A wonderful Thankful meal

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday meal as we did.  Our day was spent watching movies, playing and just having fun spending time together.  I didn't go crazy over our meal this year but made some favorites and excluded some.  I can't believe the amount of food that is normal for our holiday meal blended from my husband's family and my own.  Thing we thought we had to have but this year we cut it back and I am glad the work was less but the meal still great.

We had bought a 20 pound turkey for the day and for the six of us.  Now I know that's a huge bird but we have plans to make it last.  We are already on day two of it and it's not even half way gone.  And I hot this turkey at a great deal.  I was .79 a pound but I had a coupon from this store for a free turkey up to 12 pounds or the credit for a 12 turkey off you bill so in the end my turkey cost me 6.92ish for the whole bird.  And honest I am sure I did the whole meal for about $20 with enough for two days of meals and more with the turkey.

But by far my favorite thing to make was my stuffing.  I make my own bread with all the spices and herbs in it so it tastes like stuffing.  I will be making more tomorrow for sandwiches with the left over turkey.  I am telling you this is a great way to have thanksgiving later in the year when you want that taste.  So I thought I would share my recipe with you.

Ingredients

4 cups flour (1 cup whole wheat, 3 cups ap is what I used)

2 packets of yeast

1 tsp fine sea salt

1 1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

1 tbsp sage (we love this flavor in our stuffing please add as much or as little as you like)

1 1/2 tsp rosemary

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups warm to hot water (start with 1 1/4 and add more should you need it depends on a lot of factors with your flour and who dry your home is if you need more than the 1 1/2 add it slowly with buy one tbsp at a time)

1 tsp sugar 

The herbs used are what I use in my stuffing so use what you like it doesn't have to be the same as  mine.  And please share if you change it up and what you used.  

 Add Salt to the bowl

 Add your spices, herbs, and seasonings to the salt

 Add your flour and make a well

 Add your sugar and cover with yeast

 Add water next

 Cover with plastic wrap and let the yeast do it's happy dance.

 About five minutes later it's happy time to mix

 Knead until it's smooth

 Place in an oiled bowl and oil the dough ball.

 Recover with the plastic wrap you used earlier and let rise until doubled in size.  Punch down and form into your loaf (what ever style you like) bake about 20 minutes at 425 until golden brown on top.  I top it with melted butter when it comes out.

 Mmm....yummy bread.  I don't think you can see the herbs and everything but it's there and it smells like stuffing.

 To use in stuffing I just cut it up into cubes and then make your stuffing as normal. I made mine with apples, sage, my bread, sage sausage (we like sage this time of year LOL) carrots, celery, onions and turkey stock.  Salt and pepper as needed.  It's about one third bread, one third veggies and apple, and one third meat (this is really under about one third)

 Apples, celery, carrots, onion Cook them in evoo and butter with salt and pepper and other seasonings.  I like a bite to our carrots so I don't cook them down like the celery and the onion, the apples I leave with a bit of bite too.

 Sage sausage browning in the same pan I cooked me veggies in.

 Once the sausage is cooked I add back the veggies and apple.

 Then I add them to the bread crumbs which after cubing I baked at 325 for about 20 minutes. or until dry.

 Add turkey stock that I made last month

 Mix add more stock if needed.

 Added to your turkey (if you stuff) or to a baking pan and cover bake at 350 for about 30 minutes, remove foil and bake another 5-10 minutes for a crunchy top.  (the pic above was taken before I added more stock but we like our stuffing not as wet as many out there so add what you need and want to get it how you like it)

 My plate of food it was too much but worth it. LOL

So who was your Thanksgiving?  Did you try anything new?  And if you try my stuffing bread please let me know and give me feedback and don't be afraid to ask any questions should you need them I am not in the habit of writing recipes so if I made a mistake please point it out.  And now the last questions....Did you go shopping today?  What is the deal you were seeking out?

On Turkey how many meals, 6 in total, quick catch up plus Thanksgiving turkey leftover ideas

So I am not a great blogger LOL.  I got two more meals out of the turkey a pot pie and a soup.  I also got a few lunches as well.  That's not counting all the meals that the stock will go into.  One 12-14 pound turkey is a great source of meat for a family of 6, and if you plan your meals out right and watch the portions, you can get a lot out of it.  Now this turkey cost me about 21.00 so we will use 20 as a middle number and for six meals for the meat alone that is 3.33 a meal, that is not counting in the savings from making my own stock and the meals it will go into and the lunches that were made from left overs or the meat itself.

