Maggie's Farm

Just Put the F*cking Turkey in the Oven and go take a walk. She's right. Turkey does taste like cardboard unless you charcoal-and-wood grill one, in which case it tastes like semi-smoked cardboard. I'll only eat the dark meat of the thighs and legs, where there is flavor and juiciness.

Two of my kids are going down to see Dylan in Brooklyn tonight with pals. I'd go myself, but I am working. My kids find Bob kind of fascinating. I love it when my kids are around and they decide to go off and do things together. Feels good to know that they will be there for eachother in the future when I fade from the picture.

It also makes me feel good to know that Bob is back in New York tonight, his old stomping grounds. He'll never quit. Like a true Yankee or an old bluesman, he'll work until he drops. It pleases me to let the youth use my tickets.

At last count, we have 32 people, friends and family, coming for Thanksgiving. Ages 4 to 86.

It's a partay! I usually do 2 large turkeys, but was wondering if I needed 3. How Much Turkey Per Person? Use This Rule of Thumb

I like leftovers more than I like the first go-round, and I just like a little bit of turkey to go with my main deal of mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry relish, and gravy.

 Which reminds me, I need to get out and buy up my annual supply of fresh cranberries. 10 bags, at least. Perhaps corner the New England market for cranberries, and make out like George Soros. I freeze them whole and use them year round.

Gee whiz, it's getting breezy and blustery in Yankeeland today. Expecting to lose power to our servers any minute. If I lived near the shore, I'd throw out an anchor. But on to more interesting topics than the weather -

My pic in an oil shop in Spello, last summer. They have little paper cups for tasting. People design their own blends:

My lad quipped yesterday, as I was dressing the salad I had brought for Dad's birthday, "America needs to free itself from dependence on imported olive oil."

I was using a super-special oil I had smuggled home from Umbria along some of my precious but tiny supply of 25 year-old Balsamic that friends gave us as a dinner gift.

One of my brothers-in-law brought up a book he had just read: Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil. He recommends it.

A few points about olive oil:

- As with wine in the past, California olive oil is now competing with Europe's finest.

- The fresher it is, the tastier and more fragrant. We use a lot of it here.

- To really taste it, dip a piece of bread in it - or just sip it to taste it as housewives and chefs do in Italy in the oil shops.

- For salads and for dressing cooked vegetables (eg asparagus, spinach, cauliflower, carrots, raw tomatoes, etc, with or without garlic), use the best you can get. For cooking, I don't think it matters too much but gourmets would dispute that.

- Costco's house brand oil (Kirkland) is much better than any supermarket brand for an everyday oil. It comes from their Tuscan orchards. Naturally, Dean & DeLuca has good oils. Cold-pressed extra virgin.

- High-end Italian oils are often blends of olive varieties from neighboring orchards. Reminds me that I have a friend who owns an olive orchard in Greece on a hill overlooking the Aegean, and each year he ships home 100 small casks of his own orchard's first pressing to give friends as Christmas presents. Nice.

- Do not dress a salad until immediately before it is to be offered. Also, never serve a salad with a meal. Only before. There are many good reasons for that.

- Do you prefer red wine vinegar to Balsamic? The store stuff is terrible. Make your own. When you drink a bottle of decent red wine, leave an inch or two in the bottle if you have the moral fortitude to do so, stick the cork back on top lightly or leave it off, and put it in the pantry. In a couple of weeks, it's good wine vinegar. The better the vino, the better the flavor. It's possible to go overboard with this.

- As I posted a while ago, Balsamic Vinegar is not really vinegar. Here's my post on that topic.

Here's how we make and dress a simple Italian-style, home-style salad: Buttercrunch or Boston Lettuce, thinly sliced bell peppers - all 4 colors, red onion quartered then sliced thin, 1" tomato chunks. Then I drizzle a little balsamic over it - not too much - and toss gently. Then I drizzle the oil over it, season with salt and pepper, and toss gently again. Always the vinegar before the oil.

For fancy dinners, plain frizze or mache with balsamic and oil.

