So it's two days after Holy Innocents' Day (thus the HI Day + 2) and it brings to mind one of my favorite carols, that being the Coventry Carol. Done in a minor key, it laments the day Herod the King sent his troops to Bethlehem to kill all male children 2 and under.
What? You expect happiness and sweetness over all 12 Days of Christmas? Over one of the happiest story arcs in The Bible? Hah.
The original Gospels aren't all light and sweetness. Men forced to travel to their birth towns for a grand census, a very pregnant lady forced to travel on an ass' back, no room in the inn, few paying attention to what was really going on, and then a year later a couple and a child being forced to run away at night to a foreign country in order to avoid the wholesale slaughter of male children.
See? Not all sweetness and light.
So we get the Coventry Carol, a Medieval carol from Coventry England (15th Century) as part of Christmas pageants put on by some guilds. What sets it apart from many carols is, well, the subject, that being as I said above the wholesale slaughter of male children under two. And the viewpoint of the song, which is the lullaby mothers were singing to their children while Herod's thugs came down the street.
Can you imagine, trapped in a town, knowing that your son is going to die and then trying to make his last moments somewhat happy before he's rudely jerked from your grasp and dashed or stabbed or stomped to death in front of you?
Well, yeah. Not so happy Christmas, no?
And then it's from Coventry, the city that was sacrificed to the Nazis in order to keep secrets.
Doom upon doom...
So here's Libera, a boy's choir, singing the Coventry Carol.
So I went shopping for Christmas dinner, and was unhappily surprised that the normal store brand turkey breasts were all gone, basically not available after Thanksgiving weekend. The only choices left were a national brand of salt-lick turkey that is overly brined and salted, and... organic turkey breasts. Free range non-gmo non-hormone antibiotic-free all-natural organic turkey breasts.
Seeing as I had real science back in the day, to me 'organic' means anything involving organic molecules. Like what makes our food. Or benzene. So I loudly blather in the store about good inorganic foods, especially ones made with lithium, lead, cobalt and uranium. Tasty tasty cobalt... In other words I despise the whole 'organic' movement.
I ended up with two 'organic' breasts. Grudgingly. Really grudgingly.
Then I got sick Christmas Eve, and the old nose went sideways. I could still smell, just everything was tainted with the smell of sinus infection. Bleh.
Christmas Day I pop the organic breasts in the oven and at the prescribed time I removed them from the oven (yes, I set the heat correctly so they were actually cooked) and didn't think that I didn't smell the wonderful smell of roasted turkey. Which should have been a portent of what was to come.
After letting the breasts rest, I got to cutting one up for to serve with dinner and noticed that the texture of the breasts was decidely more spongy and jello-y than the breasts (regular inorganic somewhat brined fed gmo and pumped with hormones and antibiotics) we had at Thanksgiving. Forebrain being slightly addled, hindbrain started screaming, middlebrain didn't connect the dots...
Flavorless. Mushy. Spongy. Like hospital food, but with less flavor. And this is after using my secret rub (black pepper and pountry seasoning.) Even the drippings were this weird snotty wet mess, not brown juicy fatty tasty drippings.
But I persevered (or was sick stupid) and kept eating Christmas Dinner, which was overall very flavorful except for the organic spongy turkey. I made turkey sandwiches, where the lettuce had more flavor than the turkey. Made more for Tuesday's dinner (we love Turkey Dinner for several days afterwards because normally tasty.)
And then Mrs. Andrew got intestinally sick. And Kegan the wonderdog (who licks our plates clean after eating) got intestinally sick. Me who normally is somewhat loose got bound-up tight.
What did I learn from this? Organic food is expensive and sucks donkey droppings. Bleh. Next year I'm buying all the breasts at Thanksgiving and keeping Christmas turkey in the freezer.
I would have done better going to McDonalds (for the meat portion only) and that's saying a lot.
So much so that I threw the meat away, in the storage containers, along with a container of the drippings and vow never to purposely eat 'organic' food ever again.
You can pry my non-GMO, hormone fed, antibiotic treated, forced grown, torture meat from my cold dead hands. You globalist rat-bastids.
