Gravy Makes the Turkey -- Start Tonight

In my family there is a tradition through the generations that gravy is the measure of a meal and therefore the cook. The roast can be tough and the turkey dry, but good gravy can save the meal and all will be forgiven. Your turkey, whether it’s rolled, roasted whole or chopped up in pot pie, is going to need gravy, and good gravy is no more work than bad gravy. 

Good gravy starts with good stock, and good stock means that you either buy chicken or turkey stock at the grocery store or you make your own. Stock is the liquid extract of meat and vegetables that you can produce in your own kitchen with basic ingredients.

Basic stock ingredients:  onion, celery, and carrots. I add any clean vegetable trimmings such as onionskin, lettuce scraps, and broccoli trimmings. These are simmered in water with the bones of whatever type of stock you are making fish, beef, chicken, and in our case turkey.  

The process:  brown the bones in the oven for 30-60 minutes, then cover with water and add vegetables. Important! Save the fat that renders off the bones during browning. Portions are highly flexible, but for a our turkey, a couple of carrots, an onion, and three stocks of celery with a bit of parsley should be enough vegetables and three quarts of water. Bring the pot to a boil and then let it simmer slowly for 4-6 hours. I have good luck making stock with a pressure cooker in about thirty-five minutes. Add the vegetables, water and browned bones to the cooker.  Cover and cook 30 minutes after it comes to pressure. 

How ever you make stock, strain it and let it cool.  Then skim as much of the fat as you can.  If you are making your stock from the bones of your rolled turkey, all this is being done a day or two before the big day. Now you have some turkey fat and a couple quarts of stock.

Before you get started building the gravy, get it in your head that this is an art not a science.  Or as mother used to say,  “there is more than one way to skin a cat.” Gravy is meat stock or milk thickened with some form of starch, usually flour. We are going to make flour gravy with chicken stock. The flour is where most people get in trouble. The flour in gravy has to be cooked or the gravy will taste like uncooked flour, the proverbial wallpaper paste. That’s the source of most bad gravy; the other danger is lumps.  

Basic turkey Gravy

Remove the turkey from the roasting pan and pour off any liquid into a Pyrex pitcher or stock separator. Add about a cup of stock to the pan and put it on the range top to heat so you can loosen all those tasty morsels stuck to the bottom of the pan. Once this is bubbling and things are loose set this aside or pour it in a bowl or pitcher. Using the fat you saved from roasting bones or butter and put it in a saucepan to heat about one half cup. Measure about the same amount of flour into this fat and simmer for about five minutes to make a roux. You need to be whisking or stirring almost

The Fat off just the roasted bones about 1.5 cups

constantly.  Now, add the pan cleanings and about a quart of stock stirring and heating as you go. As this heats it will thicken. Add stock to thin it or cook it down if it’s too runny. I like to simmer my turkey gravy a while and work it hard with the whip.  If I run out of stock and my gravy is still too thick, add the water from steamed veggies, wine, or beer. I remember the first time I saw mom thin her gravy with the water off of the green beans, I was disgusted.  Then she explained that I had been gobbling gravy made that way all my life. The gravy will need some salt and pepper, and I strain mine because lumps can occur and because I lined my roasting pan with vegetables so at this stage the gravy has chunks of onion celery and carrot knocking around in the pan. 

Now, the other way to skin a cat.You can make good gravy without adding all the fat that is in the roux. You do this by making a slurry of flour and water and adding it to the turkey stock. Put a couple quarters of stock in a pot and start it heating. In a bowl mix a half cup of flour and a half cup of cold water and make some wallpaper paste. Mix it well and then stir it into the stock and keep that whisk moving.  You really want those pan drippings and vegetable piece from the roasting pan for this gravy since you aren’t using all that flavorful fat you skimmed off.  Once this comes to a boil turn it to simmer and stir it often while it cooks for 10-15 minutes. If it is too runny, let it cook longer, too thicken add stock, water, or wine. 

If you made enough gravy you'll have some to pour over leftovers or to use in turkey pot pie.  
 If you made good gravy, you may have none left. Happy Thanksgiving!

Bone that Turkey, Roll that Tom, The Thanksgiving alternative

This a post I originally presented last Thanksgiving.  I've added some detail and photos.  

