What's on the Menu / Food Provisions for CarverFest 09'

Due to the massive amount of time that Ray spent in the kitchen this year, tending to all of us, we are going to be switching things up a little for CarverFest 09'

We are still going to keep the food PayPal account, and will need $$ from each person... BUT
It is looking like the meals will not be so "organized" as they were this year, and everyone will have to fend for themselves for breakfast and lunch.
We may have lunch meats, hotdogs, and hamburgers available, but no formal time or place to eat.
Grab something, throw it on the grill and watch it yourself...

This year, the audio really took a backseat to the preping, cooking and cleaning for some, and I don't want to see that happen again.
I will be getting with Tom and Ray, to see what we can do to provide the meals, but not have to do the amount of "work" that went into it this year.
I honestly feel bad for Ray, having become our personal caterer this year. I know he loves cooking, but it was supposed to be about the "tunes", not the food.

reserved

That sounds good to me,,again,,I don't see how you guys did it (preparation/cooking) and had any time left for audio, but yet still maintained a great attitude with all that was going on, I know that I would not have been as kind and helpful as you guys were, sounds good to me, after all,,it;s all about audio, kinda free's people up, but still gets them together for a "sitdown" dinner. yep it's a;; good.

Tom's Awesome Spaghetti Sauce......wait, that's not the entire recipe......

Here’s a list of the ingredients…

Angel hair pasta, quartered [whatever is needed]
3-4 jars of your favorite prepared spaghetti sauce flavors. [mix and match at will] Don't laugh, here's where the magic happens...
1.5-2 lbs ground turkey
2 pounds “hot” breakfast sausage [will not be hot when all ingredients are combined]
1 to 1½ cups of sun dried tomatoes
2 whole tomatoes, chopped loosely
2 sticks of celery, finely sliced width-wise
1½ large whole onions, yellow chopped
2 medium yellow squash cut in half or quartered, lengthwise and then slivered
2 cups of shitake*, Portobello or regular mushrooms, drained. Mix and match to preference
3-4 tablespoons of dried oregano
2 tablespoons of minced garlic
2 teaspoons of Sea Salt
1 teaspoon of garlic salt
1 to 1¼ cups red wine
2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves
3 bay leaves [remove before serving]
1 tablespoon rosemary leaves
1-2 tablespoons of dried parsley flakes
1 minute of crushed black peppercorn in grinder [or whenever you get sore from grinding]
2 teaspoons of Mediterranean [preferred] or regular basil leaves

Precook ground turkey [lightly salt the turkey] and hot sausage in separate pans, drain grease and throw in a BIG saucepan. Add all other ingredients into pot and cook on slightly higher than medium heat for about 4-5 hours. It will taste like ass until the flavors start to combine at about hour three. At that point, you will notice the onions just starting to get soft. When the onions are at about half soft and half texture, it is ready to serve. Stir about once every half hour or so.

Serve pasta with a generous serving of this sauce and add fresh or grated parmesan cheese. Fresh garlic bread or a healthy salad both are a wonderful accompaniment to this meal.

When cooking pasta, add a bit of oil [olive, peanut, vegetable...about the equivelent of 2-3 tablespoons] to the water to prevent the water from boiling over the edge. Also, do not put the heat up all of the way. Water will still boil on #8-9 setting on an electric or gas stove and will also help to keep spillovers in check. When adding the drained and rinsed pasta back into the pan, add about 3-4 spoonfuls of sauce into the spaghetti and stir to prevent it from burning to the bottom of the pan and also to keep it from clumping up or sticking to the pan.

When cooking without a lid, add water to compensate for evaporation and in some cases, 2 cups of water is to be expected. Red wine can be used as well, but keep in mind that if you are storing any of this for future recipes or meals, the more red wine that you use, the more the sauce will sweeten over time.

Save the jars that the base sauce came in to store leftovers after cooling. Half everything if this is too large a batch and if you want to substitute fresh spices for the dried, this will alter the taste and amount used. Refer to a cooking site for dried –vs- fresh for a conversion chart. The original recipe that I make has the maximum amount of ingredients listed above.

You can not screw this recipe up and when you are done serving……sit back and enjoy all of the compliments that are about to come. Then enjoy it yourself if you haven’t tasted too much while cooking!

*Added note: If you use Shitake mushrooms, do not use the stems of the mushrooms. Use only the caps.

More to come........................

Reserved.

[DaveS]

Well I got up this afternoon and had breakfast, english muffins and milk(left my Quick at CF) and while I eating I`m thinking "Boy do I miss Ray, his prime rib and french toast and that awesome blackberry sauce."

RESERVED. Ray proposal still is valid. You can cheat on me all you want. You cooking is the best.

Reserved? What are we reserving?

While I am saddened to know that things like the aforementioned prime rib and french toast won't be available, it is totally understand that we don't want to take complete advantage of him there too.

Well, not complete advantage....

Reserved.

Only kidding. I would like to propose a meal that I cook for everybody for one night. Someone else take the reigns for the next night and so on..........

I have a meal that I can cook for around 50 people that won't take too god awful long and tastes great. If we do it this way, then it takes the brunt of the burden of cooking off of one fantastic cook and splits it up to a "cookoff". I'm ready.

Stay tuned to post # 2 [Edit: post #4] of this thread for the dinner......... [That's why I reserved it. Well, that and some other reasons but if I told you I'd have to kill you].

Ray had brought up the same idea... move the dinner around cabin to cabin, so no one got stuck cooking all the time.
I think that might be a good plan as well.
I think a less formal breakfast and lunch are a good idea...
Cap'n Crunch for me !!!


I reserved the 2nd post... so the menu can be added later.

Whooooops. I meant the 4th post.

Apparently all that great food and gear made me forget how to count.

A couple thoughts I had were to
1: have a progressive dinner night. Each cabin prepares something and
we move from cabin to cabin eating drinking and listening to all the gear
people bring.

2: If not a dinner, how about a pub crawl or cabin crawl? We visit
each cabin and just have beverages. Each cabin could have a house
drink. I'm making margaritas. Do the cabins have blenders?

2: If not a dinner, how about a pub crawl or cabin crawl? We visit
each cabin and just have beverages. Each cabin could have a house
drink. I'm making margaritas. Do the cabins have blenders?

I am liking this idea. A meal might be tough to do that way, but drinks would certainly work. Booze is nice and cheap down there too!

Before this gets complicated and all that other shit. Keeping it simple always works best.

Before this gets complicated and all that other shit. Keeping it simple always works best.

Ditto.





(that's how you reach 4,000 posts~by standing on the posts of other, more intelligent members!)