Rethinking Trash: Greens stems in bacon grease

A friend and I were having a conversation the other day, the gist of which was this:

If our collective grandmas and great-grandmas could look into our kitchens and see the stuff we throw away and the stuff we buy, they would roll around in their graves, or at the very least be really, really confused.

We (you know it's not just me) throw away meat bones and vegetable tops and then turn around and buy stock and broth from a box? Toss bacon grease in the trash and then buy some kind of aerosol grease in a spray can to grease a pan? And then what - buy an anti-pollution t-shirt? Yeah, we deserve to be mocked...

So, "Liberated from the Trash" experiment number 1 - the stems left over after cooking mustard, collard and turnip greens plus bacon grease...

I had already used the leaves and some of the stems for my greens (which turned out horribly, by the way - somehow dirty and gritty - eeewww...the whole thing had to sadly be tossed - obviously something I hate, as I am currently telling you, in this post, right this moment, to eat your trash - I digress...), but I usually don't like to use the stems too much, because I find them too...stemmy.

I kept them long and sauteed them with a minced garlic clove in some leftover bacon grease. They smelled fragrant and rich, like a sum of all of the pieces. They looked kind of like asparagus.

I tried to eat them first after only a very light saute - fail. Way too fibrous to actually chew and eat. So, basically, you have to cook the hell out of them. Really fry them until they wither and shrivel and kind of end up looking like crispy sauteed scallions - for like an hour or so over medium high heat. And then they taste tasty. But they were way too greasy and after a while, a bunch of them still ended up in the trash....

But the idea still lives on! Vive la trash!

Bacon Popcorn

Could any two words together be more glorious? Maybe not.

There are several ways this could be down, certainly some better than the way I did it, but I was looking for quick and hot while also preparing a lot of other food, soo.....microwave! And, of course, a few other elements.

First off, the bacon:

I have been baking bacon for several years now and I have pretty much sworn off pan frying bacon forever and ever since, because baking it is so simple and the results are usually much more uniform, which, of course, creates a problem of me eating all of the bacon before I can use it in my recipes, so I recommend always making twice as much bacon as you really need. Which is why this recipe is awesome, because it's basically just an excuse to eat bacon.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lay a pack (about a pound) of bacon in strips onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the bacon looks the way you like it - I like it crispy. About half way through, take the tray out and pour the grease into a cup or bowl and then put the bacon back in the oven to finish. When the bacon is finished, pour the rest of the grease into the cup with the rest of it.

Pop a pack of (preferably) plain popcorn in the microwave - plain microwave popcorn can sometimes be hard to find, but search it out, because I think that artificial buttery flavor clashes with/ruins the awesomeness of the baconess - I found plain at Whole Foods.

::ding::

Then crumble up about half of the bacon and mix it with the bacon grease and mix it all up with the popcorn. Then divide the remaining half between crumbling it on the top of the popcorn and cramming in your mouth. At least that's how I do.

Sunshine Brined Turkey

Although it's not blustery and sucky cold in Chicago yet, I've already begun to crave the light and warmth of my California homeland - the inspiration behind my first brined turkey!

I've always done a version of the basic, cheesecloth wrapped turkey that I found in Food and Wine about seven or eight years ago (an issue I sadly can't find now for the life of me...) with great result, but, you know, turkey could always be moister.

This was started with the Alton Brown brined turkey recipe, but with a bunch of my own changeups and whatnot - like food jazz - so it's a different thang now - and fricking great!

SUNSHINE BRINED TURKEY

I had an almost 17 pound natural frozen turkey and let it defrost in the fridge for several days.

Instead of using a plastic bag, I brined it in this giant stainless steel pot I have that was large enough to hold the bird and enough of the brine to cover the whole thing.

In another big 'ol pot I mixed:

Two quartered oranges, two quartered lemons, a quartered onion, about a cup of Kosher salt, three teaspoons of poultry seasoning, three teaspoons of cinnamon, three teaspoons of ground black pepper, about a cup (maybe a little less) of brown sugar, about five or six teaspoons of vegetable bouillon (this one) and a bunch (you know - a bunch;) - about a gallon and a half) of water.

