Chasing the Bird (with a bow to Charlie Parker)

Acknowledgment: audio clip and photo courtesy of:
http://ca.encarta.msn.com/media_461519515_761563779_-1_1/jazz_saxophonist_charlie_parker.html)

Good food is like good music--and jazz, such as the inspired Charlie Parker played, is one prime example of the magic found in good (well, in his case, great!) music. As I pull out from the oven a homemade calzone, stuffed with (among other things) eggplant I'd grown this summer, encircled in a crust made with Speerville grains grown by farmers from this region and processed just over in New Brunswick, well..."I am counting my blessings," as that old hymn goes (to invoke yet another inspiring musical tradition)....

Anyone who read the Boxing Day (Dec 26th for those American readers! : - ) somewhat humourous entry about my Christmas Eve cross country ski with the 15 pound turkey in tow, will be interested to know two things:

1. It was yummy then (roasted turkey, not awkward skiing), and it’s yummy now;

[Recipes for turkey taken out of the freezer in mid-January:

Turkey alfredo, with snowpeas, on homemade fettucine (garnish: homemade french-fried onions, and quick-baked slices of George Washington Carver [love that agriculturalist!] variety sweet potatoes)

Turkey-basmati rice soup (yep, basmati rice is on my “Exclusions” list—though I’ve not bought any since I started my 96k way living, I am getting close to the end of that 10 kg bag and may be heading to one of those import shops in Halifax.....)

Turkey pot pie, with carrots, peas, onions and celery (all frozen or fresh stored, local)

Turkey Caesar sandwiches, on 12-grain bread

(yep, didn’t make muffins from the leftover porridge this week—see entry from December 26th—made yeast bread....and it was actually made from one bit of leftover porridge frozen over the holidays, and that bread-making morning’s production of old fashioned Speerville Newfound oats, cooked and served with cream and brown sugar...YUM! Well, I still had made too much, so with starter of these porridge leftovers made European style baguette, loaf and round loaf, which I’m enjoying very much this week. While there are wonderful bread bakers in the area, who meet my needs for white and brown bread (I cannot figure out how to do brown bread right; must be a Maritime-New England thing), I also love the more dense and multiple grain loaves of Eastern Europe (the Germans almost have it as good, too, but again I’m biased—nothing like the breads, for example, of Poland, and Romania...). ]



2. Marguerite Fortune-Phillips and Frank Phillips of NATURE'S SCRIPT FARM (902-668-2822) HAVE EIGHT MORE OF THESE LUSCIOUS TURKEYS LEFT IN THEIR FREEZER! I’m calling them this weekend to get one....soon as I re-organize the freezer, so I can fit it in....Easter’s only a few months away, and it wasn’t cost effective for Nature’s Script to be raising turkeys over the winter, so provisioning is called for.

Provisioning....
I’ll be writing more about provisioning in coming posts. While planning ahead used to be something every (rural at least) household did, it’s become way too easy for consumerism to lead us to not think ahead, and not buy, but rather to think we “must stop by and pick up something...” Think of the help it would be to farmers selling at the farmers’ markets if they knew that we were all going to “stock up” for the winter, and that they were going to not be hauling back product from the market because 50% of whatever didn’t sell was going to be picked up and bought (at a fair price, though less than retail) for distribution through the food banks???? Just an idea...but wouldn’t that get some local economies...and entrepreneurs...moving along?