Friday: of atlatls and tomahawks and turkey

Still posting over at the other blog. We cooked up a major food fest. Fifty pounds of turkey and all the family trimmings made dinner amazing. Tim brought 300 ears of sweet corn from the Scattergood Farm and School and that was still delicious this evening.




Here is the travel news from Friday

Thursday: The first full day of food

I'm still posting over at my travel blog. Today featured delicious foods in beautiful presentations.

Thursday in a nutshell


This was a lunch fruit platter. We just served fruit and sandwiches. For dinner we made lemon/garlic chicken, rice, roasted turnips. It was another amazing day of food.

Moving into Camp

I'm posting at the travel blog. Find the narrative here:

We Move Into Camp

Shopping for the Big Reunion

A quick hunting and gathering post at my travel blog.

Hunting and Gathering

Shopping with Liz

We are busily preparing for the family reunion. The first one that I remember was 40 years ago in 1969 at the Isaak Walton League clubhouse in Madison, SD.

Yesterday Liz and I filled two flatbeds at Sam's Club Warehouse. Now, I have my issues with Sam's Club and Wal-Mart, but when you are shopping for 50 people for 5 days, sometimes you just need the big box of whatever!

We have been doing this shopping for a few reunions now, and the excel spreadsheet has become a google docs spreadsheet and now we are able to collaborate around who is bringing what and who will be where and when.

Liz and I purchased 18 loaves of bread, so many rolls and buns, 30 lbs of pork, 25 lbs of chicken pieces, 25 lbs of turkey, dozens of eggs, lbs of cheese and deli meat, flour, sugar, olive oil, bacon, sausage, and tons of other items- my cousin Tim is bringing the produce from the wholesaler that he uses.

So, the tremor of excitement is running through the girls, and my sister stil has a "to-do" list that is impressive. As soon as I can I will post that photo I took of the sky outside of Sioux Falls on our way home from round one of hunting and gathering.

Gorgeous--

Reunion Food - Saturday

Five turkeys - no waiting

Delicious, and you should have seen the BBQ circle around the Weber grills and the troughs making charcoal.

We had not anticipated as much grilling as was necessary, so we decided to use the firewood in the de-commissioned shower house to make our own coals. The trough grills were hauled around to the east side of the building, and the making of coals was set to in earnest.

Way too much fun was had sitting in a circle in a favorite lawn chair, sipping a beer, telling a story, stoking the coal troughs, and occaisonally poking the birds. Three of the turkeys cooked in the Webers and two in the finally repaired oven. This gave the birds a lovely, smoked taste and they were moist and delicious. They birds were liberally rubbed with garlic, salt and olive oil before roasting. A hit all around with traditional mashed potatoes and gravy, green salad, rolls and butter, sweet corn, and favorite beans (the soy/garlic treatment).

Must make this meal again!

Reunion Food - Day 2

Thursday became a day of invention as we took stock of the supplies that we had and the tools to cook them. While the raw vegan set in the family would have been happy, what the heck were we going to do with all that chicken?

Lunch was a weird repeat of the flat top pizza - this time the meat lovers and the left over veg pizza were on the flat top cooking. Salty cheese I have to say.

So we fired up the barrel (trough) grills that had these intense rebar-like racks. Katy and I marinated the chicken in lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic. We tossed in fresh oregano and salt and pepper and let the stuff hang out for a while. We had to grill up a ton of the Scattergood baby eggplants. After we grilled them (actually Matt, Sam and Pirc did most of the grilling) we cubed the eggplant and mixed it with sauteed onion and garlic, more lemon juice and olive oil, salt, fresh mint, and basil. It's our version of the Silver Palette Summer Eggplant. Serve it room temperature and even non-eggplant lovers will love it.

We had lots of grilled veggies and another amazing salad. Our appetizers on Thursday were quantites if hummos and baba ganoug from the Pita Inn carried in a cooler from Skokie by my husband. He managed to have a "driving on a permit" student driver hit the car in an ice stop somewhere in Minnesota, so we enjoyed and appreciated each delicious bite.

All Thursday, Sam was on the phone - to the appliance guy and then to every Propane dealer in the area to find the folks who would service the ovens. Lots of not much luck. The guys from Swish's Hardware (not kidding) a store that used to be owned by a guy named Zen (a name that gave us hope that all would work out) came out and declared, "It's broken. We don't do commercial machines." The propane guy said almost surely it would need a part that wouldn't arrive before Monday - and we kept hoping that someone would make the oven's work. We had 5 turkeys thawing in the walk-in.

Sam continued with the persistance for which he is renouned. More on Friday. Think Swish- Zen -accio part - ovenus repairo.

Reunion Food Part Two

Once again the Potter family managed four days of amazing foods cooked under less than optimal circumstances.

Liz's menus had many more options for improvising and for vegetables many ways. This worked. Tim bought the produce and brought amazing eggplant, onions, beets, garlic, and other delicious stuff from the Scattergood School and Farm. Tuesday, Liz and I went shopping for most of the grocery items and she finished up the rest on Wednesday.

We got to the camp and one of the two ovens was eviscerated, a disappointment for sure.

Wednesday night was supposed to be pizza and I made my favorite pizza dough recipe from Anna Thomas's The New Vegetarian Epicure.
1/2 C Milk
3/4 C Warm Water
1 T yeast
1/2 t salt
1t sugar
3 C flour
a bit of olive oil -

I quadrupled the recipe and it made 3 full sheet pans of pizza - I put the cheese only - kid friendly - one in at 500+° oven and then after about 10 minutes when the sausage pepperoni carnivores pizza and the crimini mushroom, sweet pepper, onion, and olive pizza were ready to go in, it occurred to me that the cheese pizza was not almost done (as it should have been). Oven two - out of commission. So we cooked the cheese and vegetable pizzas on the flat top. This was creative, cooked the bottom of the crust nicely, but left the middle of the crust chewier than I love. All in all it worked just fine. That along with cold meat planned for lunches and an enormous, delicious salad by Tim and Duon made the meal late but tasty. We crashed into our tents - tired and full - even though it was still hot and humid and we were feeling cranky.

Reunion Food

Liz has crafted a delicious menu this year - and no tacos! Not that I don't love tacos, but they are a lot of prep time. This year this is what Liz (and I) have come up with:
Wednesday - Pizza and potluck

Thursday -- Mediterranean in feel
Lemon garlic chicken
rice
Grilled vegetables
Salad with feta and olives on the side
Roast eggplant and onions with lemon, basil, and mint

Friday - We are celebrating the year of the Pig!
Grilled Pork Loin with oriental/style rub
Chinese Cabbage Salad
Broccoli with Garlic & Soy
Sushi Rice
Fortune Cookies
Green salad

Saturday - A family Thanksgiving
Turkey & all the fixings
Mashed Potatoes
Durkee Green Bean Delish
Salad
Cranberry Orange Salad Raw style

More later - I'll post recipes as we go.