Otherwise, Merry Christmas, and hope your favorite team wins their bowl games, and your New Year's Day is bright.
As someone who believes in long term food storage, when loss leader turkey season comes around, I usually process a few turkeys each year. I used to pressure cook them and can the meat, but lately I have been drying and vacuum sealing it. All that to say I noticed that this years birds had a noticeably greater amount of fluid in them, paying for less meat and more water. This made for a larger yield of broth, made from all of the bones and skin, other unusable parts like tail and wing tips, and leftover liquid from cooking, but still felt like I had paid an inflated price. Still it was basically the only game in town for what I do.
ReplyDeleteI only have so much freezer space, but next year I'll make room. Dammit. Best Economy EVER! And sodas, which went up $.50 a 2-liter 2 years ago, have just gone up another $.50/2 liter. Shopping for Thanksgiving wasn't as expensive as Shopping for Christmas. Best Best Economy EVER!!!
DeleteAs to rendering down carcasses, well that's a quick way to get my lovely wife very ill. I have an 80 quart stock pot, but ain't allowed to use it any more. Normally the turkey breasts produce enough drippings to make broth to cover making pot pies for the year. I'll have to scrimp with what I have in turkey meat and drippings from Thanksgiving.
Well, that's one Christmas dinner that misdelivered, hoping that the three of you have recuperated after that. Stocking up the freezer when you have the opportunity sounds like a plan. Hope the three of you have a Happy and healthier(!) New Year!! Well done choosing that vid Beans.
ReplyDeleteOh, that Christmas dinner is still delivering for the wife and the dog.
DeleteI don't understand when I go to the store and stock up on a sale item that I actually use, like 2 liter sodas or spagetti sauce and the check-out clerk or some random rando asks, "Having a party?" (usually followed by a chuckle or "Can I come?" and then a chuckle.) And they get really confused when I say, "No, just stocking up while the price is cheap, I mean, who wants to pay top dollar?"
I like Sting, and Libera. Combining the two was just a bonus goodness.
As to New Years', same to you and yours, Nylon12. Have a banging good time (reference to your handle...)
Beans, I was not introduced to the Coventry Carol until my adult years - perhaps not weird, given the subject matter. Poor Coventry - maybe all the "good" carols were hogged up by the other shires.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Organic: Like a lot of things, it does not mean precisely what it is billed as (for example, nowadays even certain pesticides are considered "organic" which would horrify the originators of the movement). In terms of practical in-store experience, it means that the fruits and vegetables go bad more quickly and they are more expensive.
Hoping you are all on the mend at this point!
The Church I grew up in, that being .mil Catholic Church, tended not to hide the warts and all of the goings on in the Gospels. Or in the hymns. But Mrs. Andrew (my wife) was the one that started looking up the history behind some carols and I didn't know the viewpoint of the Coventry carol until this year.
DeleteGeez, government stooges doing a lawful order. What a great subject matter. But then again, it is a medieval carol and medieval people were a lot closer to death doom and destruction than your ordinary American. Fatality (and government stooges doing lawful but awful orders) were a noticeable part of life back then. Harder to stick one's head in the sand and ignore the negativity around oneself in those days.
Argh! The organic crowd irks me. Hope you're all feeling better! (And thanks stepping up while I'm on vaca.)
ReplyDeleteOrganic. All-Natural. Buzzword bingo for crappy food and higher prices. I mean, Arsenic is all natural, so is Botulism, Small Pox, Leprosy, Killer amoebas, blood-born pathogens, Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Cholera and so much more. And most of them are also 'Organic' and 'Free Range' (especially thanks to open borders, leprosy is baaaack, along with Diphtheria and Cholera. Yay these wonderful modern times...)
DeleteI'm okay, dog is mostly okay, wife is embracing the Imodium and probiotic lifestyle right now...
As to stepping up, I think the one who should get big pat on back is John Blackshoe. He's guest-wrote quite a few real hits, with lots of history, rather than blathering on about songs and bowel disorders like I have. But thanks. Hope the family is doing well and you and The Missus are getting all the grandparenting done you need to get done.
Organic is a legal term owned, controlled & licensed by the federal government these days.