With thanks giving around the corner so many people are going to have lefts overs and wonder what they can do with them so I thought I would share what my ideas are.

• salad, you can use it like chicken on top of a salad
• home made hot pockets with broccoli and cheese
• you can use it in pasta sauces
• take a jar of bbq sauce and make pulled bbq turkey sandwiches
• pot pie
• so many soups
• I like to bake it into eggs with spinach and feta and veggies
• you can use it with beans and taco mix for tacos
• pretty much I use it like I would chicken
• Chili

I know that this isn't a lot of ideas but it's some.  This year for thanksgiving we got a 20+ pound turkey, and I can't wait to cook it up for the holiday nor can I wait to play with the left overs I have so many ideas that I am not sure if they will work or not but I am planning on that bird to feed us for a week.

I have also decided I will post my Thanksgiving meal, the prep and what not.  Now I know I am not the best cook out there but I am sure going to try and have one yummy meal.  I am finalizing the menu in the morning and I will post it then. 

One Turkey how many meals? Day Three Stock or Broth

We are talking Turkey stock or broth which from my research seem to be pretty much the same thing.  For two days I worked at making this stock and my house smelled great.  Like Thanksgiving turkey all day long.  Broth is something that is great for you, and easy to make.  So I thought I would share how I did it.  First off I read this great article on Cooking Traditional Foods you can also find them on Facebook here. The article is great and pretty much tells you how to do it step by step.  But I thought I would type up what I did with pictures because I am silly like that.

First thing I did was pick as much meat off the turkey bones as I could and then roast it.

I also pulled out the jars that had the drippings from when I roasted the turkey.

And then it was all into the pool, eh I mean stock pot.

Then I added water until it was covered and many I was lucky my pan was barely big enough.  Next time I will break the bones down more.  In all there was 2 gallons of water added to the pan.

Then I added the vinegar 2 tbsp per quart of water.

Then I let it sit for an hour to let the vinegar do it's thing.  After that I turn on the burner and brought it up to a simmer.  Once it was simmering I went to bed, I let it simmer for 30 hours (you can do more or less time this just worked this time for me.)

I then turned it off and picked out all the big pieces of bone and such.  Then I let it cool down a bit before straining it the first time.

My set up for straining, stock pot strainer, and a kitchen towel.

Straining the first time.

After straining it.

After I strained it I put it in the refrigerator over night.  So that the fat could get hard.

 

Then I used a spoon to skim the layer of fat off the top.  And strained it again.

The set up a bowl, kitchen towel and a strainer.

All strained and ready for storage.

At this point I was almost done, all I had last was to jar it up.  We reuse glass jars here so that's what I did.  I got six quart sizedish jars, (one is a pickle jar not sure about it's size) and half gallon or so in a ziploc bag (ran out of jars).  I labeled them and froze them.  I should be able to get a few meals out of this ALONE.  I can use this stock for soups, or just cooking my beans or rice in to give it added flavor.

 This is my best looking stock to date.

 The ziploc bag before it went in the freezer

Six yummy jars of turkey goodness.

The $20 I spent on this turkey has saved me already, from the two meals I have gotten plus a few days of sandwich lunches, plus all this stock is great.  I still have about 6 cups of dark meat in the freezer for other meals and ideas.  I can't wait to use them.  I am going to try some new recipes.  I hope this helps you out when you make stock.  It is easy I know it looks like a lot but the hard work is over you cooked the turkey and took the meat off the bones.   In all I would say my active time doing this was maybe an hour (I have small children so it was a stop and go thing sometimes)  that's straining it twice (over two days) and jarring it all up. Which would have taken less time had I had a funnel. LOL Instead I had to use a ladle to fill the jars up.

One Turkey how many meals? Day Two

Tonights dinner with turkey was light.  After yesterday's dinner kind of needed to be.  We had home made tomato soup and grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches. We used about 1/4 to 1/3 of one breast of the turkey for the sandwiches and it was a nice meal.

