In the Kitchen With Mattie

Archive for the ‘Just Mattie’ Category

Dueling Turkeys

We had an absolutely lovely day today!! The food came out perfect, we are stuffed and the dishs are done for the most part. After these two birds finish cooling down a bit more they will be taken from the bones and packaged and the bones will be used to make more stock for the freezer.

This year I made a very simple meal for us. I normally go all out with several different main courses for lots of variety but this year we simply enjoyed one of the best turkeys I have ever made. The flavor of it was unlike any we ever had before, it was tender, very tasty and moist. The gravy came out silky and also tasted wonderful!

Did someone say they liked turkey?

This year we had trouble finding a large 25 pound turkey like we normally make so I bought two 16 pound birds and cooked them both. One I stuffed and the other was unstuffed so it cooked a little quicker. Along with the turkey we had mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry, fresh rolls and gravy……..very simple and very different than what we normally have each year. Even without all the extra work and eating options we always have I have to say this was one of the most enjoyable holiday dinners we have had in several years now. We laughed and joked and just generally relaxed and enjoyed each others company, our middle son was here and one of our younger sons old friends came by and had dinner with us too, it was almost like old times when the house was always filled with the laughter of many kids before our three guys grew up and started families of their own. Even our fur kids had a ball running in the yard and working up an appetite!

We have an abundance of leftovers and Matt will come back tomorrow and take at least half of them to bring to his place and enjoy in the days to come. I will make some of my dishes that are on this site with our leftovers and am thinking I will start with the Tetrazinni tomorrow as it is one of my favorites. Hubby is also off work tomorrow so we will just have a relaxing day enjoying each others company as we don’t go in for the madness of the Black Friday sales anymore.

Remains of the day!

 For those of you who have been reading here for the past year, I hope each and every one of you had as wonderful a day as we did!  May you all have many more to come. Thank you all so much for all your letters and encouragement over the past year, I have enjoyed reading each and every one of them.  Mattie

Wow, time has passed so quickly this year. It has already been a year (Nov 9) since Chris put this blog together for me. I have been having fun doing it and I’m happy that those who have wandered here seem to enjoy some of the recipes. I still remember that first post called “Chilly Weather”, it detailed that nights dinner of short ribs and wide noodles. Out of all the posts that I have done over this past year the short ribs posts get the most traffic and in private emails to me it seems my cooking them has given many people the courage to try them too. Many had tried them before and found them too fatty, I will give you that they are a particularly fatty cut of meat but oh when cooked properly and browned well before braising they give up much of that fat and you can discard it, the fat that does remain only serves to keep the moisture in the meat as it cooks, and if you skim the remaining fat before making the gravy if will lighten the dish up more, I think short ribs are probably our very favorite dish here at home and they are something that my grandmother also cooked often, mainly because back then they were a cheap meal, now though they are not a cheap meal anymore and I usually only get them if they are on sale.

My orignal purpose in starting this little blog was, and remains as a place for my sons to be able to come and have the ability to re-create the dishes they remember from their childhoods when I am long gone, the fact that others are now also enjoying it is a little added perk for me. Each day this blog is the first place I head to when I turn on my computer, I look to see if there are any new comments and if anyone has any questions, I love to encourage new cooks to enjoy their time in the kitchen, I love to spend time in mine and always have! I do realize that so many have to work everyday so I try to put up things that can be done in little time with the right equiptment at hand, but I also realize that a lot of people don’t have that equiptment. For those people I would really recommend that they do invest in the best possible pressure cooker they can afford and learn to use it, with it they will be able to create the dishes on here that look like they take hours to do, even after a long day at work.

I hope to continue this little blog into the future and I hope you all continue to enjoy it. If you have comments or questions please send them in, I will do my best to help with any cooking question………after having my own kitchen for 40 years and also cooking in restaurants I have cooked a lot of things over the years.

