Well, I haven't posted for a while, so it is about time that I note something!
Thanksgiving came and went. Not too exciting for us, but it revolved around food, so that kinda made me happy. Cooking and baking - two things I do pretty well. The only complaints ever heard are from me, when I think I coulda/shoulda done something a little different. But I refine recipes and so on...
Anyway, I brined a turkey for the first time this year. I had come across the method on the internet and in a coupla blogs. Basically (if you don't know - and if you even care about it) you dissolve a buncha salt in water. You can add other stuff, too - I added brown sugar and some herbs. The water should be room temperature when you immerse the turkey in it, so you should probably heat up a small portion of the water, dissolve the salt (and sugar if adding it), then combine the rest of the herbs plus some colder water. I used about a gallon of water. I really don't add salt, so this was a big experiment on my part. You have to keep the bird refrigerated, so that either means giving up your refrigerator (like that could happen just before T'giving) or using a cooler (my choice). I used 2 of those oven-roasting bags, turkey-size, and plopped the bird in the doubled-up bags, with the legs facing the top. Then poured the water in, including in the cavity. Closed up the bag, made sure there was lots of ice in the cooler, and closed up shop for the night.
Man - it was an excellent, tasty, juicy bird. Not.Salty.At.All Best ever (by me) and I will definitely do it again. Woo-hoo! And the bird was done in less than 2/3 of the estimated cooking time. We had to scramble to get the rest of the food ready while the bird cooled its bronzed goodness on the cutting board, and we drooled in anticpation.
Enough about food. Well, maybe not.
We are having salmon for dinner tonight. And it is fresh, not that ol' "previously frozen" crap that you usually see at this time of year (or at least more frequently than I would like to see). I am always ready to try another salmon recipe and I found a good one recently. It's a stove-top recipe, so that works when it is too hot to use the oven here in steamy Houston, plus we don't have to crank up the grill, either. The salmon is mostly seared and then cooked to a bit opaque. The sauce makes it: combo of light mayo, cilantro, lime juice, wasabi paste and ginerroot. Mmmmmm... Drummer and I are sushi fans and, by extension, love wasabi (in little doses), too.
Kinda funny. When I was graduating high school, there was an award for a senior girl, titled the Betty Crocker Homemaker of Tomorrow award. I was a test-taker back then - if it was in written form, I could usually do okay. And I got that award. So maybe I felt obligated to grow into it? Although (the older I get) I think my body wants to take that "grow into it" idea literally. Arggghhhh....
Time to end this foray.
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