People have this rather idealized vision of Florida. Every street is lined with palm trees, and the weather is always fabulous.
Except, of course, when it is not.
We do, on occasion, have freezes here. The fact that they are bookended by 75-degree days should not fool you: when it gets cold here, it gets cold in the same way it gets cold elsewhere. Frosty, even. And I have proof.
The little blades apparently forgot to bundle up.
The big smoker, on the other hand, had cuddled under its protective tarp.
I’d covered some of the plants, and moved others into the garage, but some – brassicas – didn’t need that and will actually come out healthier for a bit of a cold snap.
The garden area is where the sun hits first, so they thawed pretty quickly.
They were none the worse for their one night with 25-degree temps.
I will never, in my entire life, understand why people have to be such blazing assholes – for no reason whatsoever. Bitching to us about your billing, because you moved some site elsewhere “months ago”? Be nice if you actually contacted us to tell us this, since we don’t communicate via ESP around here. Complaining that there is an error on your page, and it couldn’t possible be your (homegrown) code, and then demanding that we fix a server where nothing has changed one iota, shown quite clearly by the information page for that server – except that very code you wrote, which shows timestamps the day before you contacted us? A pretty fair indicator that you broke something in your “couldn’t possibly be my code”, since it was working before and isn’t working now (and we won’t even go into your leeching of other peoples’ bandwidth by including their images in your site). Telling us you requested 1.5 months ago that a certain account be removed from your profile and telling us to correct this immediately? Not so, according to the ticket history – which, by the way, you can easily access to review at any time – wherein you said that you would be removing it, and you’ve made zero requests that we hold your hand through that process. Acting like a total jackhole and demanding a response to a request and telling us that you’re going to “switch hosts” if you don’t get an answer today? Number one, perhaps you should ensure that we actually received that request (we didn’t, according to the mail logs) and number two, perhaps you should ensure that the request is supposed to implemented today (it wasn’t, according to the actual tech person who cleaned up the mess you caused by your virtual stomping of feet). And of course, there’s always my favorite, someone bitching about not getting an email that was sent two nanoseconds ago, or even better, was not received when the sender merely had the passing thought of sending that email: if all you have to do with your time is constantly refresh your site or your mailbox, looking for that latest “l0l” comment on your magnificent and oh-so-interesting blog, or some stupid piece of forwarded chain mail crap, then you definitely need a hobby. In the real world. Moaning about the lack of an instantaneous response in the dead of night/morning here, our time, when there is one person on duty (me) and said person has had to go the NOC to fix yet another issue with your server, which is chronically overloaded? Not going to win you any points with a tired and cranky admin who continually tells you the very same thing over and over again, which you conveniently ignore in favor of whining about the fact that we fixed the problem you made before answering the inevitable jackass ticket that we knew would be awaiting us on the return. Whining about something that you “can’t do (again)”, making it sound as if there is some horrible, ongoing problem? It would help if there was a first report of that problem – or indeed, if there was a ticket from you anywhere in the past six months with a request for anything whatsoever, or a ticket from before that containing a request that your password be reset because you forgot it.
Fortunately for us, the vast majority of the people we deal with day in and day out are normal, polite people. Normal people who simply ask their questions, get their answers, and move on. Without the gnashing of teeth about how terribly tragic their suffering is and complaining that we “just don’t care”. Yeah, that would be why I’m on call 24/7/365 and why I work approximately a million hours a day (ok, more like 16-18 hours) around here. Because quite clearly, we “just don’t care” about anything. Tell that to the people who venture elsewhere and then wind up back on our doorstep because of the “caring” they’ve received at other places.
I don’t know why people don’t eat more turkey throughout the year. Not thin sliced turkey from the deli, but roasted or smoked turkey. It’s good at more times than just the holidays, people. I like turkey better than chicken, to be honest, and could probably eat it every day for lunch and not be bothered terribly much (although those who have lived with me could tell you that I can be rather boring with my meals sometimes, since in a lot of ways, to me, it’s just a stopping point on the route from point a to point b in any given day).
But when you’re expecting a great number of people to show up on your doorstep, hungry, it’s probably best to have a trial of the roasting method you’ll be using on the big day. What better way to experiment than to use the people nearest and dearest to you as guinea pigs? Surely they wouldn’t mind.
I picked up a turkey breast (with ribs and partial wing joints) for our test. At just under six pounds, it was perfect for our small test group. The turkey went into a brine for about four hours. Brine your bird, people! Trust me on this.
After its bath, the bird was rinsed well and patted dry. Since there was no cavity per se in this bird as the back was partially split, nothing got stuffed up its butt before it went into the oven. Some seasonings on the outside, and a rub of a spiced butter under the skin, and it was ready for its big show. Every so often I’d brush it with the remainder of the butter, which melted nicely sitting next to the stove.
In the meantime, my mom showed the boy how to make the stuffing.
Of course, there was extra. This was ours to go with our trial run. The others: in the freezer, awaiting their turn.
What’s a roast turkey meal without mashed potatoes? No roasted garlic in these. Buttermilk, butter, and a splash of half and half. Hey, nobody said it was lowfat.
After a couple of hours in the heat, the turkey was ready for its closeup.
Was it ever.
Turkey goodness.
The drippings? Gravy, naturally. So many people have a hard time with gravy. Too thin. Too lumpy. Drain off most of the fat, leaving a tablespoon or two. Or three, if you want a lot of gravy. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons throughout the pan, turn up the heat a little, and whisk together the fat and the flour. You’re looking for a soft paste consistency. If it clumps up all together, you have too much flour and not enough fat. Cook that for a couple of minutes, to get rid of the flour-y taste. Add your stock or broth. Homemade stock? Even better. Bring the heat to high and whisk away. One of the other mistakes people make is not bringing the heat up sufficiently under the gravy, so it never thickens. Your flour needs that heat, so let it rip. Just watch out for little volcanoes erupting and flinging lava-like gravy bits on your exposed skin. Ouch.
