April Fool's Turkey

Over the Christmas holidays, when all the turkeys were on sale,

I picked up an extra hen and put it in the freezer.  Unlike some things

that can get lost in the depths of a freezer, a turkey isn't one of them.

Every time I opened my freezer there it was - saying, "do something

with me."  I have been making a concerted effort to eat foods

from my freezer this last month. One reason was to save some

money on groceries  and I also needed to make room in

there before the new growing season yields up a harvest that

will need to reside in cold storage. I was getting tired of moving

that turkey out of my way whenever I needed something, so I 

defrosted it and cooked her up on the first of April.  When

Mark came home from work and walked into the house, a 

full turkey dinner awaited him.  "Happy Thanksgiving", I said

quickly adding, "April Fools!"

I thought it would be fun to see how many meals I could make

from this one turkey.  It wasn't a huge turkey - I think it was about

11 lbs. and I can't remember how much I paid for it, but it was on sale,

so it was a good deal.  It was probably under $10.  The first night

we had a traditional roast turkey dinner with the fixings.  Mashed

potatoes, gravy and green beans.  It tasted like Thanksgiving.   

I took all the meat off the carcass and put it in freezer containers .

 Back into the freezer it went, to be pulled out for recipes throughout

the month.   First thing I did, was cook the bones and other

turkey parts that I don't eat into a stock.

That doesn't look so appetizing, but it was the start for a 

great turkey orzo soup.

We had four meals from the soup.  By four meals, I mean an

individual serving for four people or two people eating it twice.  

Does that make sense?  

Of course we had turkey sandwiches. That's a given.

But these were better than average - 

thick slices of turkey, swiss cheese, dijon mustard,

lettuce and LaWren's cranberry sauce all piled on a 

Kaiser roll.

They were really good.  We had four turkey sandwich meals.

Later, I made turkey enchiladas from my regular chicken enchilada

recipe.  I made enough for three of these meals.

Turkey salad was my next idea.  Pretty tasty with grapes,

apples and nuts in it.  This was lunch for three.

LaWren's Turkey Tetrazzini was up next.  Creamy noodles, mushrooms,

asparagus and turkey. We're talking comfort food.  Yum!

We had four meals from this casserole.

I was almost to the end of the turkey and I had just enough

to make a white chili with the rest.

Spicy, but not too spicy.  With corn, white beans,green chilis and a little 

tomato.  It doesn't look very white in this picture, though.  

I combined a couple of online recipes to make this and was

pleased with the result.  Quite tasty!  This yielded four meals 

each topped with pepper jack cheese and cilantro.

Seven different recipes and twenty-four meals from

one humble turkey.  Not bad, huh?  And they were 

all delicious and not once did I feel as though I was

having leftovers.  A turkey (especially one on sale)

is a smart buy and that's no joke.

*Goal #23 - Try 50 new recipes

*Goal #31 -  Save $50 a week