The great turkey adventure, part two.

My folks were properly aghast when presented with the monster bird. After we ooh’ed and aah’ed over it for a bit, the refrigerator was reconfigured and the turkey was introduced to its new temporary home. We adjourned to the living room with beers in hand, where I outlined my doubts about the practicality of brining it. My dad, sensing a challenge, overruled my objections, and a couple of hours later, the turkey was resting comfortably wrapped in a giant plastic bag filled with water, salt, and sugars, and nestled into a Coleman cooler surrounded by ice. I bade farewell to the bird and my family, and headed back to civilization to worry some more.


Brine. I think we used 12 gallons or so.


Who knew giant prehistoric turkeys could swim?

On Wednesday, when I was off work, the preparations commenced. Rob and I went to Home Depot, turkey measurements on hand, in the hopes of finding a charcoal grill that could accommodate Tomzilla. Failing that, another plan was hatched. We would employ two Weber kettle grills, and Rob, bless his soul, would handle the pre-cooking decapitation. All seemed well. We spent the evening prepping foodstuffs, and replies to invites rolled in all day- around 20 people were expected at this point, so I was confident that the bird would be well enjoyed.

Thanksgiving morning, pouring rain, everyone’s late… And then, suddenly…. It all came together. The bird was halved, the grills were situated under umbrellas, the smoke started rising… And it was beautiful. Everything fell together, people came, they drank wine, they snacked, they laughed, and finally, they Ate.


Rob takes apart Tomzilla


And people say I have big, uh, never mind.


Solution. Beauty.


Yes. yes. YES.


So. Was it worth it? Could the experience of eating this bird possibly justify the driving, the cost, the stress, and the problem-solving needed to bring it to the table? Will the great turkey adventure bear repeating next year?

Two words: Hell. Yes. Besides all the reasoning I outlined in the initial turkey blog, that was easily by FAR the best turkey I have ever had in my life. The texture of the breast meat was unlike any I’ve had from my grocer’s freezer- somehow denser, and so incredibly moist. The flavor was amazing, and the meat literally melted on my tongue. People were swooning and crying, offering up their firstborn in exchange for a second serving, swearing to never eat again- it was like a poultry Apocalypse of deliciousness. Maybe I exaggerate here, but seriously, not by much.

If you’re curious, come by next year when we do it all again. I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

The great turkey adventure, part one

Let’s follow up on that turkey, shall we?

I drove up to Kimber’s on the Saturday before Thanksgiving with high hopes and a giant cooler. When Kimberly brought the bird out to my car, I thought it looked pretty big- but it wasn’t until it was nestled into the cooler that I realized just how big it was. It was like a relic from prehistoric times (when squirrels were big enough to take off your arm in one bite, and the cockroaches were so big they stepped on YOU*). The legs were each easily as big around as my calf; the whole bird was bigger than my torso. We looked at the tag attached to the top of the bag- 30 pounds, on the dot. I had been expecting a bird 2/3 that size, at most, and I have never seen a hunk of poultry that large that wasn’t still squawking and trying to peck out my eyes (I was very nearly killed by an ostrich once, but that’s a story for another blog on another day). I imagined, just for a second, that perhaps there had been some mistake; maybe they had butchered an emu for me instead… Hmm, I wonder what an emu would taste like on the Weber? But no, no, those were real wings, not the vestigial appendages of a giant flightless bird.


Note the tag...


My brief emu fantasy shattered, I stared at this monster for a moment, trying to take it all in, and goodness knows what my face was showing, (panic? fear? lust?) because Kimberly glanced at me for less than a second before quickly explaining (in reassuring tones) that ‘the birds didn’t cooperate this year, you actually got one of the smaller ones’. I laughed with her and handed her my check for the balance. As she walked away I commenced staring into the cooler again, trying to comprehend how on earth we were actually going to COOK this thing.

