Filed under: Madeline Pawlbright
It seems you’ve got a bunch of snausages bogging down your OS. I’d be happy to take care of them for you.
I bill by the hour and prefer to be paid up front in kisses or face-nibbles, whichever is easiest.
Mmmm. Thank you for your business.
Time for our first foray into Christmas lights! We decided to err on the side of good taste and go with a rim of icicles around the front porch and a splash of light to accent the wreath Kir picked out.
We were contemplating a lighted cast iron sleigh or perhaps a wicker moose for the front yard, but didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew.
If you’d been staking out the Liu’s house on Thanksgiving evening, at some point you would have seen me sneak out their front door cradling a roasting pan hurriedly covered with tin foil. If you’d pulled me over for a seemingly minor traffic infraction and asked me to pop the hatch, you would have found the butchered and cooked carcasses of two turkeys hidden in my trunk.
I’ve read for the longest time that one has zero cred as a home-spun foodie if one hasn’t tried making stock, and I can see why. It’s just that everytime I happen to have a decent pile of bones I have no where to store them or I do, and I freeze them, and three months later I wonder why there is a freezer-burned chicken skeleton lurking in the back of the Frigidaire.
So this Thanksgiving I decided to give stock making the old college try. Once Kir and I got settled in Pennsylvania, we started buying birds whole again (you pay a lot less per pound if you do the nasty stuff yourself) and kept the rack of a grass fed chicken frozen. I swiped the remains of the Liu-family thanksgiving fowl (one of which was a quite tasty, local, grass-fed turkey) and that gave me the weight to make stock in significant quantity
First step is to take the cooked birds and strip off any bits of good meat that the carver missed (raw remains can go right in the pot). This process is likely to make your hands a greasy mess, and bits of debris are bound to end up on the floor. Save yourself clean-up time by investing in one of these (literal) puppies.
If you are fastidious (and the person carving your turkeys was in a big hurry), you can recover this much turkey sandwich and turkey salad meat:
Now would be a good time to wash out any rogue stuffing that lodged inside the rack. Then break everything down so that it can be compacted in the pot and not take up more space than necessary. Fill the pot with enough water to cover the scraps and let her boil.
See that sea-foamy garbage that rises to the top? Bring it down to a slow boil so you can skim that off. Then add a couple of quartered onions, a few split carrots, some celery stalks (if you’re into that sort of thing), and many handfuls of peppercorns. It so happened that I had a whole jar of pink peppercorns salvaged from the Fowlkes family’s Brooklyn apartment, which is good because black peppercorns wouldn’t have looked so delicious on camera.
And now you simmer, simmer, simmer. If you are in cooking school or just plain anal, your drill-sergeant soup instructor or your neuroses (respectively) will force you to stand by your stock-in-progress for the next 6-8 hours, diligently monitoring and adjusting the temperature to maintain ideal conditions. An “ideal” simmer is one where the water boils one single bubble at a time. Any faster and the boil will rough up your scraps and yield a cloudy stock. Any calmer and the stock will take forever to form (if at all). Oh yeah, you also have to refill the stock every hour or two as water evaporates and return it to a delicate simmer.
I, for one, am not in cooking school, am not (normally) anal retentive, am not planning on making crystal clear consomme with my stock, and am trying to finishing work on the bathroom while all of this is going on. So I try to keep it at a slow simmer, but if it boils a little… no big deal.
When your little hoover makes this face, you know your floor is clean. Time to put her away!
After many, many hours of simmering you should be able to grab a bone with a pair or tongs and crush it without much ado. You’re done! Take out the scraps and let your stock pot cool on the back porch until morning.
This is a little sample that I poured off and stuck in the fridge. You can see it really isn’t that clear (I’m an amateur after all), and the cold has caused the collagen to jelli-fy (dark cloudy areas), but that’s what makes soups and sauces made with stock so tongue-coating good: collagen.
In the morning, skim off any remaining scum from the surface and strain the stock through a cheese cloth a couple of times. Then pour it off into containers of your choice (1-cup, 3-cups, ice cube tray, etc.)
Here you see 27 cups of stocks of about a 40 cup yield (I already used some for soup, it was amazing). Let’s put that in street value: 2 cups of FreshDirect brand stock sell for 2.99 online, based on those numbers I just made almost $60 out of some spent turkey bones, mirepoix, and water. Now I can make great soups and sauces without making myself a slave to Swanson!
Filed under: Rants
Patrick was recently reunited with two lost loves:
His laptop, which was being repaired, and JW Dundee’s Honey Brown, which didn’t really go anywhere but now has some fancy new branding and five other “craft” ales, lagers, porters, hefeweizens, etc. It isn’t much, but it’ll do until he tracks down some Shiner Bock (I’ve got eye-witness accounts of Shiner in the DC metro area and rumors that it’s made it as far as Delware–expect a jubilant post soon!)
