Tag Archives: Charlie’s

Thanksgiving Dinner! – The Recipes.

Posted on by Standard 3

I love to put together a holiday meal, especially thanksgiving. I have it down pretty good to corral the chaos.

Turkey in the electric roaster!
Turkey in the electric roaster!
Thanksgiving Dinner Plate!
Thanksgiving Dinner Plate!

First prepping the turkey & stuffing…

I do the bird in the electric roaster, stuffed, for 15-ish minutes per lb. @ 325° Farenheit. I roasted in the preheated pan on full for about 45 minutes at the start before turning it down. I inject the turkey in a few sports with a mixture of melted beer, butter, & spices. I usually rub some softened butter on top and toss on lots of seasoning there too. I usually pour a bottle of beer and a box of turkey broth in the bottom, & include some carrots, celery, & an onion.

Don’t worry about samonella with a stuffed bird. Take it to 165°. Always use a food thermometer. Some of the dark meat of the turkey will be overcooked but it will still be juicy & delicious. I haven’t killed anyone with my turkey yet.

The extra stuffing can be made into stuffing balls, but I put it in the crock pot. You just have to stir it, & maybe add extra turkey or chicken broth if needed or it will stick to the sides a lil’ burnt.

Do the math, & time it so you’re pulling the turkey out about a half an hour before you want to serve it.

Then I make the sides. Check out my recipes!

I cut up the butternut squash first, & put it in the fridge for when I needed it.

I peeled & quartered the potatoes, let them sit in cold water (& turkey broth).

Cut up & prep the brussels sprouts & carrots, you want to pop them in about 45 min before you plan to eat.

Prep the squash & put it in right after the brussels sprouts.

Turn on the potatoes, by the time they cook & you do your thing… it the other stuff should be ready to go.

Others brought even more sides… cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, & rolls!

If I make green bean casserole, I pretty much use the Campbell’s recipe or French’s Fried Onions recipe… sometimes with an added can of mushrooms, fresh green beans, & maybe even some bacon pieces or ham.

If I cook with beer it’s either Yuengling Traditional Lager or Straub Amber.

For the gravy, I just use pan drippings broth from the turkey, and eyeball together a slurry of corn starch, add it, & some more spices if needed.

Someday I am going to brine a turkey with a buttermilk brine & cook it on the smoker, but… not for Thanksgiving. Well, not the first time anyway.

I like to keep the oven open for sides, & any brought sides or pies that may need warmed up.

Thanksgiving Sides! Brussels Sprouts & Rainbow Carrots, Butternut Squash, Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes, & Stuffing!
Thanksgiving Sides! Brussels Sprouts & Rainbow Carrots, Butternut Squash, Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes, & Stuffing!

What are your Thanksgiving or other holiday meal prep tips, go-to’s, methods, or favorite recipes?

🦃 Don’t forget these free Thanksgiving Mazes! 🦃

Mashed Potatoes Recipe

Posted on by Standard 1

Putting my thanksgiving recipe here… which is more of a method I guess.

A bowl of homemade mashed potatoes, with some pats of butter on top.
We ran out of bowls, so it’s in a pie plate.

Here I keep it super simple.

Gather it:

  • 5 lb. bag of Yukon Gold Potatoes
  • 1 Stick Butter
  • 1 cup of Buttermilk
  • 8 oz. Sour Cream
  • 32 ox. box of turkey broth.
  • Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, White Pepper, Salt to taste

Do it:

  1. Peel the potatoes, don’t be afraid to leave a bit of skin.
  2. Quarter them, place them in your stock pot in the turkey broth with some salt and cover the potatoes with cold water.
  3. Maybe toss in a pat of butter and some spices.
  4. Bring the pot to a boil on high with the lid on, take the lid off and crank it down to medium for 20 minutes.
  5. Turn the burner off, strain the potatoes, but the pot with the potatoes back on the warm burner.
  6. Add your spices to taste.
  7. Start to mash ’em, add the buttermilk, sour cream, & butter.
  8. Don’t mash ’em too much. I like them thick enough to build a tower like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Some lumps are OK.

Tips:

  • I don’t actually measure the buttermilk & sour cream. Just do it by feel. Of course you can use regular milk, heavy cream, or a non-dairy milk.
  • Use good whole buttermilk, like Charlie’s Old Time Buttermilk by Turner’s.
  • Save a pat or two over butter for on top… or, just add MORE butter.
  • Of course you can just use water or chicken stock or bullion cubes or beer or whatever you want.
  • Add whatever spices you want too! I may have put some poultry seasoning in there. Sometimes I add cheese too.
  • I use a meat chopper instead of a traditional potato masher. I find it goes much smoother and is less of a mess.

I’d be interested to see how you do it. Got any tips or secrets for me? What are your favorite methods or add-ins? I also love a good boxed potato flake mixed extra thick and flavored-up, but get out of here with that runny Bob Evans microwavable slop!

