So, here's what's up: Internet at home is extra-super sucky, and makes trying to do anything more complicated than send emails into an hour-long battle of wills, with the interwebs usually winning. I do have a couple recipes in the hopper, but I'm also dealing with new-computer syndrome: somehow can't seem to make the software work, so my camera won't yet download pictures to my computer. It's frustrating. Add to that the cold and flu season bugs that took me and Tim out of commission for the better part of the last two weeks, and I think I'm (slightly) justified in not posting anything for two months.
BUT! I have a terribly over-ambitious baking project coming up (probably even starting this weekend), and I have just finished successfully making homemade turkey stock for the first time ever in my life, so I'm feeling pretty good about getting back on the food-blogging bandwagon.
Can we talk about this turkey stock some more? I was a little worried about yesterday's bird--it was still a little frozen on the inside when I put it in the oven yesterday, and I basted it with a blush wine, so the meat came out pink to about a half-inch deep, which made me super nervous. My worst nightmare is to cook a huge meal for a bunch of friends and family and give someone food poisoning. (Tim's jabs and snide comments about my cooking certainly didn't help, either!) But we're 24 hours on, and I've heard no reports of anyone getting sick, so it must have been fine. Anyway, we refrigerated the carcass overnight, and Tim ripped it to pieces this morning so I could boil it down, scrape the rest of the meat off the bones, and make some super-yummy stock. It definitely took the better part of seven hours, but the house smelled amazing all day, and it only required about 10 minutes of my attention throughout the day.
A couple online recipes recommended using this soup base. Wish I'd known about that a week ago! At any rate, my stock is so delicious that I don't think anything else could make it better! The base might have sped up the process, but other than that, I don't know if it's all that important. All I did was toss in my bird pieces, chop up two carrots, a few stalks of celery, and an onion, and throw in about a teaspoon of poultry seasoning and salt. Then I simmered for seven hours, stirring and tasting occasionally. Once it tasted like an actual broth (and not just vaguely seasoned water), I turned up the heat and boiled for another 20 minutes, then turned it off, let it cool, strained the stock, pulled out the vegetables, and picked apart the rest of the meat. Voila! Stock. It's now in a large pot in the fridge, and I'll make soup tomorrow.
Happy Thanksgiving, all!
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