Mrs. BD was thoughtful enough to bring us home a (too small) bag of just-picked Honeycrisps from Glen Hill Orchard outside Mount Vernon, Ohio.

The name describes them perfectly. Possibly the tastiest apple variety I have ever had. We tried a few before taking the apple portrait.

I like home-grown tomatoes because they taste good. My gardens have always been "organic" only because I have never had a problem with insect pests - I grow enough so that the bugs and animals can have some - and because I enrich the garden soil with manure and peat moss (which are delivered to my garden center by polluting 16-wheelers). Nothing whatsoever to do with nutrition or good old Gaia, though.

America has been subject to food faddism forever. "Organic" produce is just the latest marketing scam for the wealthy and the body-obsessed. Here's a good update on the topic: Organic Illusions

Those are old twin stables, the Scott's and the Beinecke's, in the East Village.  Hard to imagine how many stables there were in NYC in 1870. Many converted to modern purposes. The paired red buildings.

I've been inside functioning NYC stables. Usually 3 stories: 1st floor for office, carriages and saddles, horse ramp to second floor with stalls, 3rd floor as a hayloft. Hole in floor of second storey to dumpster below. Perfect firetraps.

Caught a grim play about the Armenian genocide at the Atlantic Theater Co, then grabbed a very early supper at Gemma (335 Bowery St) - acceptable Italian food, great atmosphere, busy bar scene, full of happy, attractive young folks.

In fact, the East Village, the Lower East Side and Alphabet City have undergone an astonishing change in the past 10 years. It's been gentrified by throngs of youth, and they all look good. No dirty hippies or addicts there anymore, or, it seems, many people over 40.

More pics below the fold -

The guy travelled around France and Italy for years, eating and drinking everything new and tasty he could find. The Founding Foodie - A president and a slave changed the way we eat:

When Jefferson returned to America about five years after he had left, he brought back “eighty-six crates with kitchen utensils and equipment, including a pasta-making machine from Italy.” He also brought various wines and cheeses, olive oil and mustard, “seedlings of fruit trees” including apricots, pears and figs, and 680 bottles of wine.

He knew how to travel. The article does not mention whether he tried the pizza (he seemed to stay mostly in Tuscany and the Piedmont where there is no pizza), but he did introduce Washington DC to Macaroni and Cheese. That was a good move, but he also brought home Italian (arborio) rice. Can't make Risotto without it.

Pic is Fettuccine Alfredo, aka Mac 'n Cheese. A touch of black truffle shavings, preserve,  or black truffle oil makes it even better. I've even seen it in fancy joints with caviar on top. Like all pastas, it's meant to be a small Primi, of course, not a Secondi.

I have seen American kids grow big and strong, smart and athletic on Cheerios, Peanut Butter and Jelly on Wonder Bread (or Fluffernutter), and Mac 'n Cheese for supper.

This is my idea of a pizza. Thin crust so it's almost like a cracker, cooked in a wood-fired oven. Shape doesn't matter, and if it's not a little scorched it doesn't taste right. Toppings? Whatever you can find in the fridge or the pantry. No tomato sauce, please. Never! I think this one is Buffalo mozzarella, asparagus, sliced yellow tomato, and pancetta. Nice.

People with outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens have pizza parties where you assemble your own small ones from a vast assortment of ingredients, then throw it in the oven for 3-5 minutes. I have a pal who does this. That's how they made fast food in ancient Rome.

Someday, I will build an outdoor combination oven and grill out of fieldstone. Indoor cooking is for the birds, and ovens were never meant to be indoors. My Memphis cast iron grill/smoker is excellent - burns wood just as well as charcoal - but it would not work for pizza, bread or calzones where you need a deep oven with a banked wood fire in the back.

Here's how to use a wood-fired oven:

And here's Baking bread in the Wood Oven. Watch that, and you'll understand the luxury of electric or gas ovens - 3 to 6 hours to heat up a wood oven.

I learned about Poutine from NRO.

Best food in the world? I would need convincing. The freshness of the curd seems to be key.

Maybe it's cold weather comfort food for after playing three hours of hockey outdoors when it's 8 degrees F. Add a few Molson's and then it's bedtime.

