Day 10 - October 6, 2009

Day 10:

My neighbor gave me a huge bag of tomatoes the night before the gardens froze for the winter. I had so many tomatoes that I didn't know what to do with all of them before they went bad. I talked with Rex and he told me to bring them in and we could do something with them so that I could freeze them for the winter. Today I brought them in and we cut a little x in one end, blanched them, put them in an ice bath to stop the cooking, peeled them, diced them and then stewed them for about an hour and a half to reduce the liquid down. After that we put them in a vacuum bag and sealed them so I could keep them in the freezer. I had thought about making spaghetti sauce and just freezing the sauce, but with the tomatoes just plain I can use them for whatever I wanted, which is most likely going to only be spaghetti sauce anyway.

After that I pulled out my turkey and carved it and diced all the meat and started prepping ingredients for my turkey tetrazzini for Wednesday. After I finished that project, I proofed and cooked 1 sheet of my herb rolls to taste them and started my turkey stock for the tetrazzini as well.

For stock, save everything that comes off the turkey that you don't use except the liver. The gizzards, the heart, the bones, etc. Add any mirepoix scraps that you have or just cut some up if you don't save the scraps and fill the pot until it just covers the bones and vegetables. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Do not stir the stock, it will make it cloudy.

Once it is finished, put in a large pan/bowl/bain marie and put into an ice bath to cool it quickly so it doesn't sit in the food danger zone for very long.

That was about it for my day, the turkey kept me busy for quite a while, as I was really careful not to leave any gross pieces in my meat cubes.