Category Archives: Food
Prepping for Thanksgiving
My sister gave me a challenge last week. She said she wished I had a turkey for a Thanksgiving card.
Well I do have a turkey picture but I decided I wanted to be a bit more ambitious. I decided I wanted to have a picture of a Thanksgiving table all decked out with food and candles and wine glasses.
I have a table. That’s the easy part. I have wine glasses and nice china. So now I need the food. The biggest food item is, of course , the centerpiece of the meal, the turkey.
Now since I plan to eat the props I want to be sure the turkey comes out nice and golden brown and doesn’t just look good, but also tastes good. I usually cook a mean turkey..nice and brown and very moist…perfect…except the last 2 turkey’s I cooked didn’t cook evenly. I think my old oven is nearing the end of its days.
I wanted to get the best price I could so I went to Walmart and bought a frozen turkey. Usually I buy fresh but this isn’t really Thanksgiving Dinner..it’s just a “fake” one. 🙂 So frozen will do. I had a gift card too. Gift cards are like shopping with someone else’s money so I become more free with my $$$.
Next to the frozen turkeys was an electric Turkey roaster. If I hadn’t had the gift card I wouldn’t have even considered it but now I thought..could this solve my old oven problem?
Into the cart it went.
At home I unpacked it, wiped it down as instructed and marveled at how big this thing was.
Mr. Turkey was in the bottom of the refrigerator defrosting. 3 1/2 days later the turkey was thawed and it was time to try out this new gadget.
The turkey was a small one. 13.5 lbs. and the chart said to allow 15 minutes per pound. That works out to 3.87 hours so in goes the turkey and I settled down to wait. Smells good!
Too bad you can’t scratch and sniff.
Times up. I lifted the lid and there was a beautiful golden brown bird except it’s drumsticks were sagging away from the body and when I lifted the bird the wings fell off!
Boy this turkey is definitely cooked! As I transferred the main body to the serving platter the whole thing collapsed. If anything this turkey is overcooked. It certainly isn’t ready to be a centerpiece of a holiday table picture. But is it edible?
I whipped out a knife and sliced a tiny piece just to see…ohhhh soooo good. It was moist inspite of being over cooked…and tender. The bottom of the roaster was filled with drippings. Lots of gravy to be made there.
So looks like I will have to try again to get that centerpiece Turkey for the picture . I might not get to it in time for this year’s Thanksgiving. After all, how much turkey can one person and 2 cats eat? At least there’s always next year.
For now I’m enjoying my early Thanksgiving feast with a squashed but tasty turkey centerpiece.
You can order greeting cards at www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com and www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com.
One more food post
Ok, I get it. You like the travel posts better than the food reviews, Ahh if only I could afford to travel enough to keep you, my loyal followers, satisfied. Every now and then I have to unpack my suitcase and spend some quality time with my cats, work some overtime to replenish the travel fund, and recharge my own batteries.
I love traveling but I subscribe to the Go, Go , Go philosophy of travel..so much to see, so little time. I would never be able to hang out on a beach, I’d feel like I was missing too much. That’s not to say a beach vacation isn’t a perfect one for a lot of people…just not me. Since my vacations are so high energy sometimes I need to get home and back to my normal routine to recharge my batteries. That’s when finding interesting topics to share becomes a real challenge.
So the bottom line here is that I have one more food tale for you then I’ll leave that subject for a while.
The Sailing Cow Cafe has closed up for the winter season now. The last weekend was Columbus Day which seemed early this year. As part of the last weekend festivities they had a band and the invited me to come down to take pictures of their customers. They called it Photos on the Beach by Dusty Roads Photos.
My friend Nancy and I went down for 10 am and stayed until 3pm. It turned out to be a beautiful day, if a bit cool by the water. The Cafe had us put a sign in the window and gave us a table outside to set up a display. Nancy is a power house when it comes to talking to people. She was busy handing out my business cards and brochures while I talked to the people who stopped to look at the cards and pictures I’d brought for display.
Everyone was enthusiastic and we gave out a lot of information but that was as far as it went. No one was up for a picture of themselves. Oh well, as far as publicity it was a great success. We met 2 women trying to get a dog park off the ground. They were very interested in the pet photography side of my business. I got ideas of things to make another such event more successful.
Being at The Sailing Cow from 10:00- 3:00 meant we had a chance to sample the food. We had muffins for a quick breakfast and all I can say is WOW. They were great. The breakfast menu had all the usual breakfast items and they looked good too but we wanted to keep it light. Others must have felt the breakfast was good too because they had a full house.
After we finished our agreed time frame (10am-2pm) we stayed a little longer to listen to the band and have a quick lunch.
One of the owners had told us they made the best onion rings so I had to try them. They were great. Very thinly sliced and fried crisp… they were excellent. The side order was easily large enough for both of us.
On a more healthy note we shared a turkey wrap. Getting a jump on Thanksgiving. For once I remembered to take a picture before we dug in.
Well, that’s all the food reviews for now. I promise to try to find something more exotic to tell you about next time. 🙂
Remember: for all your unique greeting card needs visit: www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com
Holiday cards are coming. For a more “commercial style” check out the offerings at: www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com
Summer Shack Food
Crazy week this week so I didn’t get a chance to write anything for today. But I haven’t been slacking. I’ve been practicing “Food Photography”. I can tell you the hardest part is not eating the subject…at least not til you’ve captured the photo.
These food pictures are from those wonderful, greasy, soooo good summer places that deep fry everything on the menu. With one exception…a healthy turkey wrap…
I’ll tell you the stories behind the pictures another time.
