This weekend was packed with all sorts of kitchen adventures (cleaning baby squid, making spicy peanut butter, making kombucha). You too, right?
On Saturday morning we had a serendipitous little opportunity nudged our way. Our buddy Bobby from Okfuskee Farm told us about some friends who raised heritage turkeys this year. The birds were spoken for, but he decided to cancel his order, so we could watch the turkeys being processed and pick up his reserved bird on Sunday, November 21st if we were interested. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail we cancelled our Whole Foods turkey order and made plans to drive out to Siler City, about 30 miles from Chapel Hill on Sunday morning.
When we arrived at the homestead/nouveau commune/farm, a young hipster lady with a sweet face and cool hair pointed us toward the turkey processing site. For those of you not down with farm/hunting lingo, in this context, “process” is a bland word for slaughter. What an education. I’m going to resist the urge to get all preachy and talk about the importance of knowing how food arrives in a certain state on your plate, but I can confirm it is not pretty. Totally fascinating experience though.
Show off.
Heritage turkeys outside their hutch.
Surely this will be the freshest bird we will ever buy. Surely this organically fed, free range, winged beast will be loaded with the kind of heirloom variety flavor that distinguishes Beefsteak tomatoes at chain supermarkets from the Early Girls at my summer farmer’s market. Surely this thing will be worth $5/lb. The pressure is on. The stakes are high. Thank God for chow.com’s How to Cook Heritage Turkey for the Holidays and their FREE Thanksgiving Dinner Coach iPhone app. And thank God that I will be cooking this thing for the people I love most in this world, who will forgive me if I serve a bird with overcooked thighs and undercooked breast. That’s why people make tons of sides, right?