If you are cooking a turkey Thursday, you are starting to get turkey worried.  It's part of Thanksgiving. Turkey is a problem.  Turkeys are large, cumbersome, and challenging to cook.  Add this to the fact that we serve them on the most celebrated meal of the year, and we have a serious problem.  And if that is not enough of an issue, all iconic images of roast turkey show a crisp, brown twenty-pounder brought to the table on a giant platter to be carved and served medieval style.  IF you want avoid all of these issues read on! 

The turkey problem starts with fitting it in the oven and then getting it cooked without drying out.  One way to solve this problem is to get a bigger oven, but it may be more practical to make the turkey smaller.  At our house, we have a very small oven and have to make it fit the turkey. (OR!!!! Down below I'll tell you about turkey ala GRILL!)
The way I make the turkey fit is to take the bones out so the meat is more compact -- it will cook more evenly and in a shorter time.  Boning the turkey can eliminate both the problem of fitting in the oven and cooking evenly.  And oh yes, a boned turkey is so easy to carve! You can impress your guests with your carving skill and cooking!

It goes something like this:  First remove the first two sections of each wing – save them for stock making.  

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.  When you reach the thigh joint, separate the hip joint and work the knife along the thighbone to remove the meat.

Here you have to make a decision whether to remove the leg bone (the drumstick) or leave it in (attached to the meat).  Recently, I 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.

Boned with drumsticks

If you are removing the leg bones, continue as you did the with the thigh but you will encounter some bone-like tendons that must be cut away or pulled out with pliers.  Working from the inside, remove the remaining wing bone.  You will now have a sloppy slab of meat with skin on one side.   Rub the meat with seasoning; salt, pepper, sage and rosemary are a good choice.  Some people like to add olive oil or butter to the surface the meat, but I don't. 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 with butcher’s twine into something that looks 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 except that bread stuffing is prepared and wrapped in the center of your turkey, rolled, and then tied. Try to completely cover the meat with skin when rolling and tying to keep moisture in. Some wooden skewers might be handy for bringing the roll together.  The easiest way to handle the turkey is the third way, which I call flattened.  Boned and seasoned, the turkey is placed meat-side 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 to 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. 

Plan B — there is always a plan B: 

If this seems like entirely too much work.  Cut the turkey into quarters.  To do this, split the bird down the back, lay it skin side down and split the breast so you have two identical halves.  Then cut each thigh and leg away from the breast.   Season each section and roast in a pan skin-side up.  You may want to cut the breast meat away from the bone but that's a personal choice.  If you cover the bottom of your pan with chunks of carrot, celery, and onion and lay the meat on those to roast, you will have a good base for gravy or stock.

Note!  The breast will probably be cooked before the legs so pull them out early.  
TEMPERATURE IS CRITICAL! DON'T COOK THE BIRD TOO LONG!
GET A THERMOMETER AND PULL THE MEET OUT OF THE OVEN AT 165 DEGREES AND LET SIT.  

Stock for gravy:  

If you bone your turkey, you can use the bones for a nice stock.  To make stock, season and roast the bones thirty to forty minutes then simmer them in water and vegetable trimmings for 4-6 hours.  Strain stock and skim the fat to get a rich stock for gravy.  Save that fat and the fat from the roasting pan too.  
We'll do gravy next —stay tuned!  Here;s the gravy link: Turkey Gravy better than Mom's

Speed up the stock process with a pressure cooker and make the stock in 30 minutes.    

 AS Promised.  Turkey on the grill
So, you want to try cooking your turkey on the grill. If you have the common grill with a hood, whether charcoal or propane.  It can work great and free up the oven for other things.  Use indirect heat and a mild wood for flavor.  I recommend roasting in a foil pan or get an old roaster that you dedicate to the grill. Have plenty of foil to cover the turkey after it browns. Monitor it with a thermometer and really, just think of the BBQ as an outdoor oven.  Low and slow! 
 

The Sound of a Tree Falling in the Forest

Hiker meets tree. Photo by Terry Rude

Last weekend, my neighbor sent me picture and a note about some trees down along Iditarod Trail section that borders the eastern shore of Bear Lake. I do a lot of walking on this trail since the trailhead is a quarter mile from my house, but I was out of town so it wasn’t until Tuesday that I could walk down there and inspect.

