Hi everyone!!
I hope everyone had a great holiday!
Well, I worked Wednesday and Thursday night. We celebrated on Wednesday before I went to work. My DD did most of the coking, since she wanted to be the "lead chef" in the kitchen. She watches a lot of food network. She did a great job. We took all the turkey stock from the bag we cooked the bird in and place it in the freezer. We have three cups of golden paradise!! We have a package of turkey meat in the freezer for when times are difficult. It's about a pound and will feed the five of us. We had:
12 lb turkey
home made stuffing
green peas
gravy
mashed potatoes
cranberry sauce
sweet potatoes
creamed corn
pickles
pepperoni and cheese
The items highlighted in yellow are GONE!!
We had dinner on Wednesday, and there were still leftovers on Thursday. My DH has two friends over to eat with us on Thursday (Round two of thanksgiving). One of them brought a pan of mac and cheese.
Friday we went out for dinner, since we were shopping for a friend's son for Christmas.
Last night when we got home, I put all the turkey bones in the crock pot. I picked off the meat this morning and strained the stock. The meat and stock went into the crock pot. I chopped up a bunch of carrots, the last bit of celery, an onion, and some spices. I added the last bit of mashed potatoes to get them out of the fridge. It's all back into the crock pot to make soup. It's round three of thanksgiving tonight!
The soup that is left over tonight will go into my lunch for work. I will also put some in the freezer for another meal. The turkey bones will be put into the trash can and my son and husband will take them to the land fill/recycling center. We have two dogs and two cats who like to explore. I don't want them finding the bones and choking on them.
I also carefully planned our Thanksgiving meal so as not to have a fridge full of leftovers. We had our meal mid afternoon on Thurs, then I set to pulling the meat off of the carcass and had to use 2 large Crockpots to make the broth (we had an almost 21 lb bird). 14 cups of meat is in the freezer for future meals,along with 5 quarts of stock. We still have cranberry-orange relish, but that can easily be used up. There are enough breast meat slices left for 2-3 sandwiches (in the fridge) and that's all folks. Oh-pie remains as well, but that will certainly be gone come the end of the weekend. Today is Saturday, so it's soup day here. Naturally, it's turkey soup. I picked the carcass after it made broth, gleaning another 2 cups of what I call "scraps" and set that aside the other day, just for this soup. I used 2 additional quarts that I intentionally did not freeze, for today's soup. The last stalk of celery, 2 carrots, the rest of the creamed peas/onions/mushrooms, the rest of the turkey gravey joinded the party along with some water, bouillon packets (in lieu of salt), black pepper, fresh parsley, French tarragon, chopped Swiss chard stems (to help make up for the lack of celery), a medium onion that I chopped up, I'm letting this brew all day and later this afternoon, will add some fine egg noodles aka "soup noodles" to the awaiting Crock Pot. I also plan on experimenting with the remaining Swiss chard leaves that I set aside, the rest of the fresh mushrooms and a purple onion and concocting a type of salad with sliced hard boiled egg on top. I have the dregs of some homemade honey mustard dressing and some Ranch dip that needs to go, so I'll blend that to make a mustard Ranch dressing to top the salad. This is a take on my usual Spinach salad.
ReplyDeleteIt's great when we are able to use everything that's available to feed our families. Our families are blessed!
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