Filed under: Family
November 13, 2008
at 2:31 pm
22 inches
9 pounds 9 ounces
the world welcomed Colin William Gilligan!
Isn’t he a handsome bugger?
Congrats to Lauren, Greg and Kerianne on the new addition!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Right before we were to leave for my parents house to celebrate Thanksgiving I walk into the kitchen and see this:
I’m pretty sure prepping your baguettes in reverse-Donald Duck is not kosher with the health department but hey, they still tasted delicious and he didn’t get his nice clothes all flour-y. Smart guy!
So I am insanely late in posting this but a few weekends ago was the wonderful wedding of Amy and Nick. So in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m giving thanks that 1-they are finally married after 2+ years of waiting and planning and obsessing, 2-that these two amazing people have joined the ranks of the married and 3-that I have been blessed with two people who I consider family. Since I was in the wedding I wasn’t able to take any photos but Patrick took a few and to supplement here’s a smattering of his and other peoples that I stole off Facebook…thank god for the interweb:
Getting Amy in her dress. No lie, it took all 7 girls and Amy’s mom to get her in it with her falling over! it was worth it though because she looked amazing!
Here’s me looking like her very sweet (not at all wicked) stepsister, helping her on with her shoe. She’s didn’t see her own feet all day under that huge skirt!
Here’s the bride posing sexily in the limo…and my back ruining the shot.
Amy being walked down th aisle by her brother Kevin. Such a happy moment!
I just love this photo. I think it was right after the priest announced them husband and wife and Amy was so excited she squeezed her shoulders up and, man, it was just so adorable! What a great moment!
Here’s the whole crew in the limo after the ceremony. it was a packed house and we were on our way to have a ton of fun at the reception.
Here’s the happy couple on the dance floor.
I’ll try to hunt down some photos and post later. Many apologies to Amy for not having more to show her! I love you, Ames!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today I went to my MumMum’s house so she could teach me how to make her wonderful, delicious turkey stuffing that we eat each and every Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s a tradition I don’t ever plan on giving up because it’s hands down the best stuffing in the whole world. Make it for yourself and see:
This recipe is enough for a 22 lb turkey.
First you start off with your bread. Nice, plain ole white bread and a lot of it (2.5 large loaves).
Note: Using a pro-Irish bowl helps with the flavor. Break the bread into small, but not too small, pieces. Salt and pepper lightly (Don’t worry, you’ll do it again).
Then for he special ingredients, marjoram and thyme leaves. I was told to only use McCormicks and to make sure they are leaves, not ground. I don’t mess with MumMum’s proclamations.
Sprinkle about 1/4 of the small jar of each spice for all the bread.
Add 1/3 of the celery. Then, lightly mix the bread with your hands, giving light squeezes but don’t mush it!
Repeat this 3 times, mixing each time. You’ll end up with about 1/4 of the thyme and marjoram leaves left over. Don’t use more than this or it’ll be too strong.
Now on to the stove top!
Heat a large, deep pan on the stovetop on medium high heat. If you are MumMum, heat 2 to move a little faster. These are the things you invest in when you make stuffing for a large family for 40+ years.
Next, get your other ingredients ready. Finely chop about 3 stalks of celery, 1 large white onion and a little more than half a package of bacon.
If you are using 2 pans like we are, sprinkle 1/4 of the bacon in each pan.
And now for the most important ingredient, BUTTER!
Add about a half stick of butter to each pan and mix it with the bacon. Be careful not to let the bacon burn or get too crispy.
Next add 1/4 of the onion to each pan and stir.
Then add 1/4 of the seasoned bread to each pan.
This part is very important. You much stir constantly. Not occasionally. Not sporaditcally. You must stir and flip the bread to prevent it from toasting. I was told this is the most important part of the process. If you aren’t vigilant you risk ruining the stuffing!
After about 5 minutes of stirring the stuffing should be slightly browner but the bread should still be soft with only a few toasty parts. it looks something like this:
Once it’s finished, pour it into a stock pot to store and do it all over again, 3 times if you used one pan or once more in 2 more pans. Once you are all finished you will have enough of this gorgeous stuffing to fill a giant bird or a smaller bird with some left over. I recommend making in inside the bird, not in a casserole dish, for the ultimate experience.
Big thanks to my MumMum and to her mom who she learned it from. We are lucky to have her pass this yummy tradition on to us and we’ll surely be enjoying it for many years to come. Thanks, MumMum! I love you!
Filed under: Uncategorized
So earlier you caught a glimpse of the water damaged wall. Here’s another look at what we found when we started poking around.
Basically the previous owner didn’t bother getting a nice, shiny new front porch or coat of waterproofing paint and water got in through spauling (crumbly holes) in the exterior stucco. So, many years worth of moisture was trapped in the wall until Dad went at it with a putty knife. (Yes, a single putty knife did all of this).