How I made my tomato soup

1 28 oz can of tomato sauce (found with the canned tomatoes)
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes
1 onion choped
1 green pepper
2 gloves garlic choppedsp evoo
1/2 can of water
and then I used different spices to our taste. (salt, pepper, ect)

First chop the onions, green peppers, and garlic

then cook the onions and green pepper add the garlic near the end.

Then add all the tomatoes and sauce and water stir and turn to med low and stir occasionally

After about two hours add the soup to a blender and puree it. 

I did this in stages and poured into to a bowl until I got it all pureed after that I added it back to the pan I cooked it in.

See it's much smoother now.  At this point I did add some sugar to cut the acid of the tomatoes and checked all the seasonings.  Then I put it on low and let it sit till dinner time stiring it every now and then.

Mean while I made bread the same recipe from before but doubled.  And my littlest man got into a marker and the flour I dropped on the floor.

Don't worry it was a non toxic marker one my 2 yo was coloring with while I cooked.

And that's the soup really I let it sit till it was time to eat. Hubby was a little late but that was good it gave the bread time to cool.  I bake it in a corning ware dish and it worked great it was huge and one slice made one sandwich or two slices made one really big daddy size sandwich.  Here is the bread in the oven and fresh out of the oven.

 In the oven looks like I am cleaning it tomorrow

 Fresh out of the oven with butter melted on the top

Close up of the top.

To make a grill cheese I just mozzarella cheese and some left over turkey now I didn't butter the outsides and it toasted up fine.

With the soup we just added a little cheese to it. 

I have tons of turkey left and I have yet to make my stock too.  I am sure I can get at least two more meals from this bird and a couple of lunches for hubby.

One Turkey how many meals?

So tonight I had a great idea I would blog about how many meals plus broth I get from my 14 pound turkey.  So lets start with tonight.  Tonight was a normal turkey dinner and almost half of the bird was gone but this feed six of us.  The older two boys shared the meat off of a leg, my daughter, the baby and my self shared a breast plus made a sandwich for hubby's lunch.  And Hubby had a wing.  I still have a thigh left that I think will be turned into Turkey pot pie or a soup tomorrow night.  I will also start my stock.  I did save all the juices from the turkey for my stock and I got two pasta sauce jars full.

My goal is to get four meals out of this bird plus stock and a few lunches for the hubby.  I know we ate almost half of it but we did skip lunch for this meal so that's our excuse LOL.

Any ways I thought I would start off with my recipe I guess you could say for turkey.

How I roast a turkey

• First get husband to unwrap and clean out the giblets of the turkey (I normally feed them to the dog I know they are healthy for me and I do wish I saved them for the stock but I forgot)
• Then have hubby wash the turkey since he already has turkey hands, mean while get the roasting pan ready for the bird
• Have hubby place bird breast side up in the pan
• Cut two granny smith apples in half place on apple inside of the bird and the other under the flap of skin by the neck
• Cut one medium size onion (we used sweet onion) in half and peel the outside off and place one half in the bird and one half under/in the skin at the neck area
• Next I peeled 4 large cloves are garlic and lightly crushed them and places two each in side the bird and under the neck area.
• Then I took soft butter and rubbed it on the bird under the skin and a little on top with some evoo and Black pepper and Lawery's seasoning salt.  I then add about 1 cup water to the bottom of the pan.  Then make a foil tent or place the lid on top and roast at 325 until done.  Mine took about 4 hours  30 minutes before it was done I took the tent off to let the skin brown.
• Let it sit for about 15-20 min with foil on top before cutting I find it doesn't lose it's juices as much that way.
• Enjoy!

With our dinner we served, peas and mashed potato with cheesy bake, Fresh baked Italian bread I used this recipe for the bread.  OH and to make it extra yummy I rub butter on top to melt it a little bit it's yummy.

And then dessert we had homemade apple pie.  Now that I am trying to make my own crust I am still perfecting this recipe for ourselves.  Don't get me wrong it tastes great but there are still problems like it's watery and the bottom crust didn't come out right.  But I will keep trying.  I do have pictures of that though. They are not the best but the pie was yummy.

All in all it was a great meal and I forgot how much we loved having turkey I think I will stock up on them when they go on sale around thanksgiving.  I can see how if you think outside of the box you can get a lot from them.