Turkeys, Challenges, Sprouts, and Oysters - Oh My!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

It’s November and that means one thing: it’s Turkey Day Challenge month!  Contributors to Farm to Philly will be sharing their favorite Thanksgiving dishes with you all month long!  My own Thanksgiving should be interesting this year.  My in-laws have been coming for Thanksgiving dinner for the last couple of years, but this year my own parents might be joining us.  This puts me in a bit of a pickle - while my mother will at least try anything you put in front of her, my stepfather is deeply suspicious of high-falutin’ cooking (and when I say “high-falutin” I mean that anything other than plain old mashed potatoes with milk and butter, for instance, is considered bizarre and potentially dangerous).  And so I might need to do a lot of cooking this year - stuff that I want to make, as well as stuff that my stepfather will eat.

Oh, and speaking of Thanksgiving, Fair Food Farmstand is now taking orders for Thanksgiving turkeys.  They’ve got naturally raised turkeys from Green Meadow for $2.99/lb, certified organic turkeys from Lancaster Farm Fresh for $4.50/lb, and Bourbon Red heritage breed turkeys from Griggstown for $6.50/lb.  If you’re trying to save a bit of cash, you might consider signing up to volunteer at Fair Food - volunteers get a discount.  I’m a seasonal volunteer, and my first shift back after dragon boat season was this past Saturday morning.  Stop by and say hello if you’re around - I’ll be there loading up vegetables, bagging spinach, and wrapping cheese every Saturday from 7:30am to around 11am.

My first contribution to the Turkey Day Challenge is a very simple way to prepare brussels sprouts: brown halved sprouts in olive oil with finely chopped bacon.  That’s like crack in a bowl right there.  I don’t eat bacon too often because I don’t like the texture, but I do like the bacon available from the Fair Food Farmstand.  I believe it’s double smoked bacon from King’s Butcher Shop - nice, thick bacon.  My husband, who generally thinks brussels sprouts taste like dirt, will eat brussels sprouts this way.  For him, bacon makes everything taste better.  For an extra special dish, use walnut oil in place of olive oil.  Delicious!

As an unrelated aside, my husband and I had dinner at Ansill’s last night (I had the Trick or Meat Halloween special - squid cooked in its own ink, a skewer of beef hearts and veal kidneys, and Tongue in Cheek - a bowl of veal cheek and pig tongue with white beans and pumpkin.  Everything was delicious!).  On the appetizer menu they offer raw oysters - the oysters of the day were Cape May Salt Oysters.  Offal aside, I would have gone to Ansill’s just to have the locally grown oysters!