T-day: making turkey stock

We had turkey for midday meal. The kids are committed to the middle of the day being “lunch”, which is ridiculous, because “lunch” is a light meal and this one was not. I took a break in posting this to show A. the wikipedia entry for “supper”, and some dictionary definitions. I’ll have to catch MIL at some point and bring her up to speed because she’s been giving me shit about calling a mid-day meal dinner for over a decade and I have fucking had it at this point.

Where was I?

Oh, right. I was making turkey frame soup. Stock. Whatever. I’ve been doing this one or more times a year for decades. I do, actually, know how to do this. However, R. was convinced that I didn’t have it hot enough, because I had it parked around 170 or so. He thought that the collagen would not break down until 186 or 190 or so. I’m like, what. But he got hold of the temperature control when I wasn’t paying enough attention and he ran it back up to 190+, and now the stock is cloudy as fuck. I don’t _normally_ care, but _normally_ my stock, soup, whatever is very clear and this annoys me. Also, he kept saying, make sure you get all the in bird stuffing out or it will make the soup cloudy. It won’t, actually … unless you run it too hot. Which he then did. Because of course.

https://www.scienceofcooking.com/meat/slow_cooking1.htm

Collagen breaks down starting around 160. No problems unless you get above 190.

https://www.culinarycrush.biz/all/how-to-make-clear-stock

I _like_ a nice, fatty soup. And honestly, I don’t care that much about how cloudy it is. But he wanted it clear … and then did exactly the thing that makes it NOT clear … in an effort to get the collagen to break down, which was unnecessary because that was starting at a low temp and I was prepared to let it simmer for hours anyway.

I _will_ be bringing him up to speed on all of this when he comes downstairs after riding his bike. I’m not going through this ever again.

We had a very nice T-day meal. A. liked the candied sweet potatoes (no marshmallows because we don’t have any and I forgot to put fluff on them) but not when reheated. Oh well! She ate a ton of dark meat turkey. The roasted potatoes were fantastic, altho I may have overshot slightly on the cayenne. Yummy, tho! We had some cranberry preserves from Walden (“New England Cranberry Cranberry Chutney”). I did an in-bird stuffing with rice, mushrooms, sage, thyme, rosemary, almonds, golden raisins. Black pepper on the bird. The bird was sitting on a layer of sweet potato discs that were themselves on top of bacon fat. R. says he added some water when he saw the bottom layer caramelizing. It went black in one corner, but those sweet potatoes were truly amazing. The stuffing was fantastic. We had snowflake rolls from the Roche Bros. and some white flour sourdough rolls from Walden. Good times!

R. and I did a 3 mile walk. I did the one mile loop with M. We did a Family Zoom.

While I’m On That What Science Tear . . .

I talked to R. He doesn’t know why he did that either. He completely acknowledges that his experience making stock is at most 1/10th of mine and that he misremembered the temperatures. There were no raised voices or arguments. Hopefully, he’ll keep his thoughts to himself next time, or go double-check the numbers before messing with the temperature setting.

In the meantime, I remembered that whole tick thing from some years ago, and I got to wondering about what the status was on it.

In 2003, I found this:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14596290/

In 2007, I find this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071006083356.htm

These are likely sources of the hour on high heat in the dryer recommendation.

In 2013 — this is where I really sat up and took notice — a teen did a little science:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/31/braintree-student-tick-experiment-catches-attention-cdc-scientists/eH2Sga4HgeDandLJDFwQKI/story.html

The teen came up with five minutes at low heat. Both the 2007 work and the 2013 work involved bugs in mesh bags. The 2007 work was high heat and no heat. The teen did a bunch of different temperatures.

Why is this important? No one is asking THAT question, because first of all, anyone who hikes knows what a nightmare this can be, and anyone who does laundry knows that you might as well just put your technical gear in the trash if you are going to have to put it in a dryer — dry already! — on high heat for an hour.

In 2016, we have this:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27156138/

4 minutes on high in the dryer — already dry — killed all the nymph and adult ticks.

I have been unable to find anyone checking for how long dry clothes and low heat requires to kill nymphs.

https://www.ofah.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/the-heat-is-on-killing-blacklegged-ticks-in-residential_washers-and-dryers-to-prevent-tickborne-diseases.pdf

This one is really great. If you wash then dry, it takes longer, but if you _just dry_ and you use low heat, it’s 11 minutes to kill everything.

So, the teen wins! It’s a few minutes longer to get all of them, but low heat for a short period of time on dry clothes really does kill all the ticks.

I am particularly offended by the 6 minutes on high heat advice. While R. insists that as long as the jeans are dry going in, 6 minutes on high will not shrink them further. That does not match my recollection, but I don’t put anything in the dryer on high and I’m not about to start now. Most technical fabrics tell you to low heat or hang dry — the high heat setting in the dryer can absolutely affect the fit of anything containing spandex and modify the function of microfibers. (My husband has really damaged two of the special cloths I buy for makeup removal by putting in the dryer — on a fairly low heat setting! They really need to hang dry.)

When there is a slightly longer time frame on low heat that will work just as well, it’s fucking criminal to be giving such shitty advice. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people, altho just as a starting point, I’m going to assume they’re bad at laundry.