The Start of Thanksgiving Cooking 2022

 I'll admit that I use broth in a box throughout the year. It's not that I can't make my own stock. I absolutely can. It's just that usually I have no room in my fridge or freezer to horde chicken or turkey carcasses.
That changed. Our old little chest freezer gave up the ghost on us. We didn't realize it, and we lost a full freezer full of food. We bought a new chest freezer, however. I stocked up on several turkeys and turkey breasts. We don't eat turkey nearly enough throughout the year. I made us a turkey dinner, using one of the frozen turkey breasts that I had squirreled away, just because, not long after we moved up here to Kelpie Kapers Farm. I found whole turkeys for 98 cents per pound at Walmart. I bought 3 of them. Likewise, I found turkey breasts at Safeway for $12 or less. I bought 2. I purposefully kept room in that chest freezer to store my bones so that I can start making my own stock. My goal is to become less dependent on the supermarket supply chain and slowly work over to using my own home produced items. I will start with growing amaranth and quinoa next year.
I'm getting ahead of myself. I tend to get a bit excited when I talk about my self-sufficiency goals.

Back to making stock. The key component to any successful and delicious Thanksgiving feast is a good homemade turkey stock. Safeway had turkey necks for sale. I bought a pack of 3 of them. They were a bit on the spendy side, at over $3, for a piece of turkey that nobody really ever thinks of...but I sure do! Not only do turkey necks make a delicious stock to use for dressing and/or gravy, the meat off of the necks is some of the most delectable meat on the whole bird! It's just a major pain in the keister to pick it off the bones. That's why I only do it when I want to make a dinner that I want to impress Bob with.

I decided a few weeks ago to start collecting vegetable scraps to make my turkey stock with. They hung out in the freezer for a bit.

I bought my vegetables for Thanksgiving with the idea of most of them being multipurpose. I'm adding chopped fennel to my dressing this year. I bought a fennel bulb with a lot of fronds and stalks on it so that I could use it in my stock. Not only that, but I saved my asparagus ends for the stock. A word to the wise and because my sister, Ginger, gave me a heads-up about putting asparagus ends into stock. Too many of them will cause your stock to have a bitter taste to it. Use them sparingly. I'll still save them because I like to use them to make cream of asparagus soup. That's a different blog post for another time, though. 

I added in a shallot that I simply cut in half. I didn't bother peeling it. There's no need. The solids are all strained out and discarded (except for the turkey necks). I added in 3 or 4 bay leaves, celery, carrots, a whole head of garlic that I cut in half. I left the skin on the head of garlic. It's like the shallot. There's no need to peel it. I also added in a couple of parsnips that had seen better days that I had in the crisper drawer.  I also added in some Penzey's Bavarian Herb blend. It has all the good stuff in it. Some kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper finished it all off.

I love that we have well water up here and we don't have to use city water. I added in 2 quarts of cold water and a good glug of a nice oaky chardonnay.
I put this over high heat just until it came to a boil and then I turned the heat down to low and let it simmer. It reduced by over a third. I added another half quart of water to it and let it condense down again.
When all was said and done, it took around 2-1/2 hours to get a quart of some rich looking turkey stock to use in my stuffing and gravy recipes on Thursday.

Cheers!

Autumn Garden Relish

 I believe our incredible warm weather streak has finally ended as of yesterday. It's not a moment too soon that we got that canopy up over the fifth wheel, either. I find it satisfying to walk outside and not get wet when it's raining out. Bob was so kind as to go out and gleen all the tomatoes off of the plants and pick all the beans. We're going to see if we can get our remaining zucchini to get a bit bigger before picking it. I will plant garlic this coming week and, after that freak hot weather streak through October wiped out all of my fall seedlings, I'm opting to not do much of a fall garden. I'll tackle it again next season.

I have a ton of unripe tomatoes. I've put up 5 pints of  Picalilli. I'm going to be canning up sliced green unripe tomatoes this afternoon so that we can enjoy fried green tomatoes this winter. Yesterday, I put up 6 pints of Autumn Garden Relish. I used this recipe from Healthy Canning as inspiration. Click here to view it.

Without further ado, let's dive right into this recipe.

This recipe starts out with a lot of finely chopped vegetables. I used cabbage (leftover from when I made Picalilli), cauliflower, unripe green tomatoes, onion, green pepper, red pepper and celery. This gets tossed in a bit of pickling salt and I left it to sit overnight in the fridge.

The next day, I drained this veg mixture. I prepped 6 wide-mouth canning jars by washing them in hot, soapy water and then I boiled them for 10 minutes. I left them to sit in the hot water until I was ready for them. In the meantime, I prepped the brine for this relish.

I started out by adding in the spices I would be using: mustard powder, turmeric and celery seed.

Then I added in sugar and white vinegar. This gets mixed up and brought up to a boil before you add the veg.

Once you add the veg, bring the mixture to a full rolling boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Everything will get a golden hue from the turmeric.

My stove only has 3 burners, so I wind up shuffling pots around so that everything has a place. I've finally got a system down that works for me.

These get processed in a water bath canner for 15 minutes.

Once these jars come out of the canner, I set them in a towel covered baking sheet (so that they can be moved easily) and I cover them in a couple of layers of towels. I want them to cool down slowly, over a 12-hour period. I don't want them to cool too quickly because that can actually weaken the jars.

After the jars are thoroughly cooled down and all the lids have sealed, I write what they are on the lid, date them, put them back into the box and we are storing these under our bed because it lifts up, it's very cool under there, it's dark and it seems like as good as place as any to put them. It's my canning pantry, so to speak.

Autumn Garden Relish

Yield: 6 pints

4 cups chopped cabbage
3 cups finely chopped cauliflower
2 cups chopped unripe green tomatoes
2 cups diced onions
1 cup diced green bell pepper
1 cup diced red bell pepper
1 cup diced celery
3 tablespoons pickling/canning salt
3-3/4 cup white vinegar
3 teaspoons celery seed
1-3/4 teaspoons turmeric
3 teaspoons mustard powder
2-3/4 cups white cane sugar

Mix all veg together with pickling salt. Put in fridge overnight.

While you are prepping the brine, let the veg drain thoroughly in a colander.
Mix all spices with sugar in a large pot. Add vinegar. Bring to a boil, lower heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Add drained veg. Bring back to a full boil, lower heat and simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Put into prepped jars, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Process in boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes. Turn off heat, let jars sit in hot water for 5 minutes then remove to cool completely for 12-24 hours.

Enjoy!