Day After Down Time

 I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. Ours was nice and quiet with just the 3 of us. My son baked a pumpkin pie using sweetened condensed milk. I honestly had never heard of such a thing, so I was excited to try it. The pie has a more condensed texture, but is really good IMHO. Will I go out of my way to make another one? No, but only because it's more expensive to make. While going down the rabbit hole of looking up the sweetened condensed milk recipe, I found that some people use cream and milk in their pies. Very interesting. I'll have to try that. 

I went out to my local farmer to pick up our turkey. He called and said they were in the process of butchering it. I went to his farm to find that we were the lucky recipient of a 37 pound turkey!!! Yes, you read that correctly - thirty-seven pounds!!! Never in my life did I ever expect such a big bird! Well, I lugged it home and cooked it yesterday. That was a trip in itself. I had nothing large enough to bake it in. All my roasting pans were way too small, so I lugged out the roaster only to find that was also too small.

I ended up taking out the liner and using it as a baking pan and covered with foil. What an adventure! I got up at 3:30am to remove any lingering feathers, cleaned it and had it in the oven by 5:15am. The bird was falling apart done by 1pm. We had a huge feast and a TON of leftover turkey. I put it in the fridge to chill and will be repacking it today for MANY dinners to come. The bones, drippings, skin, giblets, etc. are now in that same roaster with some veggies and spices. Tomorrow I'll have a delicious broth to chill to get off the unwanted fat and then Monday or Tuesday, I'll can it for the winter season. We'll have some of the best bone broth to cook with! I can't wait to see how much I'll have from this bird! 

I think I'll take some time today today to see what items are on Black Friday Specials. Most that I've seen so far have been MEH, but every once in a while I find a goodie. I did order a couple of cookbooks that should be in soon. I'm looking forward to them! I'm also looking forward to getting a little crafting time in. Today is not so pressing with tons of leftovers to eat. 

I hope you had a lovely holiday with friends and/or family and you are enjoying all the leftovers as well!

Cranberry Sauce Time!

Thanksgiving dinner is not complete without cranberry sauce. Don't take my word for it - ask my son! He will wipe out a whole can himself!!! He prefers my homemade, but will settle for the store bought if he has to, but no matter what kind, it HAS to be on the table.

I'm making 2 batches of sauce from 2 different recipes. I'll be doing my old standby (you can find the recipe here) and I'll be trying the one on the back of the Ocean Spray bag as well as on their website. The one on the bag has less sugar to berry ratio and also has more water and needs to be cooked to gel stage.

I heard that one doesn't need to use a Foley Mill, but can just blend the berries with a hand held stick blender. I don't know how that will work, but will be trying a batch to see. My guess is that it will make a more chunky sauce instead of a smooth one that I get from my mill, because the Foley takes out the skins.

Homemade Jellied Cranberry Sauce

3 cups Cranberries
1 cup Sugar
1 cup Water

Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil, add the cranberries, then return contents to a boil. Reduce heat. Boil gently for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

Place a Foley Mill over a medium mixing bowl. Pour contents of saucepan into mill and push through. Remove mill and stir berry mixture.

Pour into serving container or straight-sided jar. Cover and cool completely at room temperature before refrigerating.

Makes 1 cup.

First Snow of the Season

Yesterday at 4:45 am, I woke up to a brighter than normal morning and wondered why. I got up to have a peek and was surprised to see a dusting of snow. It looked a bit more impressive in the wee hours of the morning after the snow. By the time I thought of taking a picture, it was already melting. 

Saturday was a busy day filled with some much needed shopping. First we went to Sam's Club to pick up some of the sale items like peanut butter and raisins. Sam's is never a quick stop because I have so many friends that work there on both Sam's side as well as those that do the demos. Thank heavens hubby is a patient and understanding person!

From there, we went to Tractor Supply because he had to return some tires he had purchased for his garden cart that weren't what he needed. While he was off doing that, I found the clearance section and picked up some crocuses and some organic fertilizer that was on there. I didn't have any clue there would be snow when I woke up yesterday. I may not have gotten them if I had. With that said, the ground isn't frozen yet, so hopefully they'll have a chance and I'll see them next spring.

