a local turkey (like last year), but it still was good. I refused to go the ultra cheap route with a .60/lb turkey, but a antibiotic-free bird from the local grocery. I don’t eat much poultry meat anymore, but I know others in my family really enjoy it, so it was a good compromise.

Thankfully I took notes on my Thanksgiving dinner last year and it helped a lot, especially with the crock pot stuffing; I’ve been saving bits and pieces of my homemade whole grain bread in the freezer for stuffing. There was way too much. Note for next year: make less!!!!

I also made homemade gravy, loosely based on a recipe I found on Whole Foods. It was the first time making a gravy from scratch, and it turned out pretty okay; I loved the addition of wine to the gravy and I was happy that there was some turkey drippings to give it the extra oomph!

So, there was also mashed potatoes & sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, and green beans; plus for dessert: pecan pie, pizzelle cookies, magic cookie bars, a variety of cheesecake slices, whipped cream, and cream puffs. A feast of sugar!

All in all a great day!

Cheap Food (Turkey) Is NOT the Answer!

The holiday season is upon us, and everyone is scrambling to find the best deal on cheap turkeys, stuffing, potatoes and gravy for their holiday meal(s). Grocery stores are promoting their sales, and home cooks are rejoicing!

But in what kind of world does it make sense that a turkey can be raised and sold for only .40 to .50 per pound??? That is scary when you really, truly think about it.

(Note: Yes, some stores offer low prices as “loss-leaders” to try to gain additional sales from a customer, so one way or another, there is a higher cost to all cheap food.)

Americans are brainwashed to expect cheap products, but we need to reprogram our minds to reject food raised in “factory-farmed” conditions.

Cheap meat (including poultry, eggs and dairy) is a direct result of factory farming, which abuses animals and is destroying our environment.

And it’s not just animal products, cheap produce is causing poor soil quality, which then demands toxic fertilizers and pesticides; this affects the health of farm workers, as well as the health of those consuming the produce.

It’s unfortunate, but we’ve become a nation that is dictated by the thrill of a “bargain.” I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive to save money when grocery shopping, but we shouldn’t expect unreasonably rock-bottom prices either. There’s a reason that it’s so cheap, and we’re paying the price with our health and our environment.

There can be a middle ground. Consuming less animal products and more plant-based products will allow you to buy better quality food.

Do we not love ourselves enough to give our bodies the best we can when it comes to food? We can change the world when we vote with our forks!

I suppose it’s easy for me to get on a soapbox and spew advice; I don’t have a large family to feed (there’s just two of us) so I consider myself lucky that I am able to make a choice to purchase better quality food.

My little family is not “well-off” – we’re middle-class, actually lower-middle-class. I worry about what will happen when we “retire” in a few years; how will we survive with the money we’ve saved?

Medical costs are exploding sky high; I see that as a direct correlation to the cost of cheap food, so I intend to try to keep our bodies healthy! I’m hoping that spending more on good quality food will pay off in our older years with a fuller active life without obesity, cancer, diabetes, and chronic pain.

Helpful Links:

http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/145869/
google search “high cost of cheap meat and produce“

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving was a big success this year. Good food, good people, and a good time. There was a total of eight of us for dinner, it was a perfect number.

I did most of the cooking, and I wasn’t as flustered or crazy as I usually feel during the holidays. I tried to remain calm and relaxed and it was actually fun to prepare and cook the meal.

I was super organized, and that helped a lot. I made a list of all the meal items, and specified an approximate time that I needed to start to prepare. Turkey was scheduled for 9am, turkey breast was set for 10am, slow cooker stuffing was started at 8am. Keeping a detailed schedule reduced a lot of the stress for sure!

And of course, I had the help of a wonderful husband, and as usual, he’s my patient rockstar!!!

Turkey

We purchased a local free range 8 pound turkey from a nearby small farm. I was excited to try a truly natural bird. I knew it might not be the choice for all my guests, so I also purchased a 4 pound boneless turkey breast for those that enjoyed more white meat.

The taste of the free range turkey was definitely not conventional. I could taste the difference, and unfortunately, it was definitely a tougher, chewier texture. There was more connective tissue. More research on roasting methods are probably needed. I think it would have been better if braised, but how can anyone easily braise a big ole turkey! I might try lowering the oven temp and slow cook for a longer time.

The experience has not turned me off. I am definitely going to keep purchasing local humanely raised poultry, but I don’t know if I’ll purchase from the same farm again. It was disappointing to not receive a packet of giblets with my bird, and it seemed to be “processed” in haste.