Turner Dairy products at Giant Eagle stores?

Posted on by Standard 3

Turner'sGiant Eagle

I’m sure you remember my last post about Turner’s with the pretty picture.  I decided to ask Giant Eagle why all of their stores don’t carry Turner’s products…

From: Eric Carroll [mailto:me@my.email.address]
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 1:46 PM
Subject: Turner’s Dairy | Charie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk

Hello Friends at the Big Bird,

I’m writing to you today to request that all of your Giant Eagle and Market District Stores carry products from Turner Dairy Farms, Inc.  I know that some locations do already carry Turner’s products, because I’ve written to them trying to track down some of Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk… and they clued me in to the Giant Eagle in Brentwood.  I know that the Giant Eagle in Murrysville also carries Turner’s Iced Tea.

I’d love it if the Cochran Road, Bridgeville, and Parkway Center locations had Turner’s buttermilk, chip dip, and tea varieties readily available.  I’d add them to my order virtually every time we shop there… much like I do now with the tea when I find myself in Rite Aid on Banksville Road.

I also find it hard to believe that with the myriad of products and name brands available at the new Market District in Robinson… Turner’s is nowhere to be found!  Have you tried the chip dip?  It’s incredible.  It puts the Kraft and B L brands to shame.

You’ll find in the attached photo all of the Turner’s bounty that my wife & I picked up this weekend while just passing by the Brentwood Giant Eagle.  I can assure you, these products would be on every grocery order if available at the Giant Eagle locations where we typically do most of our shopping.  Not only these products, but the raspberry & lime tea… and just about everything that Turner’s offers!  (Sorry, I don’t do diet drinks.)

Thank you for taking the time to read my email, and I hope that you give Turner’s products serious consideration for inclusion in your fine establishments.

Sincerely,
-Eric
me@my.email.address

And, they responded…

From: “Frey, Brian” Brian.Frey@gianteagle.com
To: “me@my.email.address” me@my.email.address
Sent: Tue, February 2, 2010 10:39:21 AM
Subject: RE: Turner’s Dairy | Charie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk

Eric,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us regarding Turner Dairy Farms and some of the items that you obviously like as detailed below.

I can understand your frustration related to these items that you feel passionately about not being readily available and convenient to purchase.  However, I must honestly inform you that we don’t have any upcoming plans to carry additional Turner Dairy Farms items at any of our corporately owned Giant Eagle and Market District locations.

We get contacted by customers on a daily/weekly basis requesting us to carry a variety of items from local dairies, and we just cannot support all of these local dairy item requests in our limited dairy cooler space in our stores.  To manage the limited space we have in stores, we try to partner with dairies and vendors that can provide us item programs that accommodate the needs of the majority of our customers.  If we were to carry a representative sample of all the local dairy items that we get contacted about, we would have to eliminate a large portion of our current item mix that a significantly larger customer base demands us to carry and also asks us daily/weekly to expand upon but we cannot as a result of the same limited space challenge.

Sorry I could not give you better news here.  There are a lot of items that I am personally fond of that I have decided to not carry as well due to our limited space and need to satisfy the largest amount of our customers.  In the meantime, some of our independently owned and operated stores such as Brentwood are allowed to carry the Turners Dairy Farms items as you note below.  We allow those owners to have some flexibility in their item mix, and some stores have elected to carry Turners items based on customer demand or geographic proximity to the dairy.

Sincerely,
Brian Frey

Category Buyer
Giant Eagle, Inc.
101 Kappa Drive
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
412.963.2592
Fax: 412.968.1706
E-mail: brian.frey@gianteagle.com

D’oh!  Well, it doesn’t hurt to try, does it?  Apparently Giant Eagle has no intentions of widely carrying Turner’s products, but at least they’re honest about it.  It’s just annoying that I can’t do all of my grocery shopping in one store (or even at one chain), especially with the vicious circle of fuelperks and foodperks and whatever other kind of perks they come up with next.

Interestingly enough, I just sent an email to all those with whom I’ve shared communication with in the past at Giant Eagle, but the “To” address was cut out of the original inline reply… so I have no idea which one actually got through.

I’m assuming they’d have to have an onslaught of messages in order to even consider carrying the Turner’s products.  If you’re so inclined, you can…

Not that many of you are that adamant about the Turner’s brand… but if you are, or you know someone who is… please feel free to direct them here.

Turner’s | Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk

Posted on by Standard 8

Turner’s is awesome… whether you’re talking about the Iced Tea, the Tea-Bird, the Buttermilk, all the other products, or the customer service.  I just thought I’d share while again trying out the post-via-email feature on WordPress.  Apologies, you’ll have to read from the bottom up for it to make sense…

From: Nicholas Yon <Nicholas@TurnerDairy.net>
To: Eric Carroll <me@my.email.address>
Sent: Mon, February 1, 2010 11:38:57 AM
Subject: RE: Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk?