We discovered the outdoor Amish Farmer's Market was still opened and stopped to see what they'd have this late in the season. It was getting near the time to for the day and they were out of a lot of things, but they had quite a few winter squash left. I got a decent deal on the squash, so I ended up getting about 3 bushels of a mix of spaghetti, acorn, butternut and Kabocha squash for $48. That may seem high to some, but in this area, it's a good price. 

Ollie's was next because we had a 15% off coupon. We had some good finds - like a package of 8 Jello sugar free butterscotch pudding for 89 cents! That's what one costs on sale. We had a few good finds like that and then a few of the normal groceries we get there. 

For the grand finish, we went to the Thanksgiving dinner put on by the local fire department. It's a free dinner for the community, but is all actuality, it's a good fundraiser. I don't think anyone had a dinner without donating something. Personally, I love these kinds of dinners! The menu consisted of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, corn, beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, apple sauce, roll and a dessert - oh yes, and a beverage. 

Overall, it was a great weekend! Nice and busy on Saturday, snowy start yesterday and the rest of the day was filled with church, laundry, and working on the pantry shelves.  Nothing earth shattering, but still busy and at the same time peaceful.

Turkey - the Inexpensive Meat

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my brother's home, but one of the things we always miss is no leftovers. My brother's grocery bill is gigantic next to what ours is when we make a dinner. They end up with so many leftovers that end up being thrown out, as they can't eat them all. Sadly - it seems like they aren't the only ones that do that. I've heard over and over on the list that people spend a huge amount of money on dinner, and then don't eat all the leftovers or give them away because they won't eat leftovers.

When we make a turkey dinner, we spend a minimal amount of money. We bought a turkey this year to have a "late" Thanksgiving dinner here. On Monday, I made turkey, stuffing, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, corn and cranberry sauce. The turkey was a little over 16 pounds and cost $4.41. The stuffing was in our pantry, since I keep it on hand for making frozen meat balls and chicken dinners. We buy it in bulk, and I can't remember how much we paid for it. We were given the potatoes from a friend's garden, plus we had our own garlic and corn. The cranberry sauce was homemade, and we purchased a big 3# bag of cranberries for under $5 at Sam's Club. I used between 1/4 and 1/3 of the bag plus one cup of sugar. Our dinner for the 4 of us cost under $10.

Tuesday, the guys took turkey & swiss on homemade rye bread for lunch when they went hunting. My daughter and I had turkey dinner for lunch - yummy!! While the guys were out, I made Turkey Carcass Soup and used everything we had on hand... a couple of pieces of celery, 2 1/2 onions, 3 carrots, 1 turnip, 2 mushrooms and 2/3 cup barley (or rice if we don't have barley on hand), plus some herbs and spices. I roasted the bones first, then cooked them for 3 hours in water and any broth that we had left over that we didn't use in the gravy the night before. The guys ate their fill and were very satisfied after a long day outside.

Yesterday, the guys took more turkey & swiss on rye and we had soup for lunch. We made Deep Dish Turkey Potpie for dinner - and we used 1 cup of cubed potatoes, 1 cup sliced carrots, 1 cup frozen peas, plus a white sauce flavored with chicken boullion and pepper. This was covered with a bisquick (or bisquick clone) dough and baked. No leftovers of that.

Today, we will have the rest of the turkey dinner for lunch and will probably finish off what is left of the turkey meat. That makes a total of 6 meals (plus snitching) from one $4.41 turkey. Usually I'll freeze the meat but the guys asked for all the turkey meals. Since we had different ways of serving the turkey, they don't get tired of it. My husband says he's sad we'll be finishing up the bird today. He would love a few more sandwiches out of it. Next time....

We have less than $20 out of pocket - including the turkey - for all 6 of the meals. That's less than 1/5th of what my brother had into the dinner they had for 9 people for one day. Sadly - they threw a lot of that out!