Laying in

We needed water softener salt, so I decided to make the week’s shopping expedition a Costco run. And I figured I might as well go ahead and get the cookie ingredients that I get at Costco, like the 36 pounds of butter that even at Woodman’s gets me a lot of WTF looks, but at Costco nobody bats an eye. Because yes, I am going to do cookies, pandemic or not. No party, but I’m going to ship boxes to friends and family as usual, and also do contact-less porch pick up of cookie orders, and donate any money I raise over the cost of ingredients. Probably to this and this. More on this project Real Soon Now™.

So, we went on Tuesday afternoon at about 2:30 – and there were a lot of people. All masked and high ceilings and a good amount of space, but Costco doesn’t have one way aisles and it was pretty disorganized. People going all different directions with their big carts, and the checkout lines were long and congested.

Certainly not like the beginning of pandemic when people were actually staying home.

Tuesday’s experience started getting me worried that people would start freaking out again like the beginning of pandemic and I wouldn’t be able to buy my mass baking necessities, like 50ish pounds of flour and 35ish pounds of sugar.

So, on Thursday morning I went to the co-op and Woodman’s. I decided on the co-op stop at the last minute, but I was happy that I did because I got dairy and vegetable oil, and some of the honey, and other things where the co-op is better because I can get local or prefer the  packaging over Woodman’s (though Woodman’s itself is locally owned). Then on to Woodman’s where I got a 25# sack of A.P. flour (because I already had about 30# in the pantry after the Costco run), and a 25# bag of granulated sugar, and honey and jams and heath bar chips, and, and, and … And learned to use the over-20-items self-checkout and the machine only yelled at me a few times.

Later on Thursday I got my CSA storage share, the Thanksgiving box. Actually two big boxes. Potatoes and sweet potatoes and squash and beets and parsnips and onions and garlic and shallots and celeriac and purple broccoli and Brussels sprouts and 3 colors of carrots and Romanesco broccoli and  leeks.

Then on Saturday, we drove out to the northside to get our turkey, and some cider, spinach, eggs, and bacon from other local farmers. The turkey is from Blue Valley Gardens, Matt & Susan Smith. I’ve been ordering turkeys from them for probably 20 years and they’re always big – I usually order a 12-15 pound turkey and it’s never less than 17-18.  And of course, this year when everyone wants smaller birds for smaller Thanksgiving, they’re really big. Mine is 22 pounds.

Things got a little mixed up. Turkey pick up was 8:00-noon, and veggie pick was 12:30-2:30. On my order form I asked if I could come at 12:30 and get everything, but since I wasn’t there at noon, my turkey got taken back to the other drop off place out in Verona (southwest side of Madison).

It all worked out in the end and we got to have a little backyard visit with Steve & Heike, who live about 4 minutes away from the farm pick up place.

Now the house is literally stuffed with food. I hope I can make it all into things we can eat, and cookies, and despite pandemic, I hope to give away some food, before anything spoils.

It’s especially a lot of food because on Sunday I cancelled Thanksgiving. We were going to have only 6 people, John & Megan, and Al & Emma, socially distanced, out in the garage. We’re all working at home, but John & Megan would have to drive from Chicago, and even though we’ve done a few things with Al & Emma, they’re not really in our bubble.

Instead we’ll do a progressive zoom call where each set of kids calls mom for a different course of the meal. Rachael’s idea and a good one I think – nobody’s on the zoom too long that way.

I cut up the turkey so we can just have the breast for Thanksgiving, and I have the back, neck, and wing tips in the freezer for stock, and the legs and thighs and wings in another bag in the freezer for another meal. And I froze the liver & gizzards thinking of Cajun dirty rice at some future time. Maybe I’ll do the Samin Nosrat buttermilk brine everyone’s talking about.

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On Sunday I made apple muffins.

We also had biscuits with sausage gravy for brunch. I was going to make the biscuits, but Mary White from Honey Bee Bakery gave me three leftover cheddar biscuits to make up for the turkey mix-up. The pick up’s at her production kitchen.

Because we’re having such a small Thanksgiving, I’ll only make one dessert – apple pie. So I made a pumpkin chiffon pie, too, on Sunday. Or actually, butternut squash, one of the four from my CSA box.