ReplyDelete'Organic' is just another buzzword where the true meaning has been destroyed by the 'progressive (another word where the true meaning has been destroyed)' crowd. It's getting to the point where when I hear a word, used by those leaning to their left, my mind automatically brings up 'Real Definition' and 'Modern Leftist Definition.' Sad world we're living in.
Delete"Seeing as I had real science back in the day, to me 'organic' means anything involving organic molecules. Like what makes our food. Or benzene. So I loudly blather in the store about good inorganic foods, especially ones made with lithium, lead, cobalt and uranium. Tasty tasty cobalt... In other words I despise the whole 'organic' movement."
ReplyDeleteOh good! I'm not the only one! I also taunt the people who tout things as "all natural and organic" by saying things like :"Cockroaches and rat feces are all natural and organic." I get the commercial version of "The Look" I get from SWMBO at my bad puns. I'll also point out that there is no nutritional difference between organically grown and big agra foods. I think a lot of people believe that the "organic" label means "hand grown on a small local farm run by the elderly lesbian couple" (usual disclaimer: not that there is anything wrong with being the elderly lesbian couple) rather than on a big agra Less Efficient and Therefore More Expensive Organic Farm.
Re: Cooking. You don't use a thermometer? I've been using one of the probe types for a while now, insert probe, put roast into oven, run line out to receiver unit and set unit to desired temperature - tell SWMBO to please listen for it because I'm not likely to hear it. In the top 5 of Best Kitchen Gadgets.
Oh, I can rant for hours about food and organic and all-natural and non-GMO and non-Hormone and free-range and farm-to-table and all the other buzzwords used by modern food weirdos.
DeleteFugedaboutit. I've tried buzzword food and found it to be... unless it's a tomato or something grown and harvested directly to my table by me walking 50 feet from the back porch... lacking in any significant difference. I don't smoke, don't drink alcohol so my taste buds only get messed up by sinus issues which until recently haven't been an issue, so I know very well what food tastes like.
What kills some of the flavor of modern fruit is that it's picked green, cold-stored and force-ripened by evil gas of death (that being CO2.) Which makes for blander flavor than ripened on vine or tree. That's the only difference.
And don't get me started on Farmers' Markets. Most of the produce you find at those places comes from produce suppliers and the 'farmers' just crossload into their own containers and then charge premium prices. Hmmm... yet another food scam.
As to cooking, yes, I use an oven thermometer, meat thermometer and an oil/candy thermometer all the time. I cook my birds 5-10 degrees higher than 'recommended' and even doing that the crappy organic garbage still was, well, crappy organic and very expensive garbage. I don't have one of those fancy dancy electronic sensors because my personal aura/force field/electrical emissions tend to destroy small electrical/electronic devices like watches, electronic temperature probes (I've had, oh, 8 electronic temp/thermometers over the years and I kill them. Cell phones are a tad more hardy, but my laptops tend to die about twice as fast as other peoples.
Farmers markets used to be a place for good deals on pretty good produce. Not anymore. Onions at $3 to $6 per pound? Honey that in the store is $20 is $34 at the FM. Ground pork, $14/#.
DeleteWe have started using them, though. There's a federal Seniors Nutrition program that gives you $50 of vouchers to use on produce and honey. Plus there are Seniors Bounty Bucks here, $40/month to use at the FM. I'm unclear if that's per household or per person, twice this last 6 months we got $80, four times got $40. When I contacted the person who runs it here her reply hinted that we should each be getting the $40 per month. Either way, we'd be stupid to not take advantage of it. We've paid into it in taxes for decades, why not get a benefit from it?
Oh! Er can also use them for live plants...herbs and such.
Hmmm... Not adverse to some free money if I can find it. My grandma used to run stuff like that in California before the state went weird.
DeleteRe: Trendy buzzwords https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HliCZh4t5ys
DeleteThis lady is a hoot-and-a-half!
More excellent culinary, food prep, and cookery tips!
ReplyDeleteJB
Thanks. I just want cheap mass-grown and mass-slaughtered meat for my table. Is that so hard to find these days?
