The New Turkey Sandwich

As inevitable as turkey on Thanksgiving, there is the post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwich. After all of the trimmings and stuffings and dressings and gravies and potatoes and sweet potatoes and pies and etc. etc. etc, there is something really comforting about the simplicity of a turkey sandwich.

Mine was a little less simple than most, but no less comforting. Sometimes change is comforting too. Besides, I forgot to take white meat leftovers, and only took a turkey leg home with us. The Mrs. prefers white meat, so getting her to dig into a turkey leg isn't as easy as it should be. When we started going together, she was a vegetarian. So, in the grand scheme of things, I'm making progress on her. But, we still get stuck on dealing with animal bones.

So, instead of being the only person who gets to eat turkey, I took all the meat off of the leg and chopped it very fine. My aim was to make a sort of turkey burger patty. Any stringy pieces and ligaments were thrown into my broth pot and not into the bowl of chopped turkey. I then opened up my frozen chicken broth container (which you should always have in your freezer if you are serious about eating well at home) and scraped some of the chicken fat off the top of the broth. I mix a little of that chicken fat with the turkey, after its been given a chance to thaw. I then pound all of the meat and fat together with a meat hammer. After pounding, shape the meat into two patties and cook on the skillet. The meat is already cooked, so you don't have to stress about getting it back up to 170 degrees in the center. You're just trying to warm it up. Even the microwave will do the job. Not my style though. While the patties cooked, I toasted a couple pieces of french bread, melted some swiss cheese on the bread, spread the bottom piece of bread with Lowensenf, a mustard for people who love mustard and wasabi. Put the patty on the bread, garnish with fancy salad greens, put top piece and melted swiss cheese on greens, and toothpick it together.

Everyone has their own favorite way to make a turkey sandwich. I want mine to be a sandwich worthy of the time and care put into making the turkey dinner in the first place. And this is it.

Thanksgivings

So, you might remember that I was thinking of making something for Thanksgiving with my in-laws this year.

Here is what I came up with:
1) Beer
2) Pecan Pie
3) Cranberry Sauce with Port and Cinnamon

I think I've said all there is to say about the beer for now, so that leaves the pecan pie and the cranberry sauce. I've never made a pecan pie, but I recently got my hands on some pie recipes from Bangs, Texas where my father's family is from. Those people know pecan pie, so I'm going to trust them. I'll do a test run, and report on a winning recipe to bring to Thanksgiving.

As for the cranberry sauce, I already know what to do there. There are few recipes that I am willing to follow verbatim. Often I like to add stuff where none is called for, and often I decide to make things at the last minute, and so use lots of substitutes. In this case, though, I follow this recipe to the T. It is a cranberry sauce that puts those crappy tin can shaped jelly cranberry sauces to shame. It's got, *gasp*, fresh cranberries! The cranberries are cooked in a sugary mixture of port and water and cinnamon sticks. If you love real (versus processed) food, you are going to LOVE this cranberry sauce.

I'll be the best urban farmer ever!

This guy is my hero! Ok, I don't really want a new old tractor (or any tractor for that matter), but he made his own honey! and then made it into Mead! Why aren't I making Mead?!? And he cured his own fresh ham into something of a Prosciutto di Parma!

This is getting me thinking that I would like to make something that I can bring to my in-laws for Thanksgiving. If I was at my family's house this year, I would probably smoke some turkey. But it really took years to get my family to get enthusiastic about my BBQ smoke ways. I don't know that my in-laws would fully appreciate the sort of sounds, smells, and mess that comes with me setting stuff on fire all day long. Plus Thanksgiving is hard enough without a major project to partake in throughout the day.

So... Why not Mead? Or at least a decent quality beer? The die is cast.