0 First Longer Day

THE REASON FOR THE SEASON
Image: Dreams Time

Followers of this blog will know that we often choose our foods to mark special days, including those marking the changes of seasons. And between the latkes of Hanukkah (this year they were even better than the "best ever latkes" of 2012, greatly assisted by our home-made mead) and the lobster of Christmas Eve, we turned once again to Jamie Wood's The Wicca Cookbook.

During the shortest day of the year, we were still enjoying food from the day before, so we actually waited until the day after the longest night to celebrate solstice. This seems more fitting, actually, as it is the first in a string of 182 days of increasing light.

When I made cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving this year, a friend had actually given me two bags of the precious berries, directly from her work at Ocean Spray, so the Chakra Cranberry Sauce recipe (pp. 180-181) was an obvious choice. I heated one cup of water in an indispensible cast-iron saucepan, and added one cup of organic granulated sugar. When it was boiling and the sugar dissolved, I removed the berries from the freezer and poured them in. I added one orange (pureed with our immersion blender), a diced apple and a diced pear. To this I added a cup of raisins (the recipe calls for any dried fruit) and a cup of chopped pecans. I omitted the 1/2 teaspoon of salt the recipe calls for, but did include plenty of ground cinnamon and freshly-shaved nutmeg. I simmered covered for the  recommended 30 minutes, but kept it going afterward, as it was a bit too liquidish. The trade-off here is that it did not have time to cool very much. I recommend making this at least a few hours ahead if you want it to set up right, but it was delicious warm, served with a slotted spoon.

Our main course was stuffed turkey burgers (p. 188), which were similar to one of our staple dinners. In this case, to a pound (or so) of lean ground turkey, I added breadcrumbs, a tablespoon (or so) of dried thyme and the juice of half a lemon. I then made two very thin patties for each serving, forming a kind of pocket that I filled with a small amount of cheese. The recipe calls for bleu cheese, but nobody in our house eats that, so I used two cheeses we always have on hand -- aged Vermont cheddar for Paloma and me, and feta crumbles for Pam. I pressed the edges of each double patty together and put them on a plate in the fridge for a couple hours before cooking them up on our griddle.

I had been unable to find fresh thyme -- the recipe calls for 1/2 cup -- and our front-yard crop is way out of season; This was so delicious that I look forward to trying this again in the late spring, perhaps on Beltane.

The "perfect pairing" for this was to have been Glüwein (mulled wine - p. 194), but I completely forgot. As it was, we were quite satisfied to pair this meal with water, and will make the wine on some frostier day. We will compare Wood's recipe with the TasteFood version.

As always, Thank the Farmers!

Image: Ocean Spray Cooperative

Detail: First Longer Day

0 One Pound of Ground Turkey - Four Meals

On Monday night this week James and I made spaghetti with our favorite no-recipe sauce which we developed over years of trial and error. We begin by mincing and sautéing a clove of garlic and a small onion in a sauce pan, then add 1/2 pound of ground turkey until it is browned. Next a can of tomato sauce, a can of tomato paste, and healthy doses of dried basil, oregano, and parsley (we never measure these) and a bay leaf. This heats while we cook the spaghetti, and we end up with a thick, flavorful sauce. Of course we top our spaghetti and sauce with fresh shredded parmesan cheese. We had purchased a pound of ground turkey, and since we only used half of it on Monday, on Tuesday we made thick, juicy turkey burgers. Combining favorite bits of different turkey burger recipes we like we mixed the ground turkey in with a shredded granny smith apple, and a bit of horseradish sauce. Once the burgers were formed we cooked them on our indispensible cast-iron griddle, and added cheddar cheese slices and bar-b-que sauce. We made homemade french fries to go along side. We had some leftover sauce, so on Wednesday we added a can of drained and rinsed kidney beans to it, and some chili powder, and had sloppy joes. And, even after this meal, there was still about half a cup of the sauce and kidney bean mix, so for lunch on Thursday we heated it up, and put it on top of some corn chips, added some shredded cheddar, and voila! Nachos!

Detail: One Pound of Ground Turkey - Four Meals

0 All Pesto All the Time

Earlier this week I made spaghetti with my favorite ground-turkey/tomato sauce. Since I did not use all of the ground turkey that I thawed in the sauce, I had just enough left to make two turkey burgers last night. I usually like to put some kind of fruit (apples and/or cranberries) in my turkey burgers, but we were out of both, so I went looking online for some other ideas. I wound up adapting a recipe I found at allrecipes.com to use some of the pesto sauce I cleverly froze this summer (made with the basil from my garden, and garlic from my CSA). I had just under 1/2 pound of turkey to which I added a small handful of breadcrumbs, about 1/4 cup of crumbled feta cheese, a small minced garlic clove, and about a tablespoon of pesto sauce. I formed two patties and cooked on the stovetop until they were no longer pink inside. I also cooked a small serving of spaghetti and mixed it with the most of the rest of the pesto sauce, leaving just enough sauce to drizzle on of top each of the burgers. The burgers were eaten on buns, with a side serving of pasta with pesto. This was a delicious and satisfying meal, made complete with a bottle of our homemade chardonnay.

Detail: All Pesto All the Time