Mattie

It is near the end of the month and the weather has cooled off considerably down south. I am anticipating the preparations for my favorite day of the year. Most people who know me know that that day is Thanksgiving, I get to share a meal I have prepared with love with those I love and care about, although some are missing at the table I think of them often.

Starting next week I will begin to think and prepare for my cooking fest. I will watch the grocery sales and start begginning to pick up turkey parts for making the gallons of stock I go through. I generally make it from the wings and legs of turkeys and it gives our dinner some great turkey flavor, I will also use it in the stuffing,  turkey tetrazinni and turkey soup to name a few things. I will make several gallons and then skim it and pack it into quart containers and freeze it so it is on hand and I don’t have to resort to overly salted commercial stock.

Next I will start baking some bread that I will flavor with the same flavors I use in my stuffing, I mix sage, thyme, and parsley right into the dough before I bake it. The bread is then cooled and cubed and frozen in large zip lock bags, ready to be toasted on sheet pans in the oven before it is mixed with celery and onions, butter and the before mentioned turkey stock.

On the big day I usually roast three turkeys here at home, one we have here, one goes to Matts house (he normally has dinner here with us) and then we bring one over to Mikes house for his family to have for the week. I make them all the side dishes to go along with their turkeys too. We normally have mashed potatoes, broccoli, fresh green beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, cranberry and then either a lasagna or stuffed shells or maybe a ham or pork roast and baked beans too, and of course fresh yeast rolls for Matt to enjoy his gravy with.

As you can see this is a major cooking task for me and it takes a lot of planning but I generally sail right through it all thanks to all the preparation I do before the big day. You can whip out enough food to feed an army without breaking a sweat if you just do the majority of the prep work before hand. It took me years to realize it but now that I have my little system down it results in my being very calm on the big day and spending more time enjoying it than rushing around and trying to get everything done at the last minute. You can steam all the vegetables before hand and freeze them in bags, the same with the potatoes. Take them from the freezer the day before and let them thaw in the refridgerator and then put them in casseroles and heat them when the turkey is resting after you remove it from the oven, 30 minutes in the oven and they taste fresh made and you won’t be running around trying to mash potatoes at the last minute, or set up your crock pots and set the potatoes and gravy etc in them to heat up and stay hot throughout the meal. Set the table the night before too, it’s one less thing to do the big day and you’ll know if you are missing anything. Assemble your platters and bowls that you’ll be using, that’s one more  thing you won’t be searching for at the last minute.  This is all about you getting the most done you can so you can relax on the big day. By the big day all I usually have left to do is roast those turkeys and that makes the day such a pleasure, gone are those years when I ran around and got so stressed and tired that my day was ruined, now I really get to relax with those I care about.  Another tidbit, accept the help when anyone offers, you don’t have to do it all on your own and anyone who really cares about you will be more than willing to pitch in! I am the first to admit I don’t do too many deserts, I can make a great cheesecake and an awesome bittersweet chocolate truffle cake but if I am too busy to do them I will ask whoever is coming to make or buy some desert……….there is no shame in that, most who will be coming hate coming empty handed so please allow them the pleasure of contributing.

Well I am off to start my lists and get all my ducks in a row, remember you can have a wonderful Thanksgiving with some advance prep! I wish everyone who has been reading along this past year a wonderful holiday season!

I told this story to a few friends on the web and they said it belongs here on the blog so here we go.

My hubby is one of the nicest guys you could ever meet, seriously! He has always been there for me since our first date many years ago and as he says he would give up his life for me……….I and others who know him don’t doubt that. How I ever got so lucky to find someone like him I will never know, what I do know is that he doesn’t belong in my kitchen!

He is a neat nut and I am a slob to put it mildly……seriously I will never be accused of being tidy or organized, but the chaos in my home is all straight in my mind. I can find anything I am looking for in a second if no one else has moved or “put it away” for me. Really, DON’T try to organize me or my house, if you do you will send me over the edge! Come to see me NOT my house and we will get along well, don’t try to convert me to your ways and I won’t try to make you a nut like me.