We always knew the house was a very old stucco over stone construction, but we never understood what that really meant. The stuff that holds together the stones that hold up our house is an ancient mixture of horse hair and sand. Let me repeat that: horse hair…. and sand.
Needless to say I coated the exposed equine mortar with a concrete adhesive to make it solid and un-sandy and something like modern concrete. The contractor who was working on our front porch helped out by sending his guys in with a bucket of hydraulic cement to shore things up for another 200 years.
Now all we lack is a good sanding, a skim coat of spackle, a slab of sheetrock for below the chair rail, and a paint job. Hmm. Paint…. Maybe something like this:
The finished (flooring aside) dining room. Many thanks to Dad, Mom, and Drew for the help.
Earlier in the post I mentioned the contractors working on replacing our front porch roof, which used to look like this:
And here’s the finished product from the front…
It looks great, which is a testament to our carpenters’ patience and skill. A stucco/stone wall doesn’t keep square as it settles for 200 years or so, and that means that all of the cross members and rafters had to be custom cut. And that’s a lot of rafters…
Pudgy jolly carpenter John with the deep deep tan claims that if you laid the far left rafter against the far right one, they would differ by 4-5 inches. Sheesh.
One last fix-up we handled with Dad here was the side deck off of our utility room. It needed new treads, new rail caps, new spindles, lag bolts, a power washing, bleach, and water seal. Turns out you have to have more than 48 consecutive hours above 50 degrees Fahrenheit in order to apply the water seal. Maybe in the spring.
Bonus! I totally mowed the lawn. It took two different cuts, adding up to over three hours of pushing. Uncle-in-law John Nolan’s mower is NOT self-propelled, a feature worth looking into if you care about your lower back. And on that note I’ll be heading to bed.
1-The New House and Renovations
So we are in the new house and finally feeling a little settled. So far we have had the entire outside of the house painted:
The front porch is being reroofed and should be finished next week. Helen and Phil, Patrick’s parents, drove up from Arkansas and arrived on Monday evening to help us get started with a few home improvement projects. We painted the dining room, put some new spindles and steps on the deck, hung bars in the bathroom and attempted to fix the door to the office closet. We were all set to paint the living room when the guys decided to investigate a spot that looked like it had some water damage to see if it needed to be patched or what. Well, it was “or what”. A little poking and prodding led to this:
Needless to say I was traumatized to see the lower front wall of my living room crumble in chucks before my eyes. There are a few other spots that need patching so once we get this all figured out we’ll post some pics of the finished product.
Living in an old house has always been something Patrick and I have wanted to do but there are some strange realities we didn’t expect
Reality 1-Nothing in the house is square. Apparently in the 1800s they didn’t have geometry.
Reality 2-We can’t hang crown molding. The walls are stone, thus impossible to nail or screw into without a bunch of rigamarole, and irregular, aka not smooth.
We’re sure other things will come up that need to be taken care of but right now we have our hands full so here’s to hoping that it stays relatively calm.
2-Puppy
On Sunday we brought home our first puppy!. Meet Madeline Pawlbright, aka Maddie:
She sleeps alot. (Yes, we’re thankful for that part of her basset side!)
She LOVES her crate and her new bed from Helen.
This is what she looks like when she is BEGGING the cats to play with her and they are hissing in fear on the other side of the short blockade we’ve set up to protect them (and their food) in the mud room. Note: even with her very short legs, with a running start Maddie can leap over the short blockade which then does not protect the cats.
Drew came up for the day and she showed her soft underbelly. What a pushover!
She’ll be joining Chairman Meow and Fidel Catstro in trying to take over the world, if they can ever stop barking and hissing at each other.
3-Fauxgiving
On Tuesday we had a first holiday meal! We won’t be seeing Helen and Phil for Turkey Day so we moved Turkey Day up a few weeks. It was a huge success. It was the first turkey I’ve ever made and it was pretty yummy. (Full disclosure: Helen made the turkey with the recipe I provided and I dutifully stood by and learned. But it was my receipe!) Also on the menu were sour cream mash potatoes, bussell sprouts, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin cheesecake. The brussell sprouts and pumpkin cheesecake were such a hit that I’ve been asked to make them for real Thanksgiving (recipes on StegaliuRecipes).
4-Work
Because of the lousy economy my contract was cut short and last week was my last week in NYC. I was sad to leave so suddenly and didn’t get to see everyone I wanted before I left but I am happy to feel a bit more settled in PA. I am temping for the timebeing while interviewing for a 9-5 that won’t interfere with my classes. A headhunter found my resume online and is doing a lot of the legwork for me which is an interesting experience. We’ll see what comes of it.
Look forward to posts on Amy’s Wedding and Lauren’s new baby!!!
