The Cowboy Monte Cristo

All the Monte Cristo sandwiches I have eaten were dipped in a flour batter and then deep fried and served with raspberry jam. They were yummy, but I ran across this recipe that uses a simple egg batter, and it sounded delicious and way healthier. It is more like stuffed French Toast than the deep fried sandwiches I ran across at Bennegans.

It is cowboy style because we used beef and turkey instead of ham and turkey. It is really simple to make: just put together a sandwich with cheese, tomatoes, avocados, beef, turkey, and anything else that suits your fancy. Butter the inside of the bread, then dip it into 2 eggs that have been beaten with a little water. Pan fry it like French Toast, then snarf it down.

Turkey Noodle Soup

What do you do with the leftover turkey? Make soup, of course!

Sometimes noodle recipes call for salt, but I don't like to knead noodle dough with salt because it cuts into my hands. Salt the water instead. Also, the standard is to use 1 egg for each person, but I think that is too much. 1/2 egg is more like it. It really isn't an exact science - you can have wildly different ratios of eggs to flour and they will still be perfect.

The noodle sheet should be smooth and elastic - but it doesn't have to be perfectly square.

When the noodles come out, just put them on a dowel and let 'em hang while you finish the rest of the noodles.

Here they are - hanging around and waiting for you to use them. The best thing about fresh noodles is how tender and fluffy they are.

Turkey Noodle Soup

2 carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

3 T food storage onions

1-2 C turkey

2 T chicken broth

sea salt

noodles made from 2 eggs

Cover the turkey carcass in water and boil a couple of hours. Strain and put everything except the noodles into the turkey water and cook on low. Make the noodles while the veges cook. Turn up the heat and let it come to a boil right before you finish the noodles. Add the noodles and boil 3-5 minutes until they are tender.

Noodles

2 eggs

2 T water

2-3 C whole wheat pastry flour, whole wheat flour, or all purpose flour

Beat the eggs lightly with the water and mix with 1-2 cups of flour. Knead lightly, adding more flour until it creates a firm ball. Press it into a flat disk and run it through the noodle maker. Keep folding the noodle sheet and running it through, creating thinner sheets until it is smooth and elastic and fairly thin. I usually stop at setting #4. Then run it through the fat noodle cutter. If you don't have a noodle maker, come to my house and make them, or roll out the dough and cut it into 1/4 inch strips with a butter knife.

Turkey - It Ain't Like Momma Made It

Kevin made everything except the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving this year. He's really great like that. About 3 hours before dinner I was sitting around, pouring through the ads when I started thinking that we should eat Thanksgiving dinner so we would have to start to preparing the food. I asked Kevin what he wanted me to do.

He answered, "I am making the turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, and cranberry sauce. You can make anything else that you want to have." WOW! Just one more reminder of why I married him. Why did he marry me? I have no idea, but now he is trapped and I am the luckiest girl ever.

He found a recipe for turkey online and wanted to see if it was better than how he usually makes it. It turned out very moist and delicious - even the white meat leftovers. After we ate he mentioned that he always just cooked it like his mom - but now he knows that he can branch out and find what he likes best.

Honestly, I was a little leery of the recipe. I come from the strict religion of "Don't Cook Oil Above its' Smoking Point." But it turned out really, really, incredibly really good.

Even Harper got to chew on a bone for awhile.


And then he scoured the ads to find all the good deals and took a nap in front of the heater.

Turkey the "Too Good to Believe" Kevin Way

Thaw turkey completely and remove all gross little pouches and innards from the cavity. Rinse it off and completely towel dry the inside. Put it on a rack inside your roaster. Lightly coat the outside of the bird with olive oil and then sprinkle sea salt over the outside and rub in lightly. Use about twice as much sea salt in the cavity and rub that in. (Don't oil the cavity.)

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Cook bird for 15 minutes (it will smoke because it is above the smoking point for olive oil) then reduce heat to 350 and cook for 1 hour. Reduce heat to 325 and cook for 1 more hour. Check the temperature of the bird. It must be 165 degrees or greater; check in the thigh close to the body. If it isn't done reduce heat to 300 and check every 15 minutes until it is done. If the bird gets too dark at any time during the cooking process, cover it with tin foil and continue cooking.