Thanksgiving Leftovers, Days 1&2

Leftovers are going good so far.

My appetizer was turkey liver with onions.

 

The main course is turkey chili.  This took 3 pots, but still, I think it was pretty efficient.

pot 1 is the beans.  Borlotti from Rancho Gordo.  They look like pebbles at the bottom of a stream (or stainless steel pot).

pot 2 is for simmering the turkey carcass.  (you can see the 2 serrano chili peppers in there too.)

I recently learned about boiling the bones from watching Alton Brown.  This dissolves gelatin out of the bones and maybe other connective material.  Basically, there is good food for eating in the bones.  If you dissolve all this gelatin and connective stuff into your broth and let it cool, it gets thick.  The gelatin gels. This will give your stew unctiousness.  That is the word Alton Brown used, and I really like it.

Getting the turkey carcass simmering is actually the first step.  This gives maximum simmer time while you deal with the beans and the veggies and your tasty liver and onions appetizer.

pot 3 is the big one that it will all end up in.  This pot begins with mirepoix.  When the mirepoix was getting good and soft, I added two chopped green bell peppers.

 I added cumin (and curry powder because I ran out of cumin) shortly before adding the beans with their liquid.  This allows a little toasting of the spices.

I pulled the turkey carcass parts from the liquid and separated the meat from the bones.  I threw almost everything soft into the stew.  I ripped pieces a skin into smallish pieces before putting them into the stew.  There were a few large pieces of skin and unappetizing looking pieces of fat I did not throw in, but I threw in a lot of pieces I would call sausage appropriate.  But the chili really had no i-don't-like-these-pieces feel to it.  The chili was just a tasty, unctious stew.

here are a few shots of the final product.

 

 Here's a bowl of chili toped with the heart and gizzard.

A few more nibblets rounded out the post holiday menu.

 

 A little left over tofu puttanesca and a little leftover adafina.

 

speed-smoked turkey

We cooked this between 420 F and 450 F.  Our 15 pound bird took 3 hours and 30 minutes.  Here are the highlights.

goat rib chops

adafina?

Adafina is the famous sabbath day stew of the Iberian and north African Jews.  If I understand the evolution of the dish we call "Andalusian chickpeas" correctly, a pretty simple way to get to a decent adafina is to do this.  Start with Andalusian chickpeas.  Take out the chorizo.  Add goat and pimenton.  So that is what I did.

Here is my organic, grass-fed, free-range goat shank.

 Here are a couple of later stages.

 

Oh yeah.  I cooked this on a Tuesday night (and wednesday morning) and did tend to it after sunset, but this was really more in celebration of Thanksgiving!

My Dietary Goals for the 2012-Thanksgiving-Year

I am going to use a set of dietary goals to add some healthy structure to this blog.  These are goals for the 2012 Thanksgiving year, which the year starting on Thanksgiving day 2011.  But this year, I will start 1 day early—today, November 23, 2011.

I will use a "positive" or "inclusive" method of defining my goals.  This way, I need no explicit restrictions on saturated fat, trans fat, refined carbs, or transglobal watermelons.  If I can get everything on my list down, overall, it should be pretty good.

Dietary Goals

1000 lbs fruits or vegetables, 

            at least 100 different kinds, 

            at least 20% organic by weight,

            at least 99% from U.S.

100 lbs whole grain, 

            at least 20 different kinds, 

            at least 30 lbs wheat, rye, or oats,

            at least 50% organic, 

            100% from North America

100 lbs beans,

at least 40 different kinds

at least 50% organic

100% from North America

40 lbs tofu

            at least 50% organic

            100% from U.S.

40 lbs nuts or seeds

            100% from U.S.

100 lbs organic grass fed, pastured, or free-range meat / eggs

            100% from U.S.

50 lbs fish or non-mammalian seafood 

I have some more specific goals for fruits and vegetables:

Specific fruits/vegetables goals

            200 pounds dark green cruciferous, spinach, Swiss chard

                       40 pounds kale or collard greens

            100 pounds carrots

            100 pounds citrus

            50 pounds onions

            50 pounds potato/sweet potato/yam

            25 winter squash

            20 kinds of apple

            5 kinds of pear

            10 kinds of grape

I should also include a physical activity goal:

             walk 2000 miles

             (The idea that a food or a diet can be identified as healthy or not healthy independent of 

             a person's energy needs seems ridiculous.  Compared to whether I am physically active, 

            what foods I eat is small potatoes.)

I seem to have no dairy goals regarding dairy products.  Dairy does not seem that healthy.  Dairy is a good protein source, but I like meat more and either crowds out plants.  To be green, I should probably include diary proportional to the  beef, lamb, and goat that I eat.  I don't know how much that is.  A dairy goal could help me crowd out the conventional milk and cheese I buy and eat.  My Harris Teeter does not have organic milk in a one quart size, which is perfect size for my coffee consumption.  I will skip a dairy goal on the grounds that it would be a downer.

Lumping sweet potatoes and yams with white potatoes seems strange, but I think my carrot, winter squash, and cruciferous goals will pick up the slack if I don't eat a lot of sweet potatoes.

20% organic for fruits and vegetables probably seems low, but I have a lot to consume in this area, restricting my choices could be a big problem.   The selection of conventional fruits and vegetables is a lot larger than the organic selection in the grocery stores where I shop.  A big factor in discouraging me from a higher percent organic goal is that I have found these little bugs (in large numbers) in organic broccoli and organic cauliflower multiple times, and that made these vegetables much less appealing.  Still, 20% organic will give me 200 pounds organic.  That's ok.