<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38522-2001Oct23?language=printer">washingtonpost.com: Cooking Class: Lesson 10</a>: “Carving a Turkey”
I believe I agree completely!
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56185-2003Nov18.html">The Neo Thanksgiving (washingtonpost.com)</a>: “I believe in tradition. I believe in Thanksgiving. I believe in Thanksgiving tradition. I believe that there should be butter, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy and pie on the fourth Thursday of every November in the United States of America. I believe that Thanksgiving is a day on which people should gather to share food, friendship and love. I do not believe it is a day on which calories should be counted or guilt should be expressed at having eaten too much food, too many complex carbohydrates or too much saturated fat…
“As to general Thanksgiving decorum, I believe that guests at the table should feel comfortable and welcome and should express any documented dietary needs or preferences in advance, if need be, and that both new cooks and seasoned cooks should be happy to accommodate them. By that some token, if there is something on the table that the guests don’t want to eat, I believe that they, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, should refrain from eating it and not make a big deal out of it.
“I believe we are a nation that eats too much, a dangerous pattern. We eat the wrong stuff and we eat it in enormous portions. And this is a problem of grave concern that should be dealt with the day after Thanksgiving. In the meantime, after the apple pie, I believe we should push away from the table and go for a nice long walk.”
So… Do we need to eat or don’t we?
<a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1517&e=6&u=/afp/india_old_health_offbeat">
Yahoo! News – Doctors baffled as Indian man claims not to have eaten for 68 years: “An Indian man who claims divine inspiration says he has survived 68 years without eating, drinking or relieving himself, baffling doctors who are unable to prove him an imposter.”
Why do I keep a food log?
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11346-2003Nov24.html">Making This Holiday Season a Leaner One (washingtonpost.com)</a>: “Research suggests that two keys to weight maintenance are getting on the scale and tracking food intake and physical activity. ‘Self-monitoring and being accountable is something that we can’t say enough about,’ notes Joan Conway, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center. ‘It’s about managing your choices instead of just allowing the food to manage you. With just a little pre-planning, you can go almost anywhere and have almost anything to eat.’
“It’s that kind of planning and attention to detail that helps thwart holiday weight gain. Just jotting down what you eat — even if you don’t calculate exactly how many calories are included — helps reduce over consumption.
“‘Lots of studies suggest that the very act of recording food is going to help people make better choices about what they eat,’ notes [Jack Yanovski, head of the growth and obesity epidemic unit at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development], author of a 2000 study of holiday eating published in the New England Journal of Medicine. ‘Paying attention to what goes into your mouth helps you make active decisions about eating that you might not otherwise think about, like passing a desk and mindlessly picking up a piece of candy as you go by.’”
Food Log
Breakfast this morning was a bowl of cold cereal and a glass of orange juice.
I am going to start journaling my weight. This probably would have been more interesting [to me] had I done it all along, but now is as good a time to start as ever. When I started I weighed 180 pounds. After a little over three months, I am down to 162 as of this morning after breakfast. That is when I weigh myself — I understand that consistency is important because your weight may vary throughout the day. If I believe that weight, I have lost about a tenth of a pound a day for the last three months. I am not sure I trust that measurement though, since I think I remember weighing 165 yesterday. In fact, I have weighed 165 for several weeks now. It may be that it was not me that was stuck at 165, but rather the old bathroom scale we use. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/wink.png" height="18" width="18" alt="I am winking" />
I walked over to the Telecommunications Building to work this morning wearing my backpack. I managed to turn what is normally a one mile walk into a two mile walk. You see, you need an access card to get into the building, and half way over I remembered that I had left mine in my car so I had to walk back to get it. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/slant.png" height="18" width="18" alt="I am rolling my eyes" />
<ins datetime="2003-11-25T14:39:00-05:00">After walking from the Telecommunications Building to the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center for a presentation and back to University Support Building 2 — bringing my mileage for the day to around three miles — I just had a <a href="http://www.paydaybar.com/" title="PayDayBar.com > Can't Get Enough Peanuts? Try a PayDay Candy Bar!">PayDay Bar</a> (260 calories, 130 from fat).</ins>
<ins datetime="2003-11-25T18:43:00-05:00">Gretchen made a sautéed onion and pepper pizza for dinner, which we split, with 1½ <a href="http://www.sierra-nevada.com/beers/celebrationale.html" title="Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale">Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale</a>s. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/laugh.png" height="18" width="18" alt="I have a big grin" /></ins>
Free to Strut His Stuffing
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/pardoned-turkey.jpg" width="341" height="256" alt="Bird in hand: Stars looks pardonably pleased. Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite — AP" />
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11948-2003Nov24.html?referrer=email">Free to Strut His Stuffing (washingtonpost.com)</a>: “Only two turkeys a year get the [presidential pardon and are] therefore saved from ending up on a platter, surrounded by mashed potatoes and a horde of screaming relatives… Turkeys like [this one] have come to the White House every year since 1947 to be pardoned. President Clinton continued the tradition, which perhaps helps to assuage some of the national guilt over the fact that some 50 million turkeys will be slaughtered and eaten this Thanksgiving.”
