The Turkey Made Me Cry

For dinner, I had chipotle-apricot roast turkey and a baked potato.

I've become addicted to baked potatoes lately, mostly due to a serendipitous run-in with them at Beck's Prime a few weeks back. I love their burgers, but I was trying to be healthy and ordered a massive, delicious stuffed potato instead. It was the best potato I've had in decades, if ever, with crispy skin I HAD to eat. I wonder if they coat their potatoes in lard? They're that good. I speculated at the time that it was probably as bad for me as a burger, and I finally looked up the numbers today. It's actually worse for you than a burger by 200 calories. And almost as bad as the delicious (but very, very bad) cheeseburger I love. I ate said evil cheeseburger for lunch.

So, a healthy dinner was called for. I was fascinated with the art of the perfect baked potato, so I bought a couple to experiment with, along with some turkey from Whole Food's prepped food area. The potatoes turned out well, if not quite as crispy as the ones I made a few days back. It seems like those had slightly thicker skins, even though they were all Russets. Baking at 425 for an hour, coated in olive oil and a little salt seems to work consistently, if not always perfectly.

The turkey, however, was awful. Perhaps I should have anticipated that white turkey meat, sliced and left in a display cooler all day might not be terribly moist, but, well, I expect nice grocery stores to sell food that doesn't suck. The purported "chipolte" and "apricot" flavors were invisible, so I supplemented by slathering the meat with some peach/prosecco jam and some Marie Sharp's. Of course, I grabbed the "hot" bottle instead of the "mild" MS by accident (we have at least four varieties floating around in the fridge), so the turkey also made me cry.

I also had a glass of carignan with my meal. WF's wine selection is absurdly overpriced, even compared to Central Market, so I was ecstatic to find an old vine French red for under $7/bottle. I know most people dislike carignane except as a blending grape, but it's actually one of my favorites. This particular one is so generically labeled it doesn't really have a name ("Carignan, vin de pays d'aude 2006"). I was surprised at the structure, considering it's a few years old- it tasted like vinegar until it got some air, then opened up into a very tannic, tart wine with cranberry and smoky flavors. Sort of what pinot noir might taste like if it weren't so damned watery and soft.