The classic regional sandwiches of the US.

My favorites: BLT, Club Sandwich (with extra Mayo on the side), Po' Boy (fried oysters). Best of all? The Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich.

They omitted the classic Northeastern Italian-inspired sandwich: Fried eggplant on a hard roll. And what about the ordinary tuna sandwich? I like capers on mine.

I like 'em all though - except for Fluffernutter (h/t Marginal Rev)

These elegant stone barns were the dairy operation on the Rockefeller family's Kykuit Manor estate in Pocantico Hills, NY -a charming semi-rural hamlet nestled between the remarkably named villages of Sleepy Hollow and Pleasantville, one which has probably the highest-performing public schools in NY if not in the entire USA. Also, a famous Matisse and Chagall church.

The family recently deeded 1200 acres of their pasture and woodlands to New York State as parkland, now Rockefeller State Park Preserve. It has 20 miles of scenic riding and hiking trails, many overlooking the Hudson River. The parking lot was filled with horse trailers.

This land is only 25 miles north of Manhattan, 8 miles north of White Plains in Westchester County. That's what is remarkable about it.

The stone barns area of the preserve is now operated as a demonstration organic farm (definitely not vegan - they grow their own free-range pigs, beef, chickens, lamb, turkeys and geese), and is the site of the Blue Hill Restaurant. They only cook local, and pretty much all of their food comes from their farm, year-round, like old-timey farmers. They do not make their own Coke or Scotch whiskey, however. We stopped by for a stroll and a late lunch last weekend. Blue Hill has no menu, reservations required, but their cafe is casual.

OK, I think eating local is silly and that "organic" is a foolish fad. Harmless efforts, though. I did happen to notice that the natural gas which runs their a/c is imported from out-of-state because NY still has no fracking. Same for the greenhouse heating system for winter. Local food, imported energy. Guess that passes as "green" these days.

More pretty pics below the fold -

A re-post.

Surely some readers have cucumbers in their gardens by now. Probably, tons of them. 

First one: two slices of good bread, one slice of Costco ham, plenty of mayo, a fat slice of a tomato from the garden, and generous slices/chunks of Costco goat cheese, salt and pepper. Mmmm.

Or: bread, fat slice of tomato, skinny slices of warm cucumber from the garden, salt and pepper and mayo. Wow.

Or, minimalist - the man's version of a lady's cucumber sandwich: bread, two or three fat slices consisting of an entire cucumber from the garden (sliced lengthwise, not in rounds, with or without the seed part), salt and pepper, mayo. Olive oil and vinegar dressing always substitutable for the mayo, but I prefer the Hellman's.

Never build a sandwich without salt and pepper - learned that long ago from a chef friend. Except PB&J - or Fluffernutter, of course.

Theo's inflated girlfriend, pictured, loves a good old Yankee Fluffernutter. She told me so. (Loyal Yankee tho I am, I cannot eat those things.) Anyway, I think this gal is pulling in her tummy for the photo.

Among the many fine things in Montana is Cream of the West cereal.

Now you can get it by mail, close your eyes, and pretend you are in God's country.

(Woops. Sorry - once again, we violated our rule to never say anything good about Montana. I will correct it by saying Montana Sucks. Do not go there, and do not move there. Chardonnay-sippers beware: you would hate it. It is full of redskin injuns, rattlesnakes, crazy horses, aggressive pangolins, evil horney toads, and Grizzly Bears, and excessively-armed paranoid meth-intoxicated right-wing rednecks who are always spoiling for a fight.)

Cereal is no good either. Pure carbs, no nutrition. Nobody under 50 eats cereal anymore except cowboys.

Pic on top is with friends hiking up on Ear Mountain, near the Bob Marshall Wilderness. A big hike. Leave the horses with the wrangler at the base. Have water in your backpack. Mountain Goats are up there. They eat the rocks.

You don't need to open a restaurant. You can be a seafood farm entrepreneur.

Natural marshes no longer support the markets for Littleneck Clams and Atlantic Oysters - especially the delicious Wellfleets. These tasty mollusks have to be farmed, but it's not very hard work.

