On Holidays Furniture and Family

While our two kids were growing up, Madelyn and I made a concerted effort to sit down to family dinner every night, and most nights we made it.  Whether it was midweek leftovers or sunday evening pork chops we sat down together at our kitchen island.  Carlyn was often straight from swimming and shaking with hunger and Luke bruised and silent aft

er wrestling.  The meals were not always cheery and bright and, in fact, they often began with someone out sorts about a broken friendship or challenge at work, but it sees that by the end of most meals we were telling stories or chatting in the warm circle of a tight little family.

Now my kids are gone and usually there is just two of us at the table, but when there are more, whether the kids, relatives or friends I want to be able to gather people around it for a meal.  With that in mind, this year we got a new table because the one we have is too small for that.  A drop leave family heirloom of hard-rock maple passed on to my daughter, and I went in search of a table that would seat four or six and extend with leaves to feed ten.  We have no formal dining room, so the table had to fit in the common area between the living room and kitchen and support everything from sewing projects to Christmas Eve dinner.   

I found a nice birch table on Craigslist that seats six and with the leaf we can squeeze in ten.  We found a bench for seating on one side and then four chairs that complemented the light birch finish; we hung a copper light fixture above for accent.   On Thanksgiving, our family-- now six adults and two children -- gathered around the new table comfortably, and the warmth of food and family stories filled the house.  Through the many dinners of the holidays, I am reminded that when we bring people together around food, elbow to elbow around a table; the conversation is different from when people are squatting around the living room eating off their laps or scattered about at card table from the hall to the back porch.  That’s not about gathering; that’s about eating.  

This week, my sisters visited with a niece and her husband.  Nine of us gathered around the dinner table, three generations.  We reminisced about Mom’s pink Pyrex casserole that I served the escalloped potatoes in and gaped at four year old Sawyer, who wanted to eat everyone’s broccoli.  Somehow, the conversation turned to ice skating and my sisters and I relived our childhood when we hiked out to the frozen pond in the muskeg behind our our house for ice skating and how miserable and cold we were in those torturous leather figure skates.  “With an experience like that, no wonder Dan never wanted to go ice skating,” Madelyn said.  When my grandson was itchy to leave the table, Aunt Amy leaned over said, “Ok, but your going to miss all the good stories.”  Later that evening, the same table was spread with a mountain of skirts Madelyn had made as she and my the sisters pawed through them.   

The new table rests nearly in the center of my house, and in a few short months it has come this heart of our home.  Here, stories are told over coffee and cake, puzzles are completed or abandoned, quarrels resolved, and appetites sated.  Here I can write and watch football at the same time; Madelyn can cut sewing projects while I make lunch.  Here friends gather like hunters around a campfire.  It was all just as I had planned when I bought the table.  A home needs a table that invites people  to gather for meals, and other food for the soul.  I didn’t invent the idea; I grew up with it, but it is a good one.  I know, you want to tell me that the table is just an iconic centerpiece, a place to meet, representation of my love of family, and I can only say, “Of course it is.  That’s the point.”

A Big Turkey in Small Oven

The two biggest problems for cooking are turkey are fitting it in the oven and getting it cooked without drying out. Boning the turkey can eliminate both of these. We have a small oven and I almost always bone the turkey.    

Not everyone who wants to cook a turkey has an oven big enough to cook it in.  One way to solve this problem is to get a bigger oven but it may be more practical to make the turkey smaller. The way I do that is to take the bones out so the meat is more compact -- it will cook more evenly and in a shorter time.    

It goes something like this:  Turn the bird breast down and with a sharp boning knife cut along the spine and start filleting the meat away from the rib cage.  The intent is to remove the bone from inside the meat leaving the meat attached to the skin.  separate the hip joint and work the knife along the thighbone to remove the meat.  

Here you have to make a decision to remove the leg bone, or drumstick, or leave it in.  Recently did a turkey like this and left the leg bone in and it went very well.  Read the rest of this to decide which you will try.

If you are removing the leg bones, continue as you did the with the thigh but you will encounter some bonelike tendons that must be cut away or pulled out with pliers.  Clip the wings first two joints away and then working from the inside remove the bone for the upper wing.  You will now have a sloppy slab of meat with skin on one side.   Rub the meat with salt, pepper, sage and rosemary at least.  There are three ways to proceed now: rolled and tied; stuffed, rolled, and tied; or flattened.  

A rolled and tied turkey is rolled, skin side out and tied within the butcher’s twine into something like a loaf of bread. This will firm up while roasting and slice like a beef or pork roast.  A rolled, stuffed, and tied turkey is done the same way by bread stuffing is prepared and wrapped in the center of your turkey rolled then tied.  Try to completely cover the meat with skin when rolling and tying to keep moisture in.    

The easiest way to handle the turkey is the third way that I call flattened.  Boned and seasoned, the turkey is placed meatside down in a roasting pan and sides pushed in so the meat is slightly mounded.  This works well if you want to leave the legs on.  When I use this technique I like put a good layer of stuffing in the bottom of the pan and then the turkey on top, or chunk up carrot,celery and onion to lie under the bird for a richer gravy.  

All three techniques are cooked the same way.  Rub the seasons on the skin (with a little butter or oil if you want).  Cover with foil and cook at 300-325 until done 1.5 to 2 hours.  Remove the foil about 1/2 through for browning.  

If this seems like entirely too much work.  Cut the turkey into quarters like you would a chicken then season and roast in a pan skinside up.   Note!  The breast will probably be cooked before the legs so pull them out early.

Stock for gravy:  If you bone your turkey, you can use the bones for a nice stock,  season, roast for a while  then simmer in water and vegetable trimmings for 4-6 hours.  Strain and skim the fat to get a rich stock for gravy. 

