thanksgiving – New England's Narrow Road

Turkey Broth and Leftovers

Yesterday we ate turkey for Thanksgiving like so many other people did.

Today I am making broth, or stock, and chopping up the leftover turkey for meals to come.

If you have a big pot, like my Lodge Dutch Oven, (6 quart size) add the turkey carcass (you may have to pull the bones apart to make it fit) and some vegetables and herbs for flavor. I added garlic cloves, celery, green onions, parsley and basil leaves from my garden and covered the whole thing with water. It simmered for two hours, then I strained it into another big bowl. Once it was cool enough, I dug through the meat and bones and got about a cup of meat to use in another recipe.

Then….. I made a Turkey Pot Pie based on the Chicken Pot Pie I made recently.

Turkey pot pie in dutch oven — Turkey Pot Pie, the day after

There is much more turkey to deal with, so maybe sandwiches or I’ll freeze it.

Why Not Be Alone on Thanksgiving?

Right now I know a handful of people who will be home, all alone, on Thanksgiving. And not one of them is sad about that!

For the past couple of weeks everywhere I’ve been strangers have asked what I am doing for the holidays. Grocery clerks, nurses at the doctor’s office, bank tellers, you name it. When the nurse asked me what my plans were and I said “I don’t have any”, she looked at me like I had come from another planet. “Oh, are you cooking a turkey?” I said no, that I don’t do that any more. I wish I had added that I drink a bottle of wine now instead. Ha!

But the looks you get when you don’t seem to give a flyin flip about this holiday are quite amusing. My sister says that you can’t say that – that you will be alone and doing nothing. She says that she makes something up because otherwise people think you are pathetic.

The truth is that I don’t have much family. Only 2 of my kids are near me and I have one sister. My daughter nearly always goes to her boyfriend’s family’s house and my son visits his dad who has a big family. And although being invited into someone elses home to spend the holiday with their family seems like a nice thing to do, it is not appealing to me. I don’t want to spend time watching another family spend time together.

Thanksgiving is a family holiday and if you don’t have family, there is no sense in celebrating it. We don’t all have parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. and those of us who don’t prefer to be alone. Some people do have big families and just want to steer clear of all the drama of being together.

So leave us alone if we decide to be alone on Thanksgiving. Enjoy your turkey and crowded roadways and I’ll enjoy a peaceful, quiet day, drinking my wine.

Remembering Thanksgiving

My favorite Thanksgivings took place long ago when I was a kid. There were no microwave ovens to quickly heat the cooling food, but I remember it always tasted great. All the Aunts and my grandmother pitched in to help get everything ready and my sister and I (if it was at our house) had to set the table. I couldn’t wait for everyone to arrive – it was exciting!

We had turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, boiled onions and carrots, cranberry sauce and homemade pies made by my mother, Nana and Aunts. My Nana used to make “Monkey Faces” which were little mincemeat cookies and also mincemeat pie. It was the only thing I wasn’t crazy about. What the heck is mincemeat anyway??

The meals I remember best were when we ate in our big living room with a couple of tables put together, or at my Grandmother’s house. She lived at the bottom of my driveway and her house was small, but some years we’d all cram in there and it was great. My cousins and my sister would share the kids table and we usually ended up laughing at something and couldn’t stop. Then we’d get in trouble, and that would make us laugh more.

After I grew up I really didn’t like Thanksgiving. It was a family time and I didn’t have much family. My parents had split up and I had moved south to live in Florida. My husband had a big family but they lived up here in the north. Thanksgiving became a day of work for me. In fact, for a few years I worked in the Flower Shop of a local grocery store and I did have to go to work for the morning on Thanksgiving Day. Then I’d stand in the kitchen for hours cooking the whole, huge meal by myself, and then spend more hours cleaning up. Before my mother got Alzheimers, she’d come over and bring Pecan pie – my favorite. Unfortunately she also brought her bum of a husband which totally ruined the day.

Then one year my husband and I and our kids took our pontoon boat out on the Intracoastal for Thanksgiving Day. My mother’s idiot husband had stuck her in a nursing home by then, so we really had no family. Going out on the boat was a good decision and it was such a good day. I hadn’t enjoyed that holiday so much in a long time. I cooked the turkey days before and packed turkey sandwiches for the boat. It was a peaceful day of family togetherness, cruising around and fishing, and I wondered why the holiday couldn’t always be so good.

Happy Thanksgiving to my faithful readers, and to all the ones who stumbled across this post. May your Thanksgiving Day be yummy and peaceful.

Chicken Duty For Thanksgiving

chickens in a coop — How I Spend Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Just a quick note today before I attempt to cook my turkey, to wish all my faithful readers a happy turkey day!!

It’s 6:30am and in about a half hour I will go to my neighbor’s house and release their chickens from the coop. The cute chicks have grown and there are a lot of them! Then tonight at about 4:30 (it gets dark so early now) I will go back and close the door on their coop and hook up the electric fence so the bears and coyotes won’t have a feast. The chickens go in on their own when it’s dark.

I’ll do that all weekend while my neighbors are away because they have places to go and people to see, whereas I don’t. It’s pretty much like that for all holidays. I spend it taking care of their chickens, which I don’t mind now that the rooster is gone. (He’s in their freezer I’m told).

I almost had to quit my chicken duty when the rooster insisted on trying to slash me with his talons. You wouldn’t think that a “bird” could be so scary, but they have sharp talons on the back of their feet and he would fly up at me and kick out his feet just because I was in his pen! Fortunately I had a bucket with me and he’d hit that instead of me, but I didn’t like that and since I get paid in fresh eggs, I figured it wasn’t worth it!

So the next thing I knew the roosters were being “harvested” – I didn’t even know there was more than one -and now it’s safe to enter the pen again.
Other than that my day will be filled with cooking and cleaning up and watching football – Go Pats! It should be a relaxing day. Enjoy!