Summer Braised Turkey with Chard, Tomatoes and Basil; the update

Deconstructed Turkey Rolls

I don’t like that term…. Deconstructed.

I hear it often on the Food Networks.

On the one hand, I think it sounds a bit pretentious and self-aggrandizing.

On the other hand, it sounds as if the chef either wasn’t capable of coming up with a better name or simply couldn’t be bothered.

Or, maybe, it was just a screw-up:

‘The tuna salad fell out of the bread so I slapped a few more lettuce leaves on it, cut the bread smaller and called it a Deconstructed Tuna Sandwich.

I’ll lay claim to that last one.

I was planning on making turkey rolls.  They were meant to look similar to these Turkey Pesto Rolls I made two summers ago:

I have always gotten perfectly sliced turkey cutlets in the past.  I buy them prepackaged, but always pay attention and have never been disappointed.

Until this time.  They looked good through the film, but looks can be deceiving.

The cutlets looked like they’d been cut with a chainsaw.

A very big chainsaw wielded by an incompetent amateur.

They ranged from paper thin to an inch thick.

They were thoroughly inspected by both mon mari and me…. There was absolutely no way of salvaging them to make turkey rolls.

Since I had the rest of the ingredients laid out and ready to roll (so to speak) I could legitmately call this dish Deconstructed Turkey Rolls.

But I won’t.

And I only used the ingredients I had intended for the rolls and the accompanying sauce.

I was determined…..

I don’t know how the Rolls would have been – but this was sinfully delicious!

About a month ago, when mon mari had the finished dining room in his sights, he was debating who he could get to help move in the book cases.

Yesterday he decided he could do it himself.

And there you have it…..

He moved them himself.

He even took everything off the shelves!

Well, he started to, then I realized what he was doing….

It’s ever so much easier if all the books are taken off the shelves and kept in the order they were in, by shelf.

It’s also so much more logical to clean everything in the dirty den, then move it to the clean dining room…. Than move it to the clean dining room, then dust it.

Remember, the farmers have been harvesting here – we’re living in a dust bowl.

He finished the moving of the shelves early yesterday afternoon.

I finished the cleaning and reorganizing this afternoon.

As long as I was at it……

We could finally move the last bits out of the crowded living room into the den where they were meant to be…. More cleaning and organizing (no photos – not finished.)

I moved our collection of wine decanters into the dining room – from their scattered places throughout the house.  This is a table that was left to us by the previous owners at our last house. They left a lot of furniture.  We kept it.

And I moved the tea-cart in.  I decided it was a good place to store the wine books… Since I had eliminated their former resting place.

There will be a bit more rearranging once we have a mantel over the fireplace….

But we have a hearth!  (Needs to be grouted).

We’re getting very close to having this floor finished….

Mostly