I won’t bore you with a long list of where our ingredients came from or how far they traveled. But suffice it to say that we had a mostly local, very delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Things that weren’t local that made it to the table? Black olives, organic chicken broth, dried sour cherries, sugar, salt, pepper, Montana flour, Oregon wine, an extra California turkey and some other odds and ends. Everything else came from within 100 miles and it was all fabulously in season.
Our menu?
- cheese, salami and crackers
- dill pickles (homemade) & black olives
- 11 lb. free range organic Heritage turkey (local)
- 13 lb. free range organic broad breasted white turkey (California)
- traditional bread stuffing
- sausage, apple, sage and caramelized onion stuffing
- mashed yukon gold potatoes
- cheese broccoli souffle
- arugula / spinach salad with hazelnuts
- cranberry / sour cherry chutney
- wheat “no knead bread” (1/2 local, 1/2 Montana)
- the best homemade gravy I’ve ever had
- cherry pie
- apple pie
- homemade vanilla ice cream
The most interesting parts of the menu were the turkeys, the cranberries and the no knead bread, so those are the only parts that I’ll expound on.
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Turkey | Leggy vs. The Traveler:
For reasons that we don’t really need to go into, and that I’m tired of explaining, we ended up with two fresh turkeys and decided to cook them both. “Leggy”, shown on the right above, came from Stokesberry Sustainable Farm and was local, organic, free-range and a heritage breed. “The Traveler”, shown on the left, was an organic, free-range broad breasted white from Diestel Farms in California. I didn’t think to ask whether they were toms or hens.
Since we cooked them both, we prepared them slightly differently, so the side by side taste test wasn’t exact. We rubbed Leggy with salt, pepper and olive oil and let him rest for 4 hours before roasting. The Traveler was brined for 4 hours the night before. The two were roasted side by side in the oven until done - about 5 hours - basted with butter at regular intervals.
And wow, they were both good! Mike and I both preferred Leggy, my sister in law (hi Kris!) preferred The Traveler, and everyone else was undecided. Things that were obviously different? Leggy has a more prominent breast bone and less breast meat. He also was less compact even though they both weighed about the same amount. Finally, the muscle fibers in Leggy’s breast meat were longer, more tender, and tasted more like “Turkey” to me.
In the interest of full disclosure, Leggy cost me $5 per lb. and The Traveler was $3 per lb. To me the extra money was worth it to help preserve heritage turkeys and to support a local farmer that believes in sustainably raising poultry. But if you can’t get your hands on one I’d say that the Diestel was almost as good.
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Cranberries
Not a lot to say here, except that I used a new recipe for these that combined dried sour cherries with the cranberries. The recipe also added a hint of rosemary and substituted brown sugar for the traditional white.
Recipe at Roux Seattle
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No Knead Bread
This was the first time that I’d tried this. But I have to say that it really is as easy as it sounds. I made my loaves with 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour and 1/2 unbleached all purpose white flour. The bread turned out light and airy with a crispy crust. Definitely worth the minimal effort. I plan to keep practicing my bread and make this again soon!
Recipe at The Steamy Kitchen
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A parting photo from the day - the hens enjoying the scraps from my prep work. Once nice thing about all the rain we’ve been having? The grass is finally green again. Note the missing feathers on Lucy (black) and Agnes (white) - they, plus Pru, are all wishing the weather would warm back up or their feathers grow faster!
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We had the Dietsel turkey too and the meat in the leg and wings was, I don’t know, different than what I’m used too. For one, it was really chewy. I racked it up to the fact that the turkey gets exercise as the legs were muscley. That’s my theory anyway. All in all, it was great. I wish we’d had some homemade ice cream! Good for you.