49 Writers: Alaska Shorts: A Last Walk in the Woods, by Dan Wa...

49 Writers: Alaska Shorts: A Last Walk in the Woods, by Dan Wa...: The consensus among people I know is that we wait too long before we finally put our sick, old pets to sleep.  That was on my mind when I...

One August day In the Forest

     Took a walk in the woods today with my partner, Snape, who is getting used to being the sole dog on the property after we put down Old Nelson.  We walked down the road and onto the Iditarod Trail that runs along the south shore of the lake.  Not far down the trail we cut into the woods to follow a game trail with fresh moose tracks.  This was a trail stomped out by some fellows cutting firewood last year and the moose seem to take advantage of any such trace made through the devils club and deadfalls.   This is a mature forest of almost entirely spruce trees though there are a few mall hemlock as well with an understory of fern, blueberry, huckleberry, currants, and devils club with a few alders thrown in.  Anywhere the alders are thick is place that's been opened down to soil like an old road or trail.  Beneath all this green is a complex carpet of mosses and belly flowers.
     Snape and I found one spruce grouse, a young one, nearly eating size and a couple of good blueberry bushes, where I picked a couple handfuls for a snack.   It impossible for me to tell if the blueberries had were sparse or had already been gathered by bears or pickers.   Either way any berries out of these section of the forest would be well earned. Snape seemed a little nervous in the woods and seemed eager to get back to the main trail.  He doesn't range far into the woods unless there is a rich scent to something like the spruce grouse which he didn't notice until it was well up a tree and then he was ready to get after it.   Nelson always loved bushwhacking, and he let his nose lead him on great explorations well away from me, often leaving me frustrated while I waited for his return.   

     The loons returned yesterday and it reminded me to return to my writing here.    Solstice was quite a while ago.  We hadn't seen the loons for sometime and I wonder of they were at the other end of the lake, on their nest again or travel to visit neighbors, which loons are known to do.  I have watched visiting loons arrive here and at the Pear Lake to visit the resident pair.  The visits usually involve a lot of vocalizing, water dancing and short, circling flights around the host lake.  What I call water dance is a drama performance by one or two loons that rise up and run across the surface of the water flapping their wings and calling for thirty to fifty yards.  This is often repeated by other birds.  Noisy and dramatic,  this display of energy and force is a moving event to watch.   The lake is always dramatic, sometimes with the wildlife busy on, in and around it; sometimes with the weather lashing the water and the trees and sometimes with the placid silence of solitude.
   

Breakup

Breakup came early and easy this year and on May tenth the lake is free of ice for three days now and the loons, goldeneyes and swallows are busy mating nesting and feeding on the bounty of Bear Lake.
The temperature is 65 degrees and no snow is left in our yard.  Winter was little more than an interlude between fall and spring this year.  This morning the sun was shining in the north windows of the house will will for the next several weeks as we bath in nearly endless daylight that we don't have the energy to use.

Happy Solstice

     I'm a day late hitting a solstice post but for most people that is no big deal.  The vernal equinox brings light to our lake in great wave of sunshine pouring over the fridge of spruces onto the great open setting of the lake.  Uncharacteristically, we were ice skating on March twenty the day of the vernal equinox when usually we the ice is buried under several feet of snow.  Not in 2014.  This year we are looking at ice dusted lightly with snow like powdered sugar on coffee cake.  Strange snowmobile trails are imbedded in the ice from the days when the layer of slush was a playground for kids on sno-gos.  Now those trails treacherous mounds of ice.  Skiers still find fridges of along the lake edge where snow is thick enough to make ski tracks but between those bits of snow the skier must scoot across ice for sometimes for several hundred yards.

The ice has changed the character of the lake.  Fewer people venture out since it's too rough for most skating and lacks snow for skiing.  Some people and critters enjoy the easy walking for the ice is rough and not too slick to walk on.  A moose crossed this morning and yesterday two coyotes.   Firewood gathers can work easily in the woods along the lake haul their loads easily along the thin snow on the lake shore.   But it is the sun that makes the difference, the glorious spring light that is warm and bright with a promise of green leaves and wildlife soon to come.  Happy Solstice.

The Return of Winter

After a warm and damp january that seemed more like dark form of April than the first month of the year, we past mid February and full into winter.  We have had close to two feet of snow in the last week and the skating days are long past.  Now we have a trail around the lake for skiing that is almost five miles long.   We pack and smooth the snow every time it snows so we can skate ski or classical. Madelyn and I also use the trail for skijoring.   We have two sled dogs for this sport and we just borrowed a third, Zena, a retired Iditarod champion.

Skijoring with Snape and Zena

Madelyn's comments:

Zena Iditarod Warrior Princess

   Well, now that we finally look like normal and have some snow, we decided we needed to add a dog to the team.  Without Loki, who we lost in May, and Nelson's advancing age (12-13 now) we definitely had a slow down, also made it difficult to travel when we need a sled.  So our buddy Travis Beals, Iditarod racer, loaned us Zena, a retired leader who wasn't getting out much, if at all.  She's been to nome at least 4 times, was a leader in Lance Mackey's heyday - 4 time winner.  He last trip to Nome will give you a chuckle.  Lance leased a team to the first Iditarod musher from Jamaica - sound familiar?  He stayed here and trained with Lance.  If memory serves, he didn't get clear to Nome, but had a good showing.

So if you tell anyone about our newest team member, just say she went to Nome several times on winning teams....they probably will think the rest is a joke.  She's only been here two days but she is settling in well and done everything we asked - easy keeper.  She probably hasn't run much since last summer when she put 1500 miles in on the glacier dogsled tour.  Photo taken in 2010 at Lance's kennel. 

Here's a video of Skijoring with a pulk.