Category: Food

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Turkey Flow Redux

Author’s Note: Today, in time for you to plan your Thanksgiving, I repost one of my most popular entries, the turkey preparation process flowchart, with some handy 2019 updates.

Perhaps someday I’ll write a book that is nothing but flow charts. They fascinate me! My Turkey Dinner flowchart encompasses everything you really need to know about preparing the meal from three days out, including a logarithmic scale. But, wait– I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take this step by step.

You can start with a simple set of process steps, which I show below to use as a building block for what is to come. When I show you the full, unadultered version, your head will explode.  Bear with me.

Turkey cooking flowchart
Turkey specific flowchart, by kajmeister.

Clearly, everyone has their own T-day traditions, whether it’s deep-frying the turkey (dangerous but popular) or serving crab (very San Francisco) or canned cranberries (really?). I will map out the standard meal with the basics: a stuffed turkey, gravy, and ancillaries to put the gravy on. Maybe a few vegetables, too.

In our house, we brine the turkey–which has its supporters and detractors I know–and we saute fresh green beans and mushrooms, rather than bake them in a soup. Plus deviled eggs because it’s not T-giving without deviled eggs. By the way, if you don’t waste spend loads of time watching cooking shows as I do, you should know that “sous chef” is short hand for all the prep work that you do which doesn’t involve heating or freezing the food–chopping, measuring, mixing, and making room in the trash and compost for all the potato peels, onion skins, and turkey liver. No, you don’t eat the liver. I don’t care what your grandmother did. Gizzard, neck, and heart, ok; liver, no.

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Zombies, Reese’s & Candy Corn Will Live Forever

What kind of candy would zombies eat? Photo at SFFuncheap.

The Halloween holiday, Samhain, dates back centuries to Celtic festivals, and many cultures pay respect to the line between living and dead. In contrast, zombies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are only about fifty years old, while candy corn is a little older, dating back to the 1880s. All of them reflect a fascination with blurred lines, with candy and people that cross over, which explains why candy corn, Reese’s, and zombies are so popular and will likely remain so for decades.

Love It or Hate It

A recent Monmouth University poll suggested a sharp divide in American attitudes about Halloween. 45% said that the October festivities were among their favorite holidays. Another 53% don’t particularly like it at all. That kind of polarization isn’t surprising in today’s divided populace, although who doesn’t like dressing up in costumes or eating candy? (Answer: lotsa people).

Who could do this to a child? Photo from huffpost.

Know what else divides the populace? Orange. Not the orange head you might be thinking of, but the orange and yellow corn syrup and earwax combination known as candy corn. As Lewis Black and others have pointed out, it’s neither candy nor corn.

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From Seattle to Shakespeare (Day 15)

Columbia River, from the iconic spot at the Red Lion Hotel, Hayward Island. Photo by Karin Kallmaker.

Technically, this part of our Left Coast Mosey is about traveling in Oregon from Portland to Ashland, but it sounded better to use two words starting with an S. I guess I could have called it Salem to Shakespeare, since Salem was our first stop, but the drive started at the Columbia River. As the skies cleared for a brief spot in the morning, we were finally able to take that river picture from our Portland-area hotel before setting out on this five-hour drive.

Also, in the interests of fair disclosure, Shakespeare represents the site of our destination, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, at the southern border of the state, but there will be no other mention of Shakespeare in this post. That may frustrate some, but will probably relieve many. Hash tag Not About Shakespeare.

Drive Time History

We have driven before from Seattle to northern California six or seven times, usually taking three days: Seattle to Portland, Portland to Medford, Medford to the Bay Area. It’s a twelve-hour drive in total, so it could be done in two long days, with a stop somewhere near Corvallis in Oregon, though that’s the perhaps the least interesting place to stop. Or the most picturesque, since it’s slightly more remote.

In the early nineteenth century, the Oregon Trail was forged by so many pioneers, who labored for six months to schlepp their household from Kansas or the Missouri River, over the Rockies, then north through the Cascades or south through the Sierras. Most of the historical records talk about moving from the east to the western horizon, while few discuss the north-south corridor.

Still, that secondary route trailing north/south must have sprung up. Thousands of people were expanding into the Oregon Territory, from the “Spanish” lands of California, all the way to Alaska (the 54th parallel) in the 1820-1840s. Once gold was found at Sutter’s Mill in the California Valley, which gave birth to Sacramento where I spent my formative years, millions of “forty-niners” were drawn from around the world. Apparently, many even made their way cross-ocean, going through Panama or even around Cape Horn. It must have taken at least a few weeks to walk and lead a team of horses with the furniture and seeds if you were migrating down from Puget Sound. I-5 today makes that much easier.

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