For me, I must say, turkey is far from my favorite meal, but for some reason my family thinks it should be the meal of the day on Thanksgiving. I know, I read somewhere there was deer and turkey gathered for the first Thanksgiving, so I would have no problem doing Prime Rib with all the trimmings but I am over ruled. This year on the flip side, I decided to make the leftovers a dining adventure for the eye, soul and taste buds.
Preparing the bird to be roasted was brining first, making stock, using the goodies inside the turkey, for the dressing and gravy, I began the process Wednesday. Thursday, the bird make it's way to the table, in less than an hour I could see there was much more bird left than I had felt there would be. Another storage issue, so I picked all the meat from the carcass which quickly made it's way into the stock pot along with stock veggies from the freezer. Friday, there were 15 pints of stock canned. This left me with a bowl of turkey in the fridge, the next leg of this journey was turkey salad. We do enjoy the salad, this was a win, win.
During the summer I made crab imperial, could, would, just give it a try. I made turkey imperial following my recipe, I would use more Old Bay seasoning if I did this again and I need to choose some type of sauce to add a little more flavor. Maybe a little more or different seasoning would add flavor. Not having shells to cook the turkey imperial, I used my moon pie pan, worked great. Yes, I would do this again.
I still had quite a lot of turkey remaining, so it was time to try another dish. One of my favorites, egg rolls. There is pac choi growing in the tunnel, so I was off to harvest some of this wonderful green.
I used my fresh garden greens, celery, onion and turkey to make the filling, I proceeded to make the wrappers and fill them. Deep fried, what a treat we had. But all of us know there never seems to be any end to the turkey. I looked in the bowl and there was more to be used. I had heard one request for leftover turkey and that was a pot pie. I decided the final leg of this journey would be pot pie filling. There was one pot pie made and enough filling frozen for another.
I was so pleased to look in my fridge and no longer have a bowl which contained turkey. I hope somewhere, someway, somehow, there can be a rule unwritten but known by all. If you want turkey for Thanksgiving at Triple Creek Farm it is your responsibility to take home the remains at least some, leave me enough to make egg rolls.
Turkey pot pie in my cast iron skillet