Eric-

Thank you for the email and picture!  Looks like a nice variety of products.  I am glad to know that your trip to Brentwood GE was a success this past weekend and I hope that it continues to provide you with a viable option for procuring our higher standard products (and especially our Charlie’s Buttermilk).  If you enjoy baking, try the Charlie’s Buttermilk in everything from waffles to mashed potatoes to biscuits.  Thank you also for passing along your comments to Giant Eagle corporate.

We truly value your dedicated support of our products.  Have a great week!

Nicholas Yon

Marketing Director

Turner Dairy Farms, Inc.

From Local Farms to Local Families!

Nicholas@turnerdairy.net

412-372-2211

From: Eric Carroll [mailto:me@my.email.address]
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 10:39 AM
To: Nicholas Yon
Subject: Re: Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk?

Hello Nicholas,

I just wanted to thank you for telling me about the Giant Eagle in Brentwood .  We stopped a few weeks ago when in the area to no avail… the milk shelves were quite bare… must have been re-stocking time.  This past Saturday evening though, we hit the mother-load.  I grabbed two little jugs of Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk and (as you can see in the attached photo) a bunch of other Turner’s products!

The Buttermilk is awesome… it’s just like the stuff we used to pick up when I was really little at an old local dairy farm that is long since gone (Sinan’s in Murrysville/Export PA).

I intend to pass the photo along to several local Giant Eagles to urge them to also carry your products.  They’re obviously great sellers, and all the stuff in the photo could regularly be their sale if they’d only have the stuff in stock!

Have a good week!
-Eric

.seitilibasid gninrael fo nuf ekam ot ynnuf ton yllaer s’tI

From: Nicholas Yon <Nicholas@TurnerDairy.net>
To: Eric Carroll <me@my.email.address>
Sent: Mon, December 28, 2009 10:27:44 AM
Subject: RE: Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk?

Eric-

Thank you for the email, kind words, and years of dedication.  The Turner family, our employees, and our local family dairy farms truly appreciate your patronage of our products all these years.  Plus iced tea stickers on a guitar case is “uber-cool.”

Listed below is the closest location to you that currently carries our Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk with real butter flakes.  This is an independent Giant Eagle location, thus they are able to offer Turner’s higher standard dairy products.

I’ve also attached a “product request” form that can be filled out and turned into the store manager or sent to any local Giant Eagle or Kuhn’s.  I would also encourage you to email the company directly via their website.

We currently produce three varieties of buttermilk:

– Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk – a whole buttermilk with real butter flakes

– Light Buttermilk – a 1% light buttermilk

– Baking Buttermilk – light buttermilk formulated for baking

Thank you again for the email and question.  Have a great New Year!

Giant Eagle (they carry the plastic quart size)

Brentwood Towne Center

600 Towne Square Way

Pittsburgh, PA   15227

Nicholas Yon

Marketing Director

Turner Dairy Farms, Inc.

From Local Farms to Local Families!

From: Eric Carroll [mailto:me@my.email.address]
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 1:03 AM
To: customer service
Subject: Charlie’s Old Fashioned Buttermilk?

Hello Friends,

I’m a huge fan of Turner’s iced tea… I even wrote a letter years ago that warranted a free T-shirt and a few little jug labels.  I grew up in Murrysville PA not far form a little mom n’ pop store called Thomas’ that sold your milks, teas, and other products & got me hoooked.  I still have the Tea labels on my guitar case, and my wife cringes when I wear my bright orange and slightly tattered Tea-shirt.

Now I live in Pittsburgh, and I go out of my way to get Turner’s, as they don’t sell it at the Giant Eagle where we do our grocery shopping, or at the Kuhn’s that’s right by our house.  We have to go to Rite Aid to get the tea, and we usually pick up Turner’s dip & some chips while we’re there.

I know of a small number of other places around that carry the tea…  I think the BP station, and a beer distributor here are loyal Turner’s sellers… but I hear you have a new product that I’d love to get my hands on…  Buttermilk with the flecks?  I can’t find this type of buttermilk anywhere… I’ve been looking for it for … well, it has to be over a year now.  I heard a dairy up north makes it… but I haven’t been able to find any in local stores.

My mom told me that she had discovered it at Wal-Mart in Delmont, and belives that the aforementioned Thomas’ sells it… but I rarely find myself out that way these days… especially not to do any grocery shopping.

Are you able to tell me which (if any) stores in my area have been carrying this new flecked buttermilk?  I’m currently in Dormont… zip code 15216.

Also wondering… do you have any sort of form letter that I could send to Giant Eagle and/or Kuhn’s to request that they carry your tea in addition to or instead of some of the other local flavorless tea brands?

Thank you for your time, can’t wait to hear from you!

Thirsty!
-Eric

P.S. – What’s the difference between the baking buttermilk & the other varieties?