We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Most would agree that a Pepsi (Or RC or Dr Pepper) and a Moon Pie is the ultimate redneck breakfast, but another classic is Grits with Coca-Cola Hot Dog Red-Eye Gravy. Red-eye gravy needs Coke and Coffee.
To go upscale, use Country Ham on the side and skip the hot dogs. Here's another classic: Hot Dog Gravy & Biscuits. Everybody loves biscuits and gravy, but spare me the hot dogs.
Good winter food, traditionally made with an assortment of wild game if you have some around, with pork and pork sausage, pig fat and duck fat. We now know that fat is good for you, contrary to what you were told for 20 years,
You can work around the wild game issue at the supermarket.
I've made it three times, using mixes of such ingredients as wild boar, snow goose breast, wild boar sausage, duck leg confit, pheasant leg confit, etc. Never red meat, though.
This casserole is white bean-based so it is hearty and a little bland. Comfort food.
Here's the most challenging recipe I can find. If you use confit, though, no need to strip the meat off the legs - just serve the legs. You can google cassoulet recipes to find simpler ones.
It's best served in a shallow bowl with what recipes always term a "full-bodied" red. In France and in my house it's traditionally accompanied by baguette and a cheese board of very stinky cheeses. They just go well together.
We have tried dozens of meatloaf recipes over the years, some complex and some not. We have settled on our favorite, which is also the simplest.
This ought to make 2 loaves:
3/4 lb. ground chuck 3/4 lb. ground veal 1 egg 2 tbsp. ketchup 1 large finely chopped onion 2 tbsp. brown sugar 1 or 2 tsp. ground mustard 1 cup unseasoned breadcrumbs 1 cup of milk Enough salt and pepper
Mix thoroughly with your hands. Put in meat loaf thing - do not pack or compress it - at 350 for an hour or so, when it has a good crust. Serve with mashed taters, and salad if you must. It's a damn good supper, but even better in a sandwich with mayo afterwards.
Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.
Our Vermont friends have been busy getting ready for sugarin', so it's time for some info. We tend to think of Vermont maple syrup, but Canada is the major producer. We consume it abundantly in New England and do not approve of the cheap substitute goop in the supermarkets. We buy the real stuff by the gallon when we can, especially the Grades below Light Amber. You can buy the rather intense Grade B here, but I think I prefer the third level of Grade A - Dark Amber. This place sells all of the grades.
Grading - Many of of us like the intensity of the lower grades , but you won't find them in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though. About Maple sugar grades
$ - We pay retail in the $20s/gallon, but the farmers get between $2-$3/gallon, usually. More in a "bad" year.
When it looks like it has gone bad, it hasn't. Give it a light boil, skim it, and it's fine. Better yet, use it before any mold grows on the surface.
Besides on waffles, French Toast, and pancakes, what can you do with it?
- Put it on oatmeal like the Pilgrims did. - Pour some into winter squash halves with a pat of butter and bake, like my Indian ancestors probably did. - Drizzle some over fresh-fallen snow. Instant Maple popsicles with the power to pull out all of your fillings and crowns and to enrich your dentist. - Drizzle some over Pumpkin Pie. Wow. Tom taught us that. - Drizzle it over salmon, with some butter, before baking
We made an Italian supper for great pals Sunday night. It's fun to cook Italian; it takes four hands so it's handy to have a spouse.
- Antipasto: Zucchini boats stuffed with shallots, onions, chopped zucchini, with Bechamel sauce and parmesan on top - Primo: Straw and Hay (white and spinach fettucini with chopped mushrooms and mortadella with cream-parmesan sauce) - Secondo: Pork tenderloin braised in wine vinegar with a ton of peppercorns and a bunch of lauro leaves, and sauteed spinach with oil and garlic as a contorno - Dolce: Strawberries with balsamic vinegar
We seem to order Thai takeout almost weekly. Thai takeout is what Cantonese and Szechuan takeout used to be around here.
In my limited experience with Thais (limited to restaurants in the US only), they are efficient, entrepreneurial, and pleasant polite people with excellent smiles, beautiful gals, and good English. I welcome all immigrants from Thailand, but I am not sure why they come here.
I am ordering a Thai delivery tonight (Penang Curry, Clear Broth Noodle Soup, Thai Salad, extra white rice, extra hot sauce on the side). Cultural appropriation - bring it on!
A close family member has been spending Christmas week in Thailand. My father-in-law, who has visited Thailand, warned them about ordering the amazing food over there: "They give you a choice of Not Spicy, Spicy, Very Spicy, and "Local." He said "Never ask for the "local."" He said the "Not spicy" is hot enough for the average lame American person but if you want to prove your toughness, just order Spicy and take it from there.
An email from a beach in Phuket:
Some of the food pics below the fold - the last one looks mysterious but I'm sure it was tasty -
My Christmas feast crown roast of pork. Apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, taters, turnips) and mashed rutabaga and applesauce on the side. And gravy.