Some might be wondering how I could be on the Iditarod Trail when I’m five miles north of Seward. Doesn’t the Iditarod Trail start in Anchorage or Wasilla or Willow? Nope, sorry Sally. The Iditarod Trail originates in Seward where the Steamships brought miners, mail, and supplies during the gold rush and this is where the gold, and the winners and losers in the gold rush boarded the ship for Seattle.  That trail is now an National Historic Trail and, lucky for me, runs right along the shore of Bear Lake.

Back to our story.  My dog snape and I decided to check out the fallen tree situation, and Tuesday morning we walked the broad trail that follows the south shore of Bear Lake, listening to the swans talking and enjoying the blue sky day. At the southeast corner of the lake, the trail meets the main Iditarod coming in from Nash Road at the head of Resurrection Bay.

The trail is a bit of a mess here because a couple of years ago during one of our fall floods, the creek left its bed and decided to follow the Iditarod Trail to Bear Lake. Now that part of the trail has been replaced by a rocky streambed.

From this point north the trail follows the eastern shore of the lake and is more narrow and closed to ATV traffic. Snape and I were wading mud holes and stepping over roots as we followed the meandering trail and catching fine views of snow-capped peaks, spruce grouse, and the waterfowl coming and going on the lake. About a mile and a quarter from the trailhead, we came to the tree blocking the trail.

Well, this is not just some little tree blown down across the trail.  This is a major slide involving maybe a dozen trees that have uprooted, broken off and or slide down the hillside. Even up hill from the trail, massive trees have been toppled. The reason is obvious. These magnificent spruces and hemlocks are anchored by roots that are set in less than a foot of soil on sloping bedrock.  Soak that soil with days of heavy rain and add winds of more than thirty-five miles and hour and it’s amazing there are any trees left on that hillside at all.

Anyone using the trail for the next few months will be forced up a steep slope on a nasty bushwhack for a couple hundred yards, or they will be climbing over under around and through several massive root wads.  

Probably fifty yards of trail is covered by this slide involving probably a dozen trees.  Some of the trail is gone as well, pushed down hill to join some of the trees laying in the lake.  Another reminder that everything is temporary in a glacial valley subject to torrential rain, heavy snow, and storm force winds.

Scoring update! Humans: Five Bears: 0

One can’t live on Bear Lake without eventually writing a bit about bears. As I sit watching several swans feeding in front of the house reading about bear problems in my town, this seems like the right time. October has been bear month here on this side of the Kenai Peninsula. Last week a friend and teaching colleague Ron Hemstock was mauled by a bear at the Seward Airport, (Read more)and a few days before that several bears were dispatched by home owners who felt the need to protect their property. (read more)  Ronn's event was rare moment when man and bear collide in unexpected places,  Ronn spends lots of time on trails and mountains sides where one expects bear encounters, but he was attacked in the city limits. A tragic fact of life in bear country.  

It’s important to call things as they are. So far this month, depending whose counting, the score is humans: five, bears: zero. That’s right, we got them outnumbered, and we are killing them faster than they are us.

We live in bear country, I knew it growing up, I knew it when I built my first house on Lake Drive when there were more bears in Questa Woods than people. I raised my kids with bear awareness

and adapted my behavior accordingly.  Even with all that, what happened to Ronn could happen to me.
I knew I was in bear country when I bought this property on Bear Lake and had to honk my horn each morning when I arrived at the job site so I wouldn’t surprise a bruin fishing on my lakeshore. That summer I went several weeks when I saw bears every day. That is the reality of life in places where bears live. We modify our behavior because we know it’s hard for the bears to modify theirs. The alternative is to kill all the bears. Then we end up like California, where about the only place to see a grizzly is on their flag.

Most people who live on the edge of wildland know that living in peace with the animals require some behaviors that keep us all on safe. The better job we do the fewer conflicts we will have. When we moved to Bear Lake from a mile away on Lake Drive, I agreed to give up keeping chickens, Madelyn saw them as bear and eagle bait, so after several years I agreed. That was enough. We keep garbage in the bear-proof cans, and don’t leave birds seed and other attractant around the house. Bears walk through the yard on the way to the lake but they only stick around when we make a mistake. Last spring I left dog food on the porch and the next morning, opened my door to a bear having breakfast. He made three more visit that week before he figured out that was a one night stand. These are the kinds of mistakes that bring bears to our houses and get them shot. 

