Turkey Leek Fennel Wild Rice Soup

So the other week at my local farmer's market they had an extra turkey. I know it's early but I LOVE turkey so I got it, about 11 pounds maybe. I did the standard stuffing, but with some home grown leeks.

Here we have a gratuitous picture of leeks mixed with some other stuff from before the frost. I love leeks. I fell in love with them when I started my kitchen garde research and found Creative Vegetable Gardening: Accenting Your Vegetables With Flowers by Joy Larkcom. One place referenced by Larkcom and others is Villandry. Villandry is a chateau built during the Renaissance that was restored last century including a fabulous potager. Leeks and cabbages are pretty prominent in the squares.

I won't go in depth about it just now, but my aspirations are kinda like it. Visit their website, the design is just amazing if you haven't heard of it. So the leeks there were part of a square design I had that I let go a bit.

Anyhow, when I make turkey, I try to when the 1st meal is over to clean all the meaat off the bones. Then I put the bones in a huge pot of water with all the good stuff you need to make soupstock. Usually for poultry that includes celery and celery seed but in this case I threw in some fennel stalks with a bunch of fennel seeds left on. There's also as you may see some carrots and some parsley(not really visible. Anyway, I hope that that's a good self-portrait. This is simmered overnight which makes the house smell great.

The soup is delicious. If anyone shows an interest I might post my recipe.

Fall Veggies

This is the only radicchio to survive the repeated ground hog attacks. It seems to be forming a nice head now.

It is pretty yes? We'll see how I end up eating it. I must look at recipes. Any ideas out there?

I have had it with something or other that was pretty good, but it is a veggie that I still have had little experience with.

Next we have some giant red mustard. This stuff has some spicy kick when raw, but cooked is very nice indeed. The other night we had some turkey sausage with mustard greens. delicious!

The dead twigs overhanging it is the mother plant. I started with one and though I ate a good bit of it, I let it go to seed. There were hundreds of seedlings which I still am thinning. I highly recommend red mustard.

Finally we have a black radish. You cant tell from the picture but this is as big as a softball. I googled recipes for this thing and the most appealing to me is peel, slice them thin, salt a bit poor some beer. Eat slice, take sip.

Supposedly they are good for your thyroid. They also tend to taste better when they've been sitting around for a while, not harvested right away.

I still have some other things to eat out there such as parsley, kale and cilantro. I have some fennel that sprouted new shoots that I hope will become big bulbs.