When you wrap the thing in bacon, and stuff the center well, the thick chops come out very juicy and succulent. Good stuff.
We minimize presents, maximize festivity and games, piano sing-alongs, and being together as a jolly family.
Christmas Eve is a fasting day (meaning, curiously, lots of delicious seafoods). Why God would want that is strange to me, but whatever. For Christmas, we're doing crown roast pork with apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables and Brussel Sprouts, and a Buche for dessert with hot chocolate drizzle.
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc.
Here's the correct, home-made version from Alton Brown. However, I tend to be lazy and to do the wrong thing - to buy the pre-made, and fuss it up with the fixins. Lots of fresh-grated nutmeg.
My Dad always made it the correct way at Christmastime, but I think he made it way too strong, Brit-style like punch. It had a punch.
I have been assigned - again - the task of running the bar for the fancy Christmas cocktail party of one of Mrs. BD's lady clubs next weekend. It's a formal, traditional sort of group, dressy but not black tie. The husbands are very fine and jolly guys most of whom I have known for years and are happy to pitch in with tending the bar for 1/2 hour when asked, so the manpower part is easy. The bar generally needs only 2 guys at a time.
There will be tons of excellent "heavy hors d'oevres", aka supper, with desserts - but that's not my department.
My past experience with this group, which will be around 100-120 people for 2-3 hrs, is that most ladies are light drinkers (a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of beers), most guys will do a bit more, and there is a subset can get cranky without vodka or Scotch. I want everybody to be happy but I like to keep it simple.
Thus my provisional shopping list:
Bag of limes and lemons A few bags of ice Case of Coke Case of Diet Coke 1 case of Perrier 2 cases of Harpoon beer 2 cases of some other beer 1 bottle of Johnny Walker 1 bottle of Grey Goose 1 bottle of Rum 1/2 case of Prosecco 1 1/2 cases of red (which one to be determined) 1 1/2 cases of Sauvignon Blanc
Does that sound right to you? Too much? A case of wine is about 50 glasses of wine. You hate to be stingy and run out of something basic but you don't really want leftovers either. As a rough guide, I use this party site.
How did they celebrate their first year and their first harvest in the fall of 1621, when they sat down with their Cape Cod Wampanoag friends?
"Deer and wildfowl." What else? We don't know. I don't think they had the grain to brew their beloved beer until the next year. What we do know is that these folks had been through a nasty voyage in a rotten, leaky boat, landed at the wrong place - remember, they were headed to the Dutch New Amsterdam area - which was better idea. They managed to scrape out a living, thanks to the Indian's education (these folks weren't farmers, anyway) as they watched their family members die.
Only 53 of the original 104 immigrants survived until fall, 1621. Then they gave thanks to God. Thanks for what? Thanks, I think, to God for being there with them through thick and thin.
It's always been a wonder to me that they didn't all catch the next flight from Logan back to Leyden. Trust in God is strong stuff, and many of us are not strong enough to handle the powerful grip of God. Thanksgiving is about putting our faith in the Lord, or trying to - and nothing else. God Bless us, and America, please, and make us Pilgrims in our own time, in our own ways.
Those plastic injectors are worthless crap. The herbs and spices jam up the injector holes, and the whole thing falls apart after a few birds.
We then made do with a large-apertured medical syringe which one of our medical friends had (which I hope was clean), but this is really the cooking tool that is needed: the stainless steel Bayou Classic with one needle for herb mixtures and another for marinade (photo below).
Many folks like to inject a turkey with sherry or cider.
I bought a couple of those for my cooking buddies. (Update: I did, and got one for myself too. Would be scary to see a nurse approaching you with one of these.)
This year, I am going to inject those big SOBs with a warmed mix of sherry, butter, honey, and herbs under the skin and deep into the meat. That can not be bad. The Indians did it that way, didn't they? Of course they did - when they weren't busy scalping, raping, and torturing their neighboring tribes.
Delicious stuff, especially with chicken and other fowl. Right now is the only time of year to buy cranberries in volume.
I freeze them in the bags because I am fond of them, but chutney is one tasty way to put them up. There are many recipes online. Here's one: Putting Up-Cranberry Chutney
I have liked kippers since I was a kid. Kippers and scrambled eggs for breakfast. I also love pickled herring with that cream sauce. I raised my kids on that. Canned salmon is disgusting. Canned salted anchovies? Well, there are good ones and terrible ones. The worst ones are used by pizza joints. Always wonder why they call canned Tuna "Tuna fish"? Is there some other kind of tuna that is not a fish?
The election, that is. I spent most of the night of the election laughing. I wasn't sure what the proper response was. I didn't vote for either candidate, so it mattered little to me. Both have massive flaws, and I'm not sure one is worse than the other. We'll agree to disagree, OK? Now let's go have a beer and talk about other things. I am enjoying the gnashing of teeth among the Progressive illiterati.
Problem is...McSorley's is closed! You'd think, after all this time, of all the beer halls in NYC, McSorley's would get a pass, right? Nope. Could this be the end of McSorley's? Probably not, we're told. I certainly hope not.