One of its legs was broken, so the end of the leg was sagging, and there was a bit of gauze-like substance still attached to the broken leg. Plus, a few feathers remained, which really wasn’t a big deal. They were easy to pull off.

ETA: I just realized that my turkey was also missing the wing tips. Something didn’t seem right. All the Food Network chefs suggested folding the wings back under the back, but we couldn’t figure out how to do that with our bird. I think it was because the wing tips were gone. hmm, I wonder why they didn’t include the giblets and wing tips. Keeping them for their own turkey broth/stock? Strange and disappointing.

I don’t know if all locally raised fresh birds are like this; I realize that it’s going to be more rustic, and it could be that I’m just not used to the primitiveness… and it certainly hasn’t turned me off from trying other local farms! I just don’t know that this particular farm would be my choice in the future.

Continue reading “Thanksgiving 2010”

Picked Up My Free Range Farm Fresh Thankgiving Turkey

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to the farm and picked up my wonderful fresh (frozen) truly free range turkey. It was an amazing experience.

When I drove it, there was another small group visiting the farm, so I got to tag along to see the new baby calf/cow in the barn. He was friendly and so cute – 6 months old.

We asked Mrs Farmer (I’m not sharing the real name of the farm since I don’t know if they want extra publicity since they are so small) all sorts of questions and it was fascinating! Her grass fed cows are raised for 18 months. Now that I have a new chest freezer, I can purchase more beef from her. The next batch should be ready in mid December.

So, I took my 9lb turkey home, and put it in the freezer for now. I think the plan is taking it out to defrost tomorrow (Sunday) morning. The online consensus is that it takes about 24 hours for each 5 pounds of turkey. So, theoretically 2 days should be enough time. It’s also safe to leave a defrosted turkey in the fridge for 2 days, and I’ll start the brining process on Wednesday afternoon sometime.

I have a large anodized aluminum pot and I’ll place the turkey in an oven roasting bag with the brining liquid. This is my first time brining, so I plan on taking notes and photographs. Oh gosh, I hope I cook this bird correctly!

Cancelled the Jaindl Farms Thanksgiving Turkey

It’s funny how some blog posts evolve. This started out as a post about ordering a “free range” Jaindl Farms turkey, and progressed into an investigation and a personal lesson learned on how turkeys are raised.

So, I placed my online order for the Thanksgiving turkey at Whole Foods Market, but so many thoughts kept nagging me. Where was my so-called “free range” bird coming from?

On the Whole Foods web site, it states:

From Jaindl Farms in Orefield, Pennsylvania. Our free-range turkey has 54% more white meat and 55% less fat. This has been the turkey of choice at the White House for more than 40 years!

It all sounds fabulous, until you really think about it. How are they raising turkeys with all that white meat? And we all know the “free range” claim isn’t always what it seems, so I decided to google “Jaindl Farms” and found their web site.

Jaindl Farms in Orefield, Pennsylvania

On their home page, message from David Jaindl states that they sell 750,000 turkeys annually. Three quarters of a million turkeys? Holy giblets batman! With numbers like that, how on earth could they humanely raise that many birds? My guess is they don’t, so I did some further reading.

Quote from David Jaindl:

Corn and soybeans, the main ingredients in our freshly mixed turkey feed are grown on our 10,000 acres of farm land. Jaindl Farms is a fully integrated turkey farm, breeding, hatching, growing, processing and marketing our premium turkeys.

So they grow their own corn and soybeans (and since they don’t state the opposite, I assume it’s GMO) for the turkey feed (1,800 tons of feed weekly). Using farm land to grow only two types of crops for the sole purpose to feed animals. hmmm. That doesn’t sound like sustainable, responsible farming, does it?

It’s just so big business – from the photos of the owners in their fancy suits (they don’t look like farmers, do they?) to the fact that they supplement their income with land development and rental management. I started to feel guilty for supporting a farm like this.

And then I found the Philadelphia Weekly article written about them back in 2008.

Their turkeys are bred to be “broad breasted and short legged.” Turkeys grown like this cannot walk very well, and they certainly cannot breed in a normal way.

The article stated that Jaindl Farm’s 23,000 turkey hens are artificially inseminated once a week for four months. By my calculation, each of the 23,000 hens needs to lay at least 32 eggs to produce the 750,000 turkeys needed for sale. And it’s just as bad for the poor male tom turkeys. Poor guys have to endure being milked for their sperm.

It’s all so cruel.

Continue reading “Cancelled the Jaindl Farms Thanksgiving Turkey”