You buy the seed from a clam or oyster nursery, protect them from gulls and whelks, and harvest them at low tide in your pick-up truck as the orders come in. You plant them, nature grows them on plankton. Sometimes you have to rake mud off the oyster bins.

The small producer I chatted with out on the flats at low tide has around 1,000,000 clams growing right now, at various stages of development. These are 30 cents each, wholesale.

He has around 500,000 Wellfleet Oysters growing, at around 70 cents each, wholesale. That's a nice little inventory, but a bad hurricane or winter storm can obliterate your investment so it is best to save your profits for hard times. That is intelligent, no matter what you do for a living. I don't think you can buy insurance for clam beds or most other sorts of income.

In his spare time, he was a three-term First Selectman of Wellfleet "until he finished what he wanted to get done," as a local friend said. It's always wonderful to me to see how unskilled Americans without any higher ed can find good ways to make a living.

Cranky, laconic old Cape Codder. I said I was curious about how he did this, and he replied "I don't know. Been doing this for 50 years. I still don't know what I am doing" as he lit up a fresh Marlboro.

Those orange mats on the right are what they protect the baby clams with. Clams live in the mud. Each year, new seed clams to burrow in the mud under a new mat. Usually harvestable in 3 years. 

The oysters grow in the wire bins. Those beehive cannisters collect oyster larvae, to reduce his costs of buying seed oysters.

Shellfish guys out on the flats with their trucks at low tide in Wellfleet Harbor. The most difficult barrier to entry in this line of work is obtaining rights to areas of mudflat. Waterfront landowners own the flats out to 200 yards.

One reason we need to dine at Pearl on each visit to Cape Cod is because of Mrs. BD's addiction to their grilled Bluefin Tuna with wasabi bean crust. The Tuna are local.

I like Pearl for its raw bar (which every restaurant up there has), its marsh views, and to watch the bar scene. Plenty of other joints up there that we also enjoy. Who wants to spend time in the kitchen when away from home - unless you have a pile of little brats from whom the public should be protected?

When grilling or sauteeing (on high heat) Bluefin Tuna, I have a terrible tendency to overcook it. I think it's because it keeps cooking after you take it off the heat. Tuna should look as in the photo, like rare steak. Maybe a minute or so per side on high heat or red coals.

Here's the recipe. Sharp knife, thin slices. A little soy or teriyaki sauce on the side, lime on top.

(I think Wasabi Peas and Wasabi Beans (soybeans) are one of the best snack foods.)

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog. 

Naturally, attempted to eat my fill of Wellfleet Oysters, but I never will. Life is too short to complete that pleasure.

A number of Obama bumper stickers out there on the Cape (but MANY fewer than 4 years ago). Most of the Priuses there this year had no political stickers. Mrs. BD kept track of that. We used to think that Obama stickers were part of the Prius brand and paint job. The enthusiasm is gone. We tried to keep track of the Scott Brown bumper stickers. "Take America Back". They were easy to find, but I still think he has only a fighting chance. People ignore the details. Warren is a hard Lefty, and that's usually good enough for wealthy Massachusetts.

Will provide more fun pics later. This is at Pearl's (the old Capt'n Higgin's, upscaled with a hopping bar scene) on the dock. My apologies if you drool on your keyboard. Sweetest oysters in the world, thanks to the Herring River. Mrs. BD is addicted to the seared raw Bluefin with the chopped wasabi-bean crust. Dynamite food. I love that, but my soul needs the raw shellfish every summer. All I can find, plus some steamers too. And some mussels.

(Some readers wonder how your editor Bird Dog posts when on sabbatical from Maggie's. I pre-post and pre-date some items when away. I cheat. Got to keep the rhythm section - the basso continuo - rolling along. That's my well-paid job here. Happy that everybody pitches in and keeps the posts coming when they can. We're a hippy  hippie commune.)

Is the Mojito really the national cocktail of Cuba? This drink seems to be enjoying a craze recently. Sounds like a Mint Julep but with rum.

I have never tried one, but I steer clear of hard booze most of the time. I like anything with mint in it, though.

Here's how to make it.