Thursday, June 30, 2016

Summertime Roast Turkey

We do this once a month in the summer. I put the big roaster oven (18 quart) on the side porch table, plug it in, and roast a turkey....


And then we bone it out and snack on it for days.


I make gravy from the drippings....

So one night we have turkey and gravy and rice. (Not carb friendly! But sooo good!)

One night cold turkey sandwiches.

I freeze cranberry orange relish every fall when cranberries are on sale, and whenever we do a turkey, I take a quart bag of cran/orange relish out of the freezer and thaw it.


So cold and fresh and delicious with turkey or cottage cheese!

We do a big salad with the turkey, and then eat on that for a couple of days, too.

I did cold potato salad for Dave, but he's the only one who eats it.... And he loves it!

Diced cooked and peeled potatoes, celery, colorful sweet peppers, parsley, salt and pepper.... and Dave likes his with a Miracle Whip or Cole Slaw-style dressing:

1 cup mayonaisse
2 Tablespoons vinegar
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Mix well and pour over veggies in salad and toss lightly!

I bought corn and forgot to cook it.

SIGH......

Summer is tricky because none of us have time to do a lot of cooking, but we all love to eat! (Me especially) so trying to figure out what works for several days is always a trick.

Red sauce and meatballs: RECIPE HERE

Pasta salad with meat:   RECIPE HERE

The grill is on constant alert. (Do you clean your grill??? Does it scare you to know that I don't? This is a topic of discussion for another day!)

Mostly the busy-ness is small children, writing books, planting veggies, yard work, fixing things that took a winter beating, and just gazing up at the S-U-N.

:)

Around here, Mr. Sun is greatly appreciated!

Remember me killing the English Ivy and Poison Ivy all last year??? Repeatedly applying noxious poisons to get rid of my nemesis.... and then Dave tilled and tilled and tilled....

And we uncovered my waterfall!!!


This is from the bottom, looking up..... It's so much prettier now, and I've re-lined everything and layered rocks and planted and mulched and watered.... and it's beginning to look so sweet!

And then this is the pond Seth and I dug 15 years ago... at the base of the waterfall.... One side is planted and the other side is DIRT... But give me a few weeks of garden therapy and we'll be all set!


I'm creating a little walkway at the upper pond.... (There are three little ponds, one medium messy pond, one swamp, and one big pond buried in grass and trees way out back.

This pond attracts tree frogs and grass frogs and toads....

And this is keeping us busy! About 8 acres are planted (small by big farm standards, I know!) and there are two more acres for them to plant.  Top pic is baby cauliflower plants...  There are 510 of them.


And these are pie pumpkins, one of our big sellers. There are a few thousand planted, I think.... A lot of these.

Seth is coaxing them along up here at the house so they're strong when we put them in. Notice that we use sleds for plants in the summer (Seth's idea!) and as, well... sleds in the winter!

Multi-tasking!

It's crazy.

It's busy.

It's fun and nothing is ever what you'd consider "done".

But that's okay, it's like a round-robin of life.

And with July on the horizon....

Oh my stars, Summer is here!!!!

And check out this book to release in less than 3 weeks!!!!

I AM SO EXCITED!!!! GRACE HAVEN, BOOK 2!!!!! And what a charming story it is....

I love it to pieces.... and I hope you do, too!

Right now I'm juggling a 9 month old baby with a death wish and her 3 big brothers... and all are alive.

SUCCESS!!!!!!

Until next week my friends!

Ruth Logan Herne is living her dream of writing sweet stories folks love and getting paid to do it.
She thinks that's very cool. She lives on a farm in upstate New York which is no where near New York City, but she does love to make the 5.5 hour drive to visit NYC a few times a year... because NYC is cool. And filled with people. And where Ruthy lives?

There are more cornfields and cows than people!

E-mail her at loganherne@gmail.com, visit her website ruthloganherne.com or friend her on facebook as Ruth Logan Herne.... she loves to keep in touch with readers and writers!

16 comments:

  1. Ooooo, I have garden envy!! We have about an acre for a garden and it's mostly tomatoes. LOL. OK, maybe it just seems that way. After a few years of heirloom tomatoes and tomatillos that reseed, it seems the corn, pumpkins, melons, herbs, beans, peas, etc are such a small part. We're more of the buying sort!

    LOVE the cover of the new book an not just because she has red hair. (*Ahem* We all know redheads are awesome.)

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  2. Redheads rock. My first daughter-in-law is a redhead... gorgeous red hair, green eyes.... and my son has my mother's dark Celtic look, gray eyes, almost black hair, also gorgeous.... And they got THREE TOWHEADS.

    Now that's funny stuff! Three little blondes! Emma's eyes have a hint of green.... But the gorgeous red hair missed us!

