Roasted a turkey yesterday and put up almost twenty servings worth today

[csziggy]

Roasted a 14.5 pound turkey and made gravy, dressing, and green beans to go with it. Last night my husband and I had an off season turkey dinner. Last night I split up the dressing and gravy into 4 batches, each enough for two meals for the two of us.

Today he cut up the turkey and we split the meat up and made sets of four meals worth to match the dressing and gravy. Since I prefer dark meat and he prefers light meat we kept them separated - otherwise he will steal my limited dark meat. We had about a pound of light meat leftover and packaged that in two batches for casseroles. My casseroles are usually six servings.

So out of this turkey we should have at least twenty servings, or ten meals for the two of us, all nicely packed away in the freezer!

No fancy cooking in any of this - Publix turkey, Pepperidge Farm Herb Stuffing (with onion, celery, and mushrooms), gravy (made with Campbells Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Celery soups, turkey broth, and mushrooms - and a tablespoon of soy sauce for color and umami).

Tomorrow I will make mushroom risotto since I got way too many mushrooms and need to use them up. I'll freeze that in batches to be a quick side dish.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Wow, I wish you lived next door!

Good for you, all that cooking! I'm sure it must make you feel more confident about your immediate future.

Bon appetit!

[pnwest]

2. I do that every thanksgiving. Love turkey,

cook the whole mess for the two of us and then freeze portions to enjoy for several meals! We keep saying we ought to cook a turkey more than once a year, just never seems to happen...

[csziggy]

8. Since we usually go to family get togethers for the holidays

I try to buy a turkey around Thanksgiving when they are really cheap. I paid less than a dollar a pound for this turkey! Then I try to thaw it out by this time of the year and cook it just for this purpose. A couple of years I lucked into fully cooked turkeys at Publix the day after Thanksgiving, maybe left over from their meals they make, and just had to cut them up. But I prefer to cook my own

Because of various deaths in the family and surgeries, I have not done this for a long time, so it's nice to do it again.

[chillfactor]

3. My caregiver did the same thing today

with pork loin. We had a pork roast today. Have left overs for pork sandwiches. Then he cut up the rest of the pork roast into pork steaks......several meals for us now sitting in the freezer!

[csziggy]

9. When I get a pork loin, I cut it up myself and freeze smaller amounts

I can get a couple of small roasts, boneless pork chops (last time I made thicker ones with pockets to stuff), and bits and pieces for stir fry. I freeze four chops at a time, which is just right for the two of us to have two meals, as are the small (maybe two pound) roasts.

Next time I go to Costco, I will look for a pork loin!

[procon]

4. Don't forget to use that Turkey carcass.

Render it down, a pressure cooker works best, but a large Dutch oven or stock pot will do nicely. You have several pints of rich bone broth to use in soups, stews, casseroles and gravy.

[csziggy]

7. I forgot to mention that - I put the carcass with carrot and celery in the crockpot

And let it simmer for about six hours. I thought about going for overnight but didn't want to smell turkey all night.

I've got seven 2 cup containers cooling in the fridge, most of which will go into the freezer later. Some will go into the mushroom risotto rather buying commercial broth. Some will be used to cook the turkey casseroles down the road.

[procon]

14. Yummy, that's good stuff! nt

[MuseRider]

5. I have a 16 pound turkey

sitting in my freezer waiting for me to have the time to cook it. Today was a 6 pound roast chicken and I baked bread. Parmesan Cracked Pepper Italian loaf, mmmmmmm. Tomorrow I will bake different loaves until I run out of ingredients. Time to put food up for the long haul. Come to think of it, I just used the last of my mushrooms. Drat!

[csziggy]

10. I was going to order flour for making different kinds of bread

Here it's been hard to find rye flour and oat flour only comes in small bags. I'd found some on Amazon and put it in my cart - King Arthur Flour has apparently shut down for the duration since everything is marked as "Not available". But when I went back to complete the order, everything had been removed as "Not available."

I've got most of a couple of bags of whole wheat flour and plenty of all purpose but I was craving a loaf of rye bread. I guess it will have to wait.

[MuseRider]

13. Wow.

That is surprising to me! I would have thought that it was way to early to be running out of things like flour. That scares me.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. Twenty servings! Sounds about right to me.

I have a small turkey in the freezer in the garage, and I'm thinking that in a couple of weeks I'll thaw it out and invite a couple of friends over for dinner.

I love turkey, often fix it well outside of Thanksgiving. When my kids were growing up I'd occasionally bake a turkey in the middle of the week (I had the good fortune to be a stay at home mom) and they'd come home from school to a turkey dinner. I miss those days. Now I live alone, and although I have a good life, there's a lot about that earlier time that I loved and wouldn't mind returning to.

[csziggy]

11. That was the nice thing about being self employed - I could set my own schedule

Now that I am retired, not much has changed except I don't have to answer to other people anymore.

And it really is nice to be able to have Thanksgiving whenever you like!

[Freddie]

12. Sounds great!

I stocked the freezer with meat (boneless chicken breast, ground beef, a ham) for a couple weeks. Found a bag of frozen raw shrimp, made shrimp scampi for dinner last night. Today I’m going to clean out the freezer and see if there’s anything else good in there and pitch unusable/freezer-burned stuff.