Blessed Beyond Belief: Where's BigBird now?

I honestly was not planning on updating you all with turkey info. This bird started to take on a life of it own (funny how it can do that postmortem, huh?). It baked for almost exactly 6 hours. Not bad considering the size. I started at 400 for an hour, 350 for 3 hours, and 250 for 2 hours. Done perfectly. Then we had to figure out how to get it out of the pan.

Dinner was great. Everyone had their fill. After dinner I pulled all the meat off the bones and started to throw everything else (including all the veggies I stuffed into the turkey) into the crockpot. Then I realized that he was not going to fit. So I put what I could of the carcass into the pot and filled a gallon ziplock with the other half of the carcass. That went into the freezer so that I could make another pot of stock later. Cover the bones, skin and everything else that isn't the good meat with cold filtered water and add a little bit of vinegar. The vinegar helps leach the calcium out of the bones for wonderful nourishing bone broth. That cooked on low all night and I shut it off this morning. Strained and stored in these mason jars. I put the two full ones in the freezer and the smaller one in the fridge to use right away.

I told you that I used all the extra parts stuffed inside of the turkey to make stew chews for the dogs. I just boiled them down really well then pulled the meat off the neck and chopped up all the parts.

Threw everything back in the pot minus the bones. Add to that 2

cups of steel cut oats, 2 cups of brown rice, carrots, potatoes and the leaves and stems from a head of cauliflower. Let that cook till it's all soft and mushy. I then fill up two muffin trays with the stew. Put this in the freezer and the next day I pop them out and put in a ziplock in the freezer. They get one every afternoon and absolutely love them. Healthy, fun for them, and keeps their teeth nice and clean from chewing.

It was a big pot of stew so I had to fill the trays again. This time I added the rest of the meat and skin that I pulled off the bones of the broth. After cooking all night everything just falls off. I'm literally left with just the bones when it's done. Make sure there are no little bones in the meat and chop it all up and mix with the left over dog stew. Not a pretty picture, but this is probably 4 more cups of meat that fell off the bones in the broth.

Last night I pulled 16 cups of meat off of the turkey. Today I chopped it up and separated it into 2 cup portions. Filled 6 bags for the freezer. These can be used for soups, on salads, mixed with taco seasoning, the options are endless.

The other fours cups went into making these:

Put two cups of chopped turkey in the bottom of two pie dishes. Topped with the left over peas from last night and a can of green beans. I had used the pan drippings (that included a Sam Adams) to make gravy for dinner. I had four cups left over. I used one cup on each of these casseroles over the veggies and turkey. Then I bagged up the rest for the freezer. A bag of turkey and the gravy will make a yummy dinner one night!

Finishing off the casseroles - one top of the gravy I sprinkled a little cheddar cheese then spread two cups of the leftover mashed potatoes over top. Here's a little secret - last night I made mashed cauliflower for myself while everyone else ate real mashed potatoes. They are really good made just the same as potatoes. Last night I mixed the left over mashed potatoes with the cauliflower. So that's what went on top of the gravy in this dish. Then I used a small box of cornbread stuffing that I had left in the pantry. Browned an onion and then browned the stuffing mix with it. Put that on top of the mashed potatoes, sprinkled with a tiny bit of cheese. So, that makes two good sized casseroles. One is for tonight. The other went... where else??? The FREEZER! It will make an awesome dinner for a night that I just can't pull it together enough to make a fresh dinner.

This is what made it into the trash. That's it.