Anything But Corn-Fed: Healthy College Cooking in Rural Iowa

This year my parents and sister were coming to Grinnell for Thanksgiving and I wanted to get a locally raised turkey.  I started to investigate and found that a music professor at my school raises turkeys along with goats, chickens, geese, and sheep.  I could buy a turkey for $2/pound + $4… or I could join seven other students the Saturday before Thanksgiving and “process” the 26 turkeys (a euphemism for butchering).

Eric, the owner, doesn’t have any processing equipment so we hung the live turkeys by their feet on a homemade wooden frame where they would be killed, submerged them in near-boiling water over an open wood fire, plucked the feathers while hanging on the wooden frame, and gutted them on a nearby picnic table, all in below-freezing weather.

I picked out a 16 pounder and stuck it in my fridge.  It was especially delicious, in large part because my dad did a great job at roasting it but also because the breast was especially meaty (we carved more meat from the breast than you would usually get from an entire 16 pound turkey) and there was no doubt that it had been a healthy bird.

I tried to choose a less gruesome picture:

Eric shows us how to pluck the feathers