Now onto hubby and me in the same kitchen.

We had been married about 2 years at the time and we had invited people over to eat. Hubby decided he would help seeing as we also had our first son by then and I was a very busy young working mom. I planned on making a beautiful roast (that we really couldn’t afford at the time) and had everything going along really well. We had a tiny little attic apartment back then and not 2 feet of spare space in it. Hubby, having just come out of the Army was all about organization, he used to scrub the woodwork with an old toothbrush every week back then, he carried it so far that everytime he would change a diaper the baby got a bath, poor Chris he had the driest skin of any baby you ever saw until I made the pediatrician have a talk with hubby.

On the day of the dinner I took the roast out of the oven and set it aside to rest. I poured the drippings from the pan into a fat separator and set it aside while I set about getting the side dishes ready. Then I assembled the rest of what I needed to make the sauce for the meat. Everything was going along great and then I went to reach for the juices, they were gone! Hubby with his Army ways and proficiency had decided to throw that “stuff” in the funny cup away and wash the container and put it away. He was always doing that, he would follow me around and clean up everything that I touched. I would get out a cutting board and put a knife on it then go to the fridge to get whatever it was I was going to cut up and by the time I got everything ready, the cutting board and the knife were washed and put away.

But back to the dinner, it came off great although the guests thought the meat really would have been better with some kind of sauce on it. After they left I almost brained him, really I was chasing him thru the apartment. He thought I was being a little mean to him because after all his family never had any kind of sauce with anything they ate so he couldn’t see the big deal in any of it.

The next time he saw that fat separator on the counter you can bet he didn’t touch it, and over the years he now looks for some kind of sauce or gravy with everything, he doesn’t even remember a time he thought it was something unnessesary. It has taken me years however to break him of the habit of following me around and washing everything in sight before I am done using it………..I think it might be because our kitchen is really too small (with all my clutter) for more than one person to fit in it.

Next time I’ll tell you about his famous turkey dinner!

This little monkey is Liam. Soon I'll have a picture section of my kids and grand kids.

Lots of people ask me about food and what I am making for dinner, I figured this would be the place to let them know. All of my dishes are not resounding successes but most are good, some are really great…..just ask my kids. I am the mom of three grown sons that make me proud of them every day, they have grown into amazing men and great fathers. I think that has more to do with the great father they have  than with with any credit I could take for the way they turned out. I can take credit however, for the fact that they are very comfortable in a kitchen and can turn out great meals. We have 6 grandchildren and two great daughter in laws who we love and it is really true what they say about “grandchildren being the reward for not killing our own children”, they are all rambunctious, bright and fun, the energy level they have astounds me and makes me wonder how we ever kept up with their parents when they were that age………it makes me tired to just think about it. I started this blog so my children and their children will be able to look at it and remember the meals I served, and so my friends can look to see if there is a dish they want to try. I will try to list the equiptment I use for each dish so you know if you happen to have it laying around the house you will now have a use for it. I can honestly say I have never cooked from a recipe although I do have a collection of cookbooks, I find them great for inspiration but not to actually cook from, my families tastes were always quite picky so lots of changes had to be made, I soon learned just to customize my own recipes to fit the family. I hope you enjoy reading here and maybe you’ll find a use for that great kitchen gadget you just had to have, you know, the one that’s still in the box sitting on a shelf somewhere. I do have other hobbies besides cooking and they include sewing, my three ShihTzus and all kinds of crafts too, although life sometimes gets in the way of pursuing the things I enjoy. I also enjoy making people smile, especially senior citizens, I think we as a nation owe them so much for their contributions to our country, they are often overlooked in the grand scheme of things and I think that is sad…………….so, go call a senior today and brighten up their world, better still bring them a home cooked meal! 

Mattie

And these guys are Mikes little monkeys…………….