People who are distressed about bears in their neighborhoods need to look around and try to figure out what’s bringing them to backyards looking for dinner. Garbage is the big one. It’s not hard to secure trash so bears can’t get it.  Another culprit is free running chickens. I don’t think it’s coincidence that chicken-eating bears are common in neighborhoods where people let their chickens run free without coup or pen. The easy access to this prey eventually contributed to bears tearing onto secure chicken coups. If people don’t lockup their small livestock, they’re creating the behavior we don’t want. I kept chickens on Lake Drive (now Stoney Creek) for twenty-five years and had one bear incident in all that time, and that incident was a bear killing ducks I had running loose.    

Am I saying we shouldn’t shoot bears?   No, I’m saying we should do what we can so we don’t have to.  Obviously we will encounter problem bears who become backyards pests and a danger to us all, but most of our bears are not that type.  Not every bear that walks down the road or crosses your yard is a problem. They are part of what most of us enjoy about living here where bears, moose, otter, coyotes, swans, and even the occasional wolf make our lives richer by sharing the this valley with us. If you don’t like these animals in your backyard, I suggest you’re in the wrong place. 

A Fall So Nice We Could Call It Autumn

On the third Thursday of October, the temperature hit fifty degrees here at the lake and we enjoyed another sunny late fall day -- a rare thing indeed. The lake is alive with waterfowl and lies flat without wind to ruffle the surface. The shore vegetation is a brown fringe beneath the deep green of the spruce forest that surrounds us here. The mountains background is snow whitened almost down to tree line.  

Without the typical dark, wet September and October, we have been able to embrace fall.  Embracing fall is one of the last things that we usually do.  Most years we go into October wishing we were somewhere else.  Weeks of rain and even shortening days can make even this beautiful place bleak and depressing. Not this year. These last couple of warm years have delivered lousy winters that are barely cold enough to call them winter, but we got some nice fall weather in the deal.  The wildlife seems especially active as well.

Yesterday, I watched an eagle harvest a muskrat off the shore in front of the house, and today twenty swans rafted up in the north end of the lake.  Oh shore, the brown bears are roaming the neighborhood like Ma Barker and her kids. A sow and three cubs are raiding chicken coops and garbage cans in about a three mile radius. This won't end well for the bears I fear.

Closer to home, the squirrels have been harvesting spruce cones in the yard like it's going to be a hard winter. I had to send a couple to see God when they started caching their booty in the attic of the sauna. An attic of a sauna filled with dry cones is a recipe for disaster, so I cleaned out the attic and made it squirrel proof —fingers crossed. Two days later the loft of my woodshed was loaded with cones. Luckily, my ten-year old friend, Noah climbed up and helped me clean those out. The squirrels had filled ski boots with cones even stuffing them up in the toes. Now I have a couple bushels of fire starters drying in the garage.

We've had one snowfall, and I helped Sawyer build the season's first snowman. Since then the wind and sun disappeared the our sculpture in a process called ablation (Madelyn gives me all those big science words) and only the mountains held their white blankets. That's all suppose to end in the next few days and we can probably expect the typical Halloween snowfall as winter final gets here in November, the month of cold and wind. It was good while it lasted.

On the Road, Where the Good Times Roll

Part of being an author is working at blatant self-promotion.  From the first time a writer submits a piece to a publisher to selling individual copies at a book fair, one has to be a seller, not my strong suit.  Part of marketing Secondhand Summer has been appearing in libraries for readings, selling books at fairs and bazaars, as well as making visits to schools.  This was a good match with Alaska Book Week 2016.

This week I did a bit of each, including visits to three libraries and three schools from Anchorage to Homer.  Fall is a great time to be driving the Peninsula with less traffic, dramatic leaf colors, and a good chance to have a bull moose cross your path — literally.  The chance of slick roads is low and the fall sunsets and sunrises on the Kenai are a dramatic light show.  Couple that with great meals in the Ninilchik with sister Amy and you have the makings of a pretty good road trip.