DeleteA few years ago I happened to drive behind a Whole Foods Market, and there, behind the store, waiting to be flattened for bundling, were the same kinds of Swift Packing House boxes that you see at Safety, Albertsons, Lucky, etc Alia.
DeleteAll the World's a Scam, as Shakespeare would say if he was alive today. Yep, same processing plant services pert near everyone, unless the store owns its own.
DeleteSorry you were sick, hope you're both over it now. Nice dig by the way! Haha.
ReplyDeleteWhat's that line from the second greatest medieval movie ever? Oh, yeah, "I'm getting better..."
DeleteAs to the dig, nothing irks me more than whackadoodles saying "follow the science" when they aren't, in fact, following the science.
I meant the dig at me!
Delete"(yes, I set the heat correctly"
DeleteAh. Well, unintentional dig. I have perfected turkey to a zen state so I don't really have to think about how do do it. Considering that I was basically a zombie and yet still managed to get the temp set, the breasts cleverly arranged and rubbed (gotta rub the breasts, don't cha know) and did temp test the breasts at the right time, the only thing that could have gone wrong was the damned birds.
DeleteBut, well, it was a good dig. Yes yes, a very good dig.
Come on, y'all! There is only ONE way to cook a turkey. DEEP FRY!
ReplyDeleteOf course, you should check with your nearest aviation regulatory body first to make sure you have sufficient clearance over the cooking area...
I am one of those that believes that fried turkey is an afront to Heaven, and we should roast the bird using whatever roasting methods we have available.
DeletePlus, well, I have an oven I use year round. Outdoor frying system that uses oil, where the heck would I put it in my 600 sqft apartment or my 10x10 rented storage shed, both which are crammed to the gills so to speak? And then there's the outlay for oil, as I can't use peanut and refuse to use oil only once or twice and then throw away. Plus I don't want the neighbors joining in, and I think the apartment manager would have something to say about it, too.
So, oven roasted. Which I normally like, as long as the base ingredient, that being a decently brined and thawed turkey breast from the store, is not some weird expensive buzzword-bingo version of food. The turkey would have sucked donkey doo-doo if I had fried it, pan-seared it, filleted it and done some weird esoteric sous-vies thingy, covered its happy ass with gold leaf and carefully cooked it over artisanally harvested exotic woods in a hand-made roasting pan done in the French tinned copper style. Seriously, in this case there was no making the crappy ingredient any better other than keeping it frozen and using a trebuchet to chuck it at one's enemy(ies).
Bleh.
Heh, well spoken Sir Beans.
DeleteNot a knight, just a squire, sadly. Not good enough in the tourneys to make it to knight. Now I am a baron so there's that, if going with my SCA career...
DeleteIn real life, just an office drone, so again, not an officer-class person. Sigh.
On the other hand, I'm still married after 37 years...
I'm glad we've all survived of eating adventures, and am unhappy for tho unpleasantnesses experienced. I don't "temp" everything I cook, but frequently. Prepping and cooking at Loaves and Fishes, we temp a lot. Before and after cooking (we worry about donated foods having been thawed and refrozen unintentionally.). I carry cooking thermometers (probe and IR) in my knife kit, and we have more at home.
ReplyDeleteThermoWorks ONE is a game changer.
(Thermoworks gear is expensive; it's great gear and they do have great sales, you can get most things 25%-50% off if you wait.)
I've always used just what I could buy at the grocery store, and have never been surprised (as long as I use quality foods, that is.) Fault wasn't in the equipment or the prep, fault was definitely in the meat. And there's only so much room for new gear. Sadly.
DeleteIf given half a chance and a boatload of money, my bedroom would be about 2' wider and longer. The bathroom would be at least double the size. The kitchen about 5' longer, maybe 2' wider. Then there's the equipment pantry (at least 10x10,) the cold pantry for freezers and extra fridge (at least 10x10,) and a regular pantry for canned goods, flours and grains and spuds (at least 10x15, with shelves firmly attached to the walls, with rails on the front to keep stuff from falling, Cans above glass, glass above spuds, Paper and other stuff on top. And maybe a 10x10 room just for pans and other cooking equipment.