On the drive out to my personal poultry storage facility (AKA mom & dad’s giant new refrigerator) my mind brimmed with possibilities and doubts. Were we going to have enough people to eat this thing? How were we going to brine it? It was barely going to fit into the fridge already. Dry-brining was a maybe, but I was nervous about trying a new method on this precious adventure. How were we going to cook it? There was no way it would fit on the grill in its current configuration, and my oven at home has nowhere near the capacity for such a robust beast. My experience with deconstructing raw poultry is limited, and the thought of me clumsily destroying the crowning jewel of our Thanksgiving table before it had touched heat or flame was depressing at best. I was starting to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. Panic set in as I thought of the vast array of possible disasters, and my eyes brimmed with tears.

By the time I pulled into the driveway at Casa de Schultz, my nerves had calmed considerably. Between the folks on hand, with our many years of Thanksgiving successes (mom & dad), mad technical cooking skills (Rob), and unquenchable optimism (me, most of the time), we would beat this thing into submission. And deliciousness. Oh, yes.


Me, a torso-sized bird, and my dad, another big turkey :)




*I am scared to death of squirrels, and I’m overly fond of Yakov Smirnoff jokes

Gobble, gobble.

A few weeks ago I drove up to Kimber’s Farm Fresh Eggs in San Marcos to put down a deposit on my Thanksgiving Turkey. I’d been toying with the idea of buying a fresh local bird this year, and upon conferring with my mother (she usually supplies the butterball, but I convinced her to go halvsies on this one instead) I decided to go for it. I wanted local, fresh, range-fed, the whole shebang, and I wanted to see for myself where it came from. Of course that put a kink in things, as many people suggested Costco for a fresh organic free-range bird. That would have been easier (I suppose- but then again I’m sure I enjoyed the drive to San Marcos and spending the day with my dad, who wanted to tag along, more than I would have the parking lot at Costco) but I wanted to be as local as possible.

Anyway, I cruised up there with my dad one Friday afternoon. Nice drive, nice place, nice folks. The operation is not a big one, a ranch-style house with big pens on either side and pastureland out back (and a couple of adorable basset hounds in the front yard!). They sell eggs (obviously), chickens, and a variety of organic produce as well. I dropped off my check and told them what type of bird and what size I needed, peeked around a bit, and was on my way. Now, nothing to do but wait…

I wasn’t sure when the bird would be ready, so I called them this week. They told me they’re processing them on Saturday, and I can come get him on Sunday. Yay! When I asked if the bird would keep OK all week, I learned that ‘resting’ time for poultry between slaughter and table is ideally 5-7 days, so there won’t be any need to freeze it between Sunday and the big feast. I’m going to have to take it over to my folk’s house for safekeeping, though, as our fridge won’t accommodate a bird that big.

A couple of my friends/people I yak with on the interwebs have expressed some doubts as to whether they’d be comfortable eating a real, live bird (okay, you know what I mean). The idea of eating an animal which I *may* have already looked in the eye (I didn’t get to identify my individual bird when I was up there, but I did eyeball a couple of the toms through the fence) apparently makes some people uncomfortable. Some of these folks are vegetarians (go figure) but not all of ‘em. As one person put it (albeit more harshly than most of my friends :p) “I can't decide what's more fucked up - someone who picks up a nicely packaged product at the grocery, allowing them to remain mostly oblivious to the craptacular living conditions and untimely death of the animal they are eating, or someone who takes a visit to a farm, looks the animal in the face, and then says "I want to kill that one"

My reply: (paraphrased and much expanded for purposes of needless verbosity)

At least I know this animal is living in healthy conditions, isn’t stuffed full of corn and antibiotics, and will be killed humanely. If you're gonna look at it from a moral standpoint, I think this wins out over factory-farmed meat. Plus, cutting out many, many middlemen and hundreds of miles (if not thousands) between that bird walking around (or not, depending on how it's farmed) and being on my plate seems like a good way to do it. Not to mention that it's healthier for me, without the aforementioned drugs and such cruising around in its bloodstream and tissue.