After mixing it all up, pour all of the brine into (I put the bird drumsticks up so I could pour the brine into the cavity too) and onto the bird until totally covered. I then covered the pot with its lid and then weighed the lid down with several cans to keep it tightly covered. Keep it like that for at least eight hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Remove from the brine and rinse with cold water - I just dumped out the brine and added the clean water to the pot to rinse it that way to avoid trying to wrestle a giant bird in my wee sink. Reserve the onions, oranges and lemons for stuffing the bird with

Stick turkey in a roasting pot and stuff with:

The leftover onions, oranges and lemons from the brine. Another lemon and orange or so. Another quartered apple and a quartered raw onion.

Melt two sticks of butta in the microwave with a little bit of poultry seasoning. Once melted, add about a third of a cup of olive oil. Add a large piece of cheesecloth to the bowl of butter and oil, and coat cloth completely, allowing it to completely soak up all of that awesomeness.

Cover the turkey completely with the buttery cheesecloth and stick it in the oven.

Roast for three hours or so.

Remove from oven and let rest for at least a half an hour or so. Remove cheesecloth. Then move the turkey from the roaster to a platter - now this was NOT easy! The turkey was so moist that the wings and legs were falling off with even a little bit of pressure.

Put on the table and watch it disappear. Look how gorgeous it came out! Seriously, I've never seen people go at a turkey like that. Which is, of course, the biggest compliment any cook can get. Enjoy!

A Thanksgiving everyone can equally get down and grub on

I took on an exciting challenge this Thanksgiving - to throw a full on dinner party (only part of the challenge) where everything except for the turkey (obviously), the turkey gravy (still obviously) and the bacon popcorn (should probably become a Thanksgiving staple for us all...) would be vegan (the rest of the challenge). Also in a separate, but more serious challenge, I had to avoid the use of nuts because of allergies.

And you know what - it turned out pretty fricking fabulous. I speak in the past tense, because my Thanksgiving dinner already happened three days ago, ushering in the first annual of my hopefully new family tradition - big ol turkey dinner party the Thursday before Thanksgiving, followed by turkey burgers, sweet potato fries and chillin' on actual Thanksgiving. And also, maybe some scavenging on the Thankgivingses of other on actual Thanksgiving, too.

Perhaps you are looking for a way to satisfy vegans (thanks to the miracle power of vegan buttery sticks), carniwhores and everybody in between, too?

Here's the (super awesome) "Farmer's Market" themed menu I came up with:

Bacon Popcorn
Pumpkin Hummus with chips and red pepper strips

Sunshine Brined Turkey

Savory Veggie Stuffing

Turkey Gravy

Onion Gravy

Oven Roasted Beets with Maple and Brown Sugar

Cranberry & Fruit Bounty Sauce

Cranberry Grapefruit Sauce

Truffled Mashed Potatoes

Brussel Sprouts with Shallots and Fried Onions

Apple Jicima Salad

Rainbow Chard with Lemon and Olive Oil

Spaghetti Squash with Coconut Milk

Chocolate Mousse with Graham Cracker Crumbs

Pumpkin Tart

Bourbon Sweet Potato cupcakes and Chocolate Chip cupcakes

Sparkling Apple Pomegranate Cider

Crispin

No doubt an ambitious menu. I'll admit that even more, given the fact that I didn't quite finish some of the things on time, so we just ate allllllll weekend looonnnngg - just like it's supposed to be, right?

So long soy milk?

As I was literally cramming bites of leftover soy chocolate mousse with graham cracker crumbs into my mouth this morning (how dare you judge me...), I read an article that basically said we might all be collectively killing ourselves by eating too much soy in our diets, specifically soy that hasn't been fermented yet - fermenting in this case being a good thing.

Most horrifically included in this story was this little blurb:

"While there was much news about the American Heart Association endorsing soy in 2000, there was little attention given when the AHA changed its mind and quietly withdrew its pro-soy claims in 2006". Whoa...I must have been watching a satisfying repeat episode of "The Nanny" (how dare you judge me....) instead of dutifully watching the news the day that news came out.

Yes, I will keep eating my chocolate mousse right now, I'm just going to fret about it. A lot.