Month: November 2003

<a href="http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OA/pubs/tbcook.htm">FOOD SAFETY FACTS Turkey Basics: Safe Cooking </a>: Many factors can affect the roasting time of a whole turkey:

• A frozen or partially frozen turkey takes longer to cook than a completely thawed turkey.
• A turkey will cook faster in a dark roasting pan.
• The depth and size of the pan can affect heat circulation to all areas of the turkey.
• The use of a foil tent for the entire cooking time can slow cooking.
• Putting a lid on the roasting pan speeds up cooking.
• An oven cooking bag will shorten cooking time.
• A stuffed turkey will take longer to cook than an unstuffed turkey.
• Ovens may heat unevenly.
• The oven rack position can have an effect on even cooking and heat circulation.

<a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/11/20/WIG1Q35G1R1.DTL">Pairing tips for Thanksgiving</a>: Here are a few other white varietals and appropriate food matches:

• Pinot Grigio is a good aperitif and goes well with roasted turkey.
• Gewurztraminer has a spicy character that sets it up for cranberry or fall fruit chutney and pumpkin or butternut-squash soup flavored with baking spices.
• Riesling, especially German Kabinetts and off-dry Spatleses, with their tropical fruit, citrus, green-apple, pear and mineral notes, work with almost any Thanksgiving dish except cranberry sauce and desserts.
• Chardonnay — the less oak the better — has similar versatility and its full body makes it appropriate for creamed dishes.

<a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/outdoors/20011122turkeys1122p2.asp">Wild turkeys sticking their necks out in more places and greater numbers </a>: &ldquo;Wild turkeys &mdash; known scientifically as <em>Meleagris gallopavo</em> &mdash; are now regularly seen in flocks of a dozen or more along Bigelow Boulevard, on Brucewood Drive in Mt. Lebanon and in the Allegheny Cemetery, from where they sometimes stray onto nearby Stanton Avenue, blocking traffic as they strut into Morningside&hellip;



Wild turkey populations have soared in Pennsylvania to an estimated 320,000 birds, up from 60,000 in 1968 and just a few thousand in 1900. During the fall turkey season that ended earlier this month, hunters around the state bagged somewhere between 45,000 and 50,000 birds, according the state Game Commission.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.williamrubel.com/magicoffire/heritage.turkey.html">Slow Food Heritage Turkey - Turkeys for Traditional Cooking</a>: &ldquo;Historically, turkeys were eaten for much of the year. In the early summer the birds were small. In the fall and early winter the birds were large. Historically, farmers culled their animals in the late fall &mdash; including their poultry &mdash; because they couldn&rsquo;t afford to keep large stocks through the winter. Even today, in countries like Lithuania where country people still live off the land, poultry flocks are thinned in the fall. As it happens that Thanksgiving in America, and Christmas in Europe, takes place just when flocks are reduced, the tradition grew up of serving large prize birds at the feast. It is important in thinking about the role of turkey in our modern diet to recognize that historically there was &lsquo;turkey&rsquo; and then there was the &lsquo;holiday bird.&rsquo;&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=tomsaaristo">tomsaaristo's Xanga Site</a>: &ldquo;Setting a beautiful Thanksgiving table includes setting it properly. Once you&rsquo;ve mastered these skills, you can teach your children to do it. It&rsquo;s an easy and necessary skill.&rdquo;



<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/formal.gif" width="408" height="263" alt="Formal Place Setting" />

<a href="http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/thanksgiving/thnkmeal.html">

A Meal Without Forks and Other Feast Facts:

• The pilgrims didn’t use forks; they ate with spoons, knives, and their fingers. They wiped their hands on large cloth napkins which they also used to pick up hot morsels of food.
• Salt would have been on the table at the harvest feast, and people would have sprinkled it on their food. Pepper, however, was something that they used for cooking but wasn’t available on the table.
• In the seventeenth century, a person’s social standing determined what he or she ate. The best food was placed next to the most important people. People didn’t tend to sample everything that was on the table (as we do today), they just ate what was closest to them.
• Serving in the seventeenth century was very different from serving today. People weren’t served their meals individually. Foods were served onto the table and then people took the food from the table and ate it. All the servers had to do was move the food from the place where it was cooked onto the table.
• Pilgrims didn’t eat in courses as we do today. All of the different types of foods were placed on the table at the same time and people ate in any order they chose. Sometimes there were two courses, but each of them would contain both meat dishes, puddings, and sweets.

<a href="http://www.pilgrims.net/plymouth/thanksgiving.htm">THE FIRST THANKSGIVING</a>: &ldquo;Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims seem to go together, just like Christmas and Santa Claus &mdash; but the truth is, the Pilgrims never held an autumnal Thanksgiving feast. Before you cancel the turkey, take a look at the origin of that particular myth. In some ways, the truth is even more intriguing.&rsquo;

<a href="http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/turkeys.html">Slow Food USA</a>: &ldquo;We think of turkeys as uniquely American, yet the birds that our forefathers knew and cherished, the bird that has become the symbol of sharing and thanks for the bounty of this land, has become virtually extinct. The population of the Narragansett, the oldest turkey variety in the United States, and once the foundation of the New England turkey industry has been reduced to fewer than 100 live birds, nationwide. Jersey Buff, an historic variety of the mid-Atlantic region, is a turkey whose diet includes foraging. Fewer than 500 exist today. The Bourbon Red Turkey was developed in Bourbon County Kentucky, and became an important commercial bird in that region, but by the 1930s and 1940s, it couldn&rsquo;t compete with the hugely popular broad-breasted varieties. Neither could the magnificent American Bronze turkey and it lost its preeminence in the market to the broad-breasted Large White in the 1960s.



&ldquo;The heritage turkeys all have richly flavored meat, succulent and juicy, and they are naturally well proportioned, which means that have a larger quantity of the flavorful dark meat than the more recent chest-heavy breeds. The heritage turkeys are hardier than the Large White birds, and farmers can raise them outside in fresh air and where they can have an opportunity to forage, both of which affects the quality of the meat. Unlike the commercially dominant Large White, the heritage turkeys can fly and breed naturally.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2003-11-25-slowfood_x.htm">USATODAY.com - &lsquo;Slow Food&rsquo; movement gathers momentum</a>: &ldquo;<a href="http://www.slowfood.com/" title="Slowfood.com">Slow Food</a> aims to be everything fast food is not. It's slow &mdash; in the making and the eating. It's fresh &mdash; not processed. It&rsquo;s from neighborhood farms and stores &mdash; not from industrial growers such as Tyson Foods or retail goliaths such as Wal-Mart.&rdquo;

<a href="http://www.cooksillustrated.com/turkeyhelp/top10.html">TurkeyHelp-from the editors of Cook's Illustrated</a>: &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t even put the summer clothes away for the season and it&rsquo;s already time to plan the annual cooking of the bird. You do recall that last year&rsquo;s turkey was, well, a real turkey. The meat was tough, dry, and tasteless. How to prevent this year&rsquo;s meal from going to the birds? Here&rsquo;s our list of the top 10 mistakes to avoid.&rdquo;