It's better for the environment, too, both because it's not a part of the big corn machine, and because there are minimal if any fuel/transportation costs involved (I gotta drive to pick it up, but the feed that they get is locally produced). Take my gas used to drive to SM for the bird (~28 miles each way) and subtract it from the fossil fuels and other petroleum-based goodness involved in growing (fertilizing) corn feed, it, transporting it to a feedlot, then transporting the poor creatures from possibly hundreds of miles away to the local grocery-selling place… That’s something I can feel good about, as well.

I would actually like to be more involved in the process, if possible, but none of the local poultry farms are allowing tours just now because of ‘biosecurity’ reasons.. So for those of you who have asked (some snidely, some not) whether I’m actually going to kill the bird with my own two hands, the answer is no. If I had my druthers I would at least be able to observe the process, if not participate. And yeah, I will kill something I’m going to eat if given the opportunity. Because I do firmly believe this: If you can't stomach the fact that the meat you're eating actually came from an ANIMAL, and that there are certain messy realities that exist between it gobbling about happily in the pasture, and the white meat with gravy and mashed potatoes on your plate, maybe you should think twice about eating it.

I'm not trying to justify anything, just sorta laying out my reasons for going this route this year rather than letting my mom buy a frozen butterball at the store. I did actually think about it a bit, especially because it's quite a bit more expensive this way. Now for the big question… I wonder how it’s gonna taste?

Buena.

One of the things that fascinates me most about food in our culture is the perception of what's 'good'. It seems to me so many folks quantify goodness in terms of what's expected, rather than what their vittles actually taste like, or consist of. The ease of manufactured food has completely skewed the perception of 'good'.- take 'diet' food, for example. I watch people eat the same 'low-fat' 'reduced-calorie' or 'low-carb' lunches every day. They insist that what they're eating is good.. But what exactly are they saying?

Is that diet frozen dinner delicious? Is it good for you at all? Are you even satisfied beyond the most basic level of sustinance once you've eaten it? That kind of thing, in my opinion, can only be 'good' in a relative sense.. It's 'better' for you than the regular packaged meal (although this is highly debateable), or McDonald's, or whatever- it's nourishing, sure, and it fulfills the basic need to fill one's belly, and it assauges the guilt of the typical American eater, but is it good? Does it make you happy?

I mean really, why drink a diet soda at all, rather than some water or an iced tea? Is it the illusion that you're treating yourself, whilst fostering the notion that you're somehow being 'good' by not fully indulging? It's an odd cycle of guilt (lust) and redemption through suffering (self-denial, one of the oldest tricks in the book). In a sense, I suppose, it is fulfilling. It makes one feel superior to those who can't say no to the sugar, the fat- the carbs, even... All the things that are 'bad'.

There are ways to get around that. We just need to forget some of our programming. When I was a starving student, I discovered that I could make my budget stretch a loooong ways by buying only fresh foods- fruits, vegetables, even grains like oatmeal and such in thier raw form- and making them into good, nourishing, and yummy (well, most of the time, I had my mishaps) food. It was necessity that turned me into the eater that I am today. $20 a week with the occasional expenditure for a value-sized pack of raw protein that would last me a month or more in the freezer (would have been cheaper to be a vegetarian, yeah), and I was eating better than many people I knew that were spending much more- though with a little more effort. After a while, I got good at cooking. I got good at eating, too. Habits are habits, after all, and once I found this one I couldn't go back to manufactured 'good'.
So what's my point?


I need for my mouth, my brain, my gut, and my soul to be happy. I need pure sensuality. I need a certain satisfaction, even, from knowing that I just had something real. (Yes, I'm still talking about food here, stay with me people). But if one isn't caught up in that cycle of consumerism and the manufactured (literally) ideal of what's 'good', then satisfaction can be much less complicated.

I'm not trying to preach.. Okay. I am. But it's a sermon of love.