Then, put it all together. That cranberry compote you made? Don’t forget that.
As part of our continuing series on “How I spent the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving”, we present: fresh cranberry compote in three easy steps.
Step 1. Sort berries and combine with apple, orange zest, orange juice, sugar, and spices.
Step 2. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until everything is nice and warm and the cranberries have (mostly) burst open.
Step 3. Try to keep people from burning their lips and mouths on hot sugar and syrup when they are too impatient to let the compote cool a bit and insist on eating it right out of the steaming pot because geez, that smells good and when will it be ready, already?
There is something about baking that is tremendously satisfying. I’m not talking necessarily about the eating of whatever has been made – since that whole cancer thing, I can’t eat half of what I make for everyone else anyway – but rather taking disparate ingredients and turning them into something greater than the sum of their parts. When you cook, say, a chicken, in the end it’s still a chicken. Delicious though it may be, or prettied up for those people who complain that chicken tastes like chicken, it’s still fairly recognizable as it once was even though it is what it is now.
But baking, oh baking: a pile of flour, some ripe bananas, chopped nuts, and a few other things (including, I might add, that homemade vanilla extract that is ready after some months) turn into something else entirely. Like this.
I figured we would freeze some of the mini loaves, so made a double batch.
Six loaves later, there was still batter left. Muffins it was. Big ones, as there was slightly too much batter for the six-cup pan.
What does it look like, with a dab of organic butter? This.
Mom also got in the kitchen and made some peanut butter cookies. Another wonderful combination of ingredients. The only regret I have is that it’s yet another instance of something quite difficult for me to eat.
I managed one, though.
In the past, I’d have eaten a handful. Now I leave that to others.
For months now, we’ve been talking about heading south a bit to a real, live farm where they raise real, live grassfed beef, organically. There always seemed to be something interfering, but last week, after dithering on it, we finally said enough: we’re going, on Thursday, to Citra, which is about an hour south of here in the midst of horse and farm country. Which means that it’s really in the midst of a whole lot of nothing.
After driving through various small towns…
…we wound up at Rosa’s.
Off to the right is the start of the actual farm, which is also where they live, so no pictures of that. I can say that it was a perfect, crisp day, the fields were green, and there were cows moooving around on the fields.
There was also hay for sale, and we picked up a couple of bales to put around the plants that are sitting in the raised beds here (more about that later).
The office is guarded by a rather amusing cowboy and his chicken.
Inside a small office, the only case without a lock on it was the refrigeration case: cage free organic eggs, and organic butter, both of which we picked up in addition to everything else.
What everything else? Ah, you’ll have to wait. After packing everything into the coolers we’d brought, and having one of the guys load the hay, we set off back toward the homestead. We tried to stop in Cross Creek at a restaurant called the Yearling Restaurant – based as it is in the hometown of a rather famous author – to have some cracker food, but were a tad early, as they don’t open for business until dinner on Thursdays. It’s on the list for a return visit.
Instead, we stopped by a place called Cracker Boys, which apparently has not yet been sued by a rather large chain of restaurants.
The boy was hungry.
So were we, and we opted for the buffet while the kid had a burger.
It was passable. The only gripe I have about buffet-style food (and quite a lot of other restaurant food that isn’t a buffet) is that it’s so very bland.
We hit the road for home, catching up with and passing a train on the way. I love trains.
We also stopped by Norman’s on the way back to pick up some fresh veggies.
We needed those things to stock the fridge but also to go with the dinner we’d decided on, which was selected from the assortment we’d picked up at Rosas – this assortment, to be exact.
The winner: rib eyes, grilled outside. We also decided to stoke up the firepit.
Every sport has its own series of trials. Car racing, biking, running – all have time trials. Other sports have playoff trials to determine who is the ultimate champion of their specific endeavor.Even individuals have their own trials: mine, most recently, was of course getting through cancer and the aftermath, although my ongoing trials are dealing with users who can’t quite grasp rather simple concepts (yes, substitute your actual domain name for “yourdomain.com” in the link we just gave you).
A more pleasant series of trials, for everyone involved, is the kitchen experimentation. The banana bread mini loaves I made as a test? Gone, devoured by those who float in and out of the house. And no pictures, unfortunately, of the first batch. That will be rectified in the next, larger batch, as I have a bunch of bananas aging gracefully in preparation for their time to shine.
Apple-cheddar-potato soup, adapted a bit from a recipe my sister found in a magazine and thought looked interesting. Didn’t last long, but I managed to get a picture of one bowl, garnished with a bit more cheese and bacon (because everything is better with bacon!).
More crabcake testing. The mixture.
Still too crabby, according to the testers. Yet another round will be done to see if this can’t be fixed.
Do you kiss your dog on the mouth?
The mushroom turnovers turned out very well. These are based on a recipe my mom had, although me being me, I couldn’t follow it exactly as written. Where’s the fun in that?
A cream cheese and butter dough, rolled out and cut into circles, is filled with a mixture of minced mushroom and onion, sour cream, and a few spices.
The edge is sealed with an egg wash and a crimp, then a couple of steam holes are poked into each.
These, according to the notes my mom made, can be frozen before they are baked, and that is where those above are destined. As with any trial, though, there must be tasting. A few – the more ragged of the rolled out pieces of dough – were selected, brushed with egg wash, and put in the oven.
They browned nicely, tasted great, and the batch made just over 30. I can see already that more will be required for the feast.
