Tag Archive for 'thanksgiving'

Happy Thanksgiving!

Published
by
chrisandcamri
on November 25, 2008
in Food
. 1 Comment

Welcome to the brand new Tastebud Chicago.  We’ve made some improvements around here, adding the ability for you to comment, some new search functions, and some fancy tags to tie articles together.  We ditched our custom software for a pre-packaged blog.  It frees us up to focus on what’s really important, content, rather than getting bogged down in the technology.

Thanksgiving, to us, is the ultimate food holiday, so it’s an appropriate time to relaunch the site, and recommit to putting out regular updates.  Welcome back!  Also, on the technology front, if you’re on Facebook, you can become a fan of the site, check out the fancy new Tastebud Chicago Facebook page.

So…turkey.  Here’s our annual Thanksgiving postcard picture.  We adore it.

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn't mind knowing where our meat came from.

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn

Happy Thanksgiving!

Published
by
chrisandcamri
on November 21, 2007
in Home
. 0 Comments
A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn't mind knowing where our meat came from.

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn't mind knowing where our meat came from.

We have an awful lot to be thankful for this year. Thanks to you for continuing to read our site, and for writing us with your ideas. All our cooking plans are in place for the big day tomorrow, we’re going to try two new things, cooking the turkey on the grill, and making our own pie crust from scratch. The turkey is going to get a heavy dose of hickory smoke, with some sage, thyme, rosemary and chopped apples for cavity aromatics. Our pie crust is going to wrap itself around a pecan pie. Camri has a big list of side dishes, including buttermilk mashed potatoes, french bean salad, and glazed carrots with cider. Should be a great meal.

Hope you and yours have a great turkey day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Published
by
chrisandcamri
on November 22, 2006
in Food
. 0 Comments

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn't mind knowing where our meat came from.

A vintage postcard, from a time when we didn't mind knowing where our meat came from.


Here’s hoping you and yours have a great time, may your birds be juicy and your potatoes buttery. There’s a ton of good Turkey recipes out there in the world, so we wanted to drop a quick leftover idea instead. In the words of Johnny Cash, “Momma turns the leftovers into hash, we’re doing alright, for country trash.” Friday morning, try taking some leftover mashed potatoes, rough chopped turkey (dark meat is great for this) and mix it together with a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper, then pan fry it in your well seasoned cast iron skillet. It makes a really great turkey hash. Throw a couple of fried eggs on top, and you have a leftover breakfast that no one else on your block will be trying.

Also, Thursday night, take your turkey carcass (oooo, carcass!), slip it into a big gallon ziplock bag, and put it in your freezer. We’re going to write a turkey stock article pretty soon, with some tips on making your own turkey stock. We’ve never tried it ourselves, so it won’t be expert advice by any means. It’ll be a more conspiratorial, “this is how we succeeded (or failed)” type article.

Have a great Thanksgiving tomorrow, if you’re cooking, remember: it’s just food, don’t get too worked up about it.

The Traditional Thanksgiving Gantt Chart

Published
by
chrisandcamri
on November 9, 2006
in Food
. 0 Comments

Thanksgiving is only two weeks away, like us, you’re probably starting to pick out a good Turkey recipe, decide side dishes, and pick out pies. That stuff is a lot of fun. We hosted our first ever Thanksgiving dinner last year. As we were planning for it, we decided we wanted to eat around three. We realized that to meet the 3pm deadline, we were going to need to work backwards and map out our prep times and oven times.

Enter the Gantt Chart

Gantt charts, the bane of project managers everywhere, are perfect for resource allocation. In this case, the resource is our oven and our prep hands. Last year we worked with graph paper and highlighters, this year we’re stepping it up to index cards, markers, and tape. The concept is pretty straight forward, treat each index card like an hours worth of time. If your turkey needs three hours at 325 degrees, write “Turkey 325″ across three index cards, and tape them together. If the same turkey needs a half hour of prep time, fold a card in half, tear along the line, and write “Turkey Prep, chop herbs and butter bird”.

Our Thanksgiving Gantt Chart

Our Thanksgiving Gantt Chart

Work through each item on your menu. Then group them by temperature. Your turkey is going to dominate for three hours, can you shove a green bean casserole in there at 325? That will save time. Look at all your prep work, group veggie chopping tasks so you spend one stretch of a half hour at the chopping board, rather than remembering you have to chop another onion even though you just chopped one an hour ago.

Once you have all your groups, start laying things out. Because they’re all on big chunky index cards, you can move them around on the table. When you have a pattern that you like, that will help to streamline things, put it on your fridge with magnets, or tape it all together in one big Gantt blob and hang it on the wall. On Turkey day, you can scratch index card tasks off as you move through the chart, or feel really accomplishy and throw out the cards as each one is completed. Whatever you do, we guarantee you’re going to be eating at the time you said you would. Good work Turkey.