Music and Cats

Yesterday morning, Paul was out of bed early to a) make coffee, b) bring a cup to me in bed (thank you, sweetie), and c) get the enormous local turkey that I’d insisted on buying into the oven. After I’d had my first few sips of coffee, I sleepily padded downstairs to watch the turkey prep. Paul was just cutting the bird out of its plastic bag. I knew that this turkey was special - organic, pasture-raised - but I didn’t expect it to look special. This turkey was big-boned, with a heavier frame than those of its poultry-farm cousins, bred for large breasts and little bones. And this turkey must have been a runner; its drumsticks had muscle definition. The carcass looked like it had once been a real bird.

The bag of giblets that Paul pulled out of its body cavity was the size of a small chicken; I put aside the 1 1/2 quart saucepan in which I usually simmer these bits (I come from giblet gravy people), and fit them into the 3-quart pan instead. Paul refilled the cavity with onions and herbs, seasoned the exterior, trussed the bird thoroughly, stuffed it into a roasting bag (which he swears by, and his results have given me no cause for complaint), and wrestled it onto the roasting rack.

It was only when he went to insert bird into oven that Paul made an interesting discovery: our new oven is not quite a 24- pound- turkey oven. Fortunately, the turkey was only 23.58 pounds, so it fit. Barely.

(That’s the one and only photo that I took the entire day. Shameful, I know, but I was busy.)

While Paul, my mother and I chopped, sauted, shredded, boiled, ground, and stirred, the turkey roasted quietly on its own. After three and a half hours, it appeared from the oven golden and fragrant, and looking not quite so frighteningly large as it had first thing in the morning.

Seven of us managed to eat our way through not quite a quarter of the turkey, as well as goodly amounts of everything else on the sideboard: cornbread dressing, gravy (both with giblets and without), mashed potatoes (the purple skins were particularly pretty against the white flesh), sweet potatoes (mashed with ginger, nutmeg and a little orange juice), brussels sprouts ( prepared like these but with shallots added… and yes, you would like them, though your 7-year-old might not), spiced cranberry sauce (made with local honey and apple cider), cranberry tangerine relish (like on the back of the bag, but made with tangerines rather than an orange) and Janeen’s delicious and beautiful squash rolls.

After two helpings each of dinner, we finished up with Paul’s yummy apple pie a la mode and plenty of good, strong coffee. Not enough coffee, however, to keep the tryptophan and sugar from having their way with us. I just hope that Janeen doesn’t post that photo of me falling asleep in my armchair…

So how did we do with the 100-mile Thanksgiving challenge? Not as well as I’d hoped we might. There were some dishes that neither I nor my family were willing to forego in the interest of eating locally. And there were some foods that I expected to be able to buy locally-grown, but couldn’t find in the time that I had for shopping. Here’s an accounting of the major ingredients in yesterday’s meal:

Local foods, bought directly from the producer:

• Turkey and Eggs - Skagit River Ranch, Sedro Woolley, WA - 75 miles
• Dairy products - Smith Brothers Farms, Royal City, WA - 138 miles
• Potatoes - Olsen Farms, Colville, WA - 216 miles
• Onions - Alvarez Farms, Mabton, WA - 148 miles
• Apples - Jones Creek Farms, Sedro Woolley, WA - 75 miles
• Honey - The Bee Ranch, somewhere on Whidbey Island, WA - 30-50 miles

Washington-grown foods from our locally-owned grocery store:

• Herbs - Snoqualmie River Ranch, Duvall, WA - 19 miles
• Cranberries - Ocean Spray is a co-op of growers from MA, WI and WA. I assume our berries are from Washington’s Cranberry Coast, near Grayland, WA - 99 miles

Grown beyond Washington, from our locally-owned grocery store:

• Cornmeal, Flour - from Bob’s Red Mill, in Milwaukie, OR. Of course the grains aren’t from there
• Orange juice - somewhere far to the south of here

Grown beyond Washington, mostly in California, bought at Sosio’s Produce at Pike Place Market:

• Brussels sprouts - I’ve eaten locally-grown, but I couldn’t find any this week
• Celery - the local farmer from whom I’ve bought celery previous years said his didn’t grow this year
• Sweet potatoes (yams, really) - these don’t grow around here; probably from Louisiana

My parents brought the tangerines from Texas. (They also brought some delicious ruby red grapefruit from my sister’s back yard! However, those weren’t part of dinner.) And then there are the items that we had around the house, bought at various times from various places: yeast, baking powder, sugar, salt, coffee, spices, spices, and more spices.

I’d guess that about 50% of the food in yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner was raised/ grown/ produced in Washington state, slightly less than that within 100 miles of Seattle. (If we measured by weight of ingredients, that 23.58 pound turkey would skew the local percentage higher.)

All this writing about food has made me hungry. It’s past dinnertime, and some leftovers are calling my name. I also have another loaf of no-knead bread that should be ready to go into the oven right about now. More on that later.

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