Good Thing I Only Drink Spring Water
<a href="http://live.psu.edu/index.php?sec=vs&story=4819">Penn State Live</a>: “<strong>Important information about drinking water</strong><br />
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
“In October, as part of routine water quality monitoring, water within the Penn State water system was found to contain levels of <a href="http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/dw_contamfs/ethylene.html" title="EPA Ground Water & Drinking Water > Consumer Factsheet on: ETHYLENE DIBROMIDE">ethylene dibromide</a> (EDB) above State drinking water standards. Upon receipt of the test results, the University took action to isolate the source well and use alternate wells for the drinking water supply. The level of EDB found in the original sample was 0.13 parts per billion. A follow-up confirmation sample was non-detect. The state drinking water standard for EDB is 0.05 parts per billion.
“There is no immediate risk. Penn State officials have been working with the Department of Environmental Protection to investigate the source of the EDB and determine the best way to treat the well water to remove the EDB.”
Paper iTunes Music Store Gift Certificates?
If anybody wants to send me an <a href="http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?productLearnMore=D2683LL/A" title="The Apple Store (U.S.)"> iTunes Music Store Gift Certificate</a>, I would not complain too much. <img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/wink.png" height="18" width="18" alt="I am winking" />
Grandpa Linton’s Turkey Stuffing
Grandpa Linton’s Turkey Stuffing
Makes enough for an 18 pound turkey.
Ingredients
- 2 loaves white bread — dried (three days)
- 3 medium onions
- 2 green peppers
- 3 carrots
- 2 small apples
- 3 stalks of celery
- Heart, liver, giblets, neck (cooked)
- Sage (maybe 1 Tablespoon)
- Salt and pepper to taste (maybe 1 Tablespoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper)
Directions
My memory of — and the real secret — of my Grandfather’s stuffing is getting up before dawn to grind all of the ingredients using an old-fashioned hand grinder. I use a Porkert® type 5 Meat Mincer. Clamp your grinder to the edge of a convenient work surface. I keep a small shallow pan under the grinder. As it fills up, I pour it into a much larger bowl that will hold the whole lot for seasoning at the end.
Start by collecting the liver, giblets, and neck from the turkey. Place them in a small saucepan with just enough water to cover them. Simmer on the stovetop for 45 minutes. When done, drain the meats and allow them to cool. Pick the meat from the neck.
If your bread is not quite dry, spread it out on the racks of your oven and set the oven at the lowest setting (maybe 200°F) for the 45 minutes while you are cooking the meats on the stovetop. Be sure to crack the oven, otherwise you will simply make a steam bath for your bread.
Quarter your onions, peppers, and apples, and cut the celery and carrots into manageable sticks. Then gather all of your ingredients around the grinder.
The wetness, or dryness, of the dressing as you make it is a function of the order you grind it. You will make your life easier if you keep the mixture uniform. If parts of it are too wet, they will make a puddle in your pan and the dressing will stick. If parts of it are too dry, they will wad up when they hit the dry parts.
Here is what I do. Start with a piece of bread. Run it through the grinder to form a bed of breadcrumbs to keep the first wet ingredient — the wet ingredients are everything but the bread and seasonings — from forming a puddle. Next, choose a wet ingredient — a piece of onion, pepper, carrot, apple, or celery and the meats — and grind it. Then, switch back to bread. Then choose another wet ingredient. Choose a different wet ingredient each time to keep the mixture uniform. Continue, alternating wet and dry.
Save two slices of bread until after you have ground all of the wet ingredients. Grinding them last will help you get all of the juices into the stuffing instead of leaving them in the grinder.
When you have ground up everything, add the seasonings to the stuffing a little at a time while you stir.
Grandpa always stuffed the cavity, but I have been so conditioned that the world will end — and it will be my fault — if I stuff the cavity, I will be making this stuffing separately (technically, I guess that makes it dressing and not stuffing). In order to do that, I will need to account for the juices the turkey would have imparted. I am going to cook it in a greased, 9- by 13-inch baking dish in the oven along side the Turkey during the last hour before it finishes. Since the Turkey will still be in the oven, I will not have the opportunity to get the drippings, so I will use 1 cup of prepared chicken broth.
Nutritional Information
Serving size: ¾ cup.
Makes 15 servings.Bread: 3040 calories
Onions: 125 calories
Green peppers: 64 calories
Carrots: 93 calories
Apples: 125 calories
Celery: 19 calories
Heart, Liver, Giblets, Neck: ??? maybe 100 calories (a chicken liver is about 40 calories)Total: 3566 calories — or 238 calories per serving.
Preperation time: 2 hours.
Cooking time: 45 minutes.
Emoticons
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/smile.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-)" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/wink.png" height="18" width="18" alt=";-)" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/frown.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-(" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/slant.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-/" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/gasp.png" height="18" width="18" alt="=-O" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/laugh.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-D" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/kiss.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-*" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/yuck.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-P" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/embarrassed.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-[" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/footinmouth.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-!" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/cool.png" height="18" width="18" alt="8-)" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/angry.png" height="18" width="18" alt=">:-o" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/innocent.png" height="18" width="18" alt="O:-)" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/cry.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":'(" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/sealed.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-X" />
<img src="http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/m/h/mhl100/images/moneymouth.png" height="18" width="18" alt=":-$" />