Of all my different events last week, I found the time at the schools the most satisfying.   Thanks to teacher, Mike Gustkey, my visit to Kenai Middle School was well organized and comprehensive. Up to three classes at time crowded into the library, and wrote energetically to a prepared prompt.  A teacher of writing, I know the challenge of getting students to engage in writing tasks.  Yet, these students hopped right to it and wrote energetically.  Many were eager to share their writings with the group.   It this is not an accident.  This is result of teachers working with student regularly to improve their writing and boost their writing confidence.  Thanks Kenai Middle School!

During my trips Homer Middle and Soldotna High, I found similar groups of teens who where friendly and polite as I shared my book with them and told my story of life in the last century on the Kenai.  It’s easy to forget how different the world of today’s children from the Alaska I grew up in.  Sure, we have the obvious impact of cell phone and computer technology in our lives, but more significant to me was change from a remote homestead lifestyle here to a rural or suburban life with lots of paved road, public utilities, and economic networks.   These kids don’t see themselves as backwoods sourdoughs, who have to hunt, fish and farm for a living.  Their world is little different from their counterparts in Anchorage, Seattle, or California.  That being said, there is an obvious appreciation by many for the rich environment where they live.

Teachers Bonnie Jason (Homer Middle) and Nicole Hewitt (SoHi) are educators who work hard each day to make students safe and help them learn.   There classes make me proud to be an educator, and I am honored that they think I have something to add to their teaching. 

It’s great to be home this week looking over Bear Lake as I write, but we all know that being away is what makes home so special.  That is true even when I’ve been visiting new friends and old the beautiful Kenai Peninsula. 

Government Hill, A Place Apart

In my novel, Secondhand Summer, I place most of the action on Government Hill, a community in Northern Anchorage across Ship Creek from downtown.  I choose this location because it has a distinct character created by it's isolation from the rest of the city and because most of the events that inspired the book took place there.

Sam Barger's Caribou Club

My family moved to Government Hill in 1965 after my dad died, just like in the novel.  We didn't have much money and the apartment buildings on the east end of Hollywood boulevard were cheap and available.  This was also a short commute for my mom who worked at the Anchorage Westward Hotel, which is now the Hilton.

Another structure from Secondhand Summer

Look at Government Hill on google maps and it's pretty obvious that this is a unique neighborhood.  Cutoff from downtown on one side by the port and railroad yards along Ship Creek— guess what we used to call it— and the Air Force base to the North, this tiny wedge of real estate would develop a character all it's own.  When I lived there, it was a strange mix of feeling remote from the rest of town, but crowded apartments and traffic to the Air Force base made it feeling busy and crowded, very inner-city.  The were single family houses here too, mostly small bungalows in clusters along the West end of the community, but also a few big house that looked like they started out as homesteads.  At the top of the hill where Loop Road from downtown enters the community, was and is a cluster of small businesses.  When I lived there it included a drugstore, a small grocery, a burger joint, and a slot car racing venue.  Does anyone remember that fad?

Scene of the Comic book Caper

Slot cars were small electric cars that came in sizes not much bigger than today's Matchbox cars to cars then inches long.  The cars ran on tracks that streamed electricity and gave them power.  The racing loops would have several tracks so cars could race.  Guys would bring their own cars or use the ones at the shop and have races.  Most of the time we didn't have money to race but we would hang around and watch.

I have often wondered how Government Hill came to be.  Why didn't the Air Force take that area too the government formed the base.  I'm guessing that the community was well established when the base was built during World War II.   Wikipedia has good description of how it all came to be.  (wiki/Government_Hill,_Anchorage) It seems the Alaska Engineering Commission had built some homes there and created a community that was preserved when the Air Force took over the extensive farmland to the north.  As in 1965, the modern Government Hill is a distinct and somewhat isolated community with a proud sense of Identity, so it has a  presence on Facebook and active groups fighting to preserve the integrity of the area.

The New Government Hill 2016

I drove through Government Hill recently  and was glad to see that the apartment building I lived in was gone, replaced with attractive homes and condos with a view of downtown.  The "Caribou Club" is still there and so is the the strip mall where Sam and his partners stole the comic books.  There is still a feeling of being close to Anchorage, but not in it though the community seems better off than when Sam and his partners roamed the streets.  I saw boys there on bikes that could have been Sam and Billy.  Some things never change for there will always be restless boys trying to grow up.