We did one turkey in the oven, stuffed with cornbread stuffing, and the other one on the grill with occasional doses of soaked apple wood chunks from my neighbor's tree, and with white wine in the steam water. Both birds were brined 24 hrs before cooking, and each around 18 lbs. but I feel that's a waste of time.
We had plenty of family and friends to eat it all up.
I think people preferred the grilled (no stuffing in the grilled bird). It was my first time trying grilled turkey. Beginner's luck: It came out perfectly: moist, with a pleasant hint of smokiness. It took around 3 1/2 hrs to cook. Keeping the temp at near 325 involved carefully titrating the number of briquettes and fruitwood chunks to keep the heat low, but to not let the fire go out. Basted it with veg. oil and honey. Just for fun, I use my heavy-duty poultry injector to squirt sherry or cider into the meat. Why not? I don't buy butterball turkeys.
Nice grill, eh? This cast-iron thing weights 500 lbs. I had to assemble the darn thing off a truck, and got most of it right. Except for the wheels, which fell off. Now it takes a few pall-bearers to move it.
This is halfway:
And done:
The puppy seemed equally happy with scraps from the grilled and from the oven-roasted turkey.
Annual re-post for Thanksgiving: The potato is a native American food, as American as turkey. Good for your soul. I suspect my Indian ancestors made their holiday mash with Moose or Elk milk and cream. This is my Mom's delicious Thanksgiving and Christmas recipe:
4 lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes, or whatever you like 8 ounces sour cream 1 stick butter 2 ounces chopped fresh chives (one bunch) 1/2 cup heavy cream Salt and pepper
1. Boil potatoes (peeled or unpeeled - I prefer peeled) in water till they're tender (when you can stick a fork in and it comes right out). 2. Drain and let the steam evaporate off, then cut them up. 3. Mix in the ingredients and cut or mash to preferred consistency. (I prefer them casually mashed and lumpy - but I do understand that the Irish expect them to be creamy, and that a single lump is the shameful sign of an incompetent wife.) 4. Season with salt and pepper. 5. Put in serving pan/plate and lightly brown in oven.
Serve, if you must, with a side of steak, roast beef, turkey, pork chops, lamb chops, or roast chicken, and daintily drizzle a reduced jus of the meat on top of your potato piece de resistance.
The Spanish version of Cappuccino, or of Cafe au Lait. A good shot of espresso with same shot of scalded milk. Good with or without sugar. Like the others, it's a morning drink but I will have it anytime to perk up. That, or a Coke.
I found we have a milk-scalder in the pantry. Never used it. One of my many cafe con leches in Spain 2 weeks ago, this one in Cordoba:
This is what I'll get for the Thanksgiving wine this year.
We had a fine dinner on Saturday with friends at a Portuguese place.
I believe I discovered the tastiest affordable red wine at that restaurant: Ramon Bilbao Riserva. Yes, a Spanish Rioja - and in a Portuguese restaurant. I can't use those fancy wine words (except rich and earthy for this one), so just try it if you are one of those millions always looking for delicious wine that tastes like a $60 bottle but costs $16.
My nice wine shop says they will get some for me, and that they have had enough requests for it that they may decide to carry it.
A few of my pals and I were splitting firewood this morning (giant 3' wide logs from the trunk of an old Ash tree - with tons of knots), and rambled onto the topic of deep-fat turkey frying. We decided to do a First Annual Bird Fry tomorrow after church. Nobody really wants to crank up a fryer just one one item, plus only one of us owns the gizmo.
We're going to do smaller turkeys, and also ducks and chickens, and will drink a bit of beer in the process. It's a nice neighborhood I live in.
I am brining my birds now with a cider and OJ recipe for infusing.
Good winter food, traditionally made with an assortment of wild game if you have some around, with pork and pork sausage, pig fat and duck fat. We now know that fat is good for you, contrary to what you were told for 20 years,
Maple sap begins to flow when there are sufficient daily temperature swings between below and above freezing. That tends to be towards late February-early March in New England, depending on latitude and the weather. Curiously, Sugar Maple sap does not just flow up from the roots - it flows both downwards from the branches and up the trunk, depending on the time of day and the whim of the tree.
Grading - Many of of us like the intensity of the lower grades , but you won't find them in supermarkets. They are easy to find in Maple sugar country, though. 
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc. 
Re-posted - 
We used some of those plastic Cajun Classic meat injectors (image on right) to inject our birds (ducks, turkeys, pheasants, etc):
We always have this on our Thanksgiving menu, but there's no reason to limit it to Thanksgiving. Comfort food.
A few of my pals and I were splitting firewood this morning (giant 3' wide logs from the trunk of an old Ash tree - with tons of knots), and rambled onto the topic of deep-fat turkey frying. We decided to do a First Annual Bird Fry tomorrow after church. Nobody really wants to crank up a fryer just one one item, plus only one of us owns the gizmo.