    This is Dave's retirement project, to bring the farm back to life, but boy is he busy... he's working dawn to dusk and past, and this time of year that's a long day. He says he loves it, but he'll love it more when there are things to sell I expect!!!!

    Isn't that cover sweet as can be? I love it, too. It matches this story perfectly.

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  3. Round here we don't roast turkeys unless it's Thanksgiving. But I hear you on the easy meals. Hubby wanted salad last night. His idea - shrimp salad. His version of shrimp salad. Pre-cooked shrimp from COSTCO on a bed of iceberg lettuce with a cup of cocktail sauce.

    WooHoo - 5 minutes and off to the keyboard I went.

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    1. That's hysterical!!!! I am rolling on the floor, laughing!

      But shrimp salad sounds wonderful... I have to have it without onion (stupid delicate stomach/gut) but if I use minced celery and chopped big shrimp...(I like the texture better than little shrimp, they get mushy) then it's an amazing dish....

      Although a major shrimp cocktail like that would suit me, too!!!

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  4. The turkey is brilliance. That is one large cooker.What do you cook it in.

    We use a giant scraper on our grill after every use and then allow the remnants to burn off. Clean.

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    1. Hmm, I do the opposite, Tina. I let the grill burn the remnants off and then scrape it before I use it. Interesting....

      Either way, I let the grill heat up to about 450 degrees before I put food on it. 450 should kill just about any bug that thought the grill would be a nice place to live!

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    2. I do Jan's way, but either works.

      I know grillers who have to not just scrape.... but wash.

      And I'm just not that worried about anything that can survive 450 degrees.

      I figure if it can live through that.... it deserves a chance to KILL ME!!! :)

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    3. Tina, it's food for days and the cooker IS the pan. There's an internal pan that will hold a 22 pound turkey... and you lift that big rectangle pan out of the "oven" and remove Mr. Turkey. They are the most convenient things.

      I'm doing a quadruple batch of Lindi's mac and cheese in two weeks for a family reunion.... and I'll use the big cooker.

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  5. I agree with Tina - the turkey idea is brilliant! Enough meat cooked to make salads, sandwiches...any king of hot weather food with no additional cooking!

    We're visiting my 93 year old mother-in-law this week, and our non-cooking habits have about emptied the fridge. We're off to the grocery store today, and a mini-roast turkey (aka chicken) sounds like just the thing to bolster the pantry!

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    1. Yes! Even the 8 or 9 lb. chicken roasters are enough for 2 or 3 days depending on how many folks are gathering around the table, and during farm season, I never know who I'm feeding. So this is awesome.

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  6. Love the idea of making up extra food during this busy time of year, RUTHY! And the meatballs look wonderful, yum. Great pictures from your garden, and your pond. And a new book as well (love that sweet cover)! I seriously don't know how you get it all done. I'm a little panicked today because it's my turn to be the volunteer hostess at a small historical museum in a nearby town and I'm afraid I won't have everything done before I need to leave. And I don't have to be there for four more hours :-) Headed off now to get in some writing before I go. JAN, love the "mini-roast turkey" comment :-)

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    1. Laura, I am not a worrier.... I'm a planner and a doer but I don't worry, because it's such a waste of time and energy and I like that energy spent on other things!!! And no one dies! I mean if I was handling nuclear waste or had my finger on the RED BUTTON of nuclear disaster to the world as we know it, well, then I'd worry.... but I don't worry about the myriad of things folks worry about these days, and I figure if I do my best.... and someone isn't happy with it... that's their problem. But I do love to keep busy, so instead of fretting, I adopt a lot of projects and kind of work at them as I can.

      Now that drives some folks crazy. Some of my family, too. But it works for me, I can have a project half-done for weeks or months, and then when I can schedule time to get back to it, I figure I'm half-way there!!! Some folks see it as being behind all that time.

      Not me. I figure piece by piece, like putting a puzzle together.

      Worry not.... Check out those sparrows of the air. :)

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    2. Wow, love this: "I figure I'm half-way there!!! Some folks see it as being behind all that time." Such a great way of looking at it!

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    3. Laura around here everyone is crazy competitive... probably my fault. Chilling over the small stuff is my equalizer....

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  8. Ruthy, you wanna know how I clean my grill? I let the preheat burn off whatever's on the grate, then hit it with a stiff wire brush before putting on the meat. I mean, if 400-600 degree heat ain't gonna kill it, nothing will. I've done this for decades and nobody had died or gotten sick yet.

    Love the roasting of the turkey and eating on it all week. Ooo...I should throw one on the smoker. Of course, they're not likely to be on sale this time of year. Need to remember to buy an extra during the holidays and keep it in the freezer.
    P.S. Yes, that was me accidentally posting as my son.

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