carcass o'plenty

Today, I ate the last of the meat I had garnered from the carcass of one of the Thanksgiving turkeys my biggest little brother had prepared for the family feast this year. On that day of thanks, I had waited too late to prepare a to-go plate. By the time the rest of the family had gotten some of this and a bit of that, there were just carcasses, some cranberry jelly, and some s'more cookies my eldest niece had made.
My sister-in-law helped me bag, and then double-bag, the largest turkey carcass. I had said I would try my hand at making broth with the bones. I rightly thought that would be all I do with it, as the bones had been picked pretty clean.
So, she sent me home with the bones, the jelly, and the cookies. I put them all away when home, then settled in to watch a marathon of "Monk" and to psych myself up for making broth.
I knew I had seen a recipe for New York Penicilln in my worn copy of The New York Cookbook. This is one of the best cookbooks I've ever had! The recipes are those of (mostly) famous people, accompanied by stories and anecdotes - quite entertaining, especially for a book of recipes! As it happens, the soup recipe I recalled reading was from Guardian Angel Curtis Sliwa's elderly aunt. (How appropriate! A guardian angel led my memory to that recipe!)
Sure, I hear you now: that recipe was for chicken broth. To you I say: Fowl is fowl and poultry is poultry.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. It was already approaching 8 PM and the recipe called for all of the ingredients to simmer for four hours.
FOUR HOURS.
Good thing I'm a night owl. Hoot, hoot!
So, I grabbed my largest pot, poured in the gallon of cold water, submerged the bird remains, and set it to heat. The recipe called for garlic (got it!), an onion (whole, peeled, but not sliced: got it!), and two carrots ("peeled, cut into hunks": got baby carrots!). It also requested celery, a bay leaf, parsley, salt, peppercorns, and chicken feet or chicken wings or a turkey wing.
Oh, and it started with a whole chicken, not just bones.
Hmmm... nah, didn't have it, so didn't add any of that. I was cooking turkey broth, so I figured I was free to make other alterations.
(By the way, that's fairly typical for me to use a recipe as a springboard, not a rulebook. Used to drive my ex crazy.)
It was well past midnight before the broth was done. Then, the decision to be made: go ahead and strain it and gather the bits of meat and discard the bones - or, close it all up, put it into the fridge, and tackle the onerous task of picking some other time?
You mean, when it would all be cold?
Nah, that didn't sound appealing. At all.
So I took care of it then and there.
Pulled out and discarded the larger bones and the onion and the carrots, as the recipe said to do.
Fetched my strainer and pulled up spoonfuls of meat and gunk, drained them, then picked out the meat.
Repeat, Repeat. Repeat.
By the time I was down to just broth, I had about four cups of meat.
WOW!.
I had thought I came home with no turkey and here I had four cups of ready-to-use meat!
It was also 4 AM and definitely time for bed, after covering the broth and setting it in the fridge to cool, so I could de-fat it later.
I ended up with about six cups (1500 milliliters) of broth!
Quite impressive. Especially as I thought I took home bones.

Since then, I've eaten quite a bit of turkey. Sometimes (four days) as breakfast sandwiches, made with dill pickle dip mix in "sour cream", on hearty white bread (4 grams of fiber per sandwich). What a grand way to start the day!
I've also had turkey and mayo sandwiches (twice), turkey with pasta and vegetables (twice), Italian ribollita (twice, made the quickie way with a pint of my broth, some fresh onions and chopped broccoli, and a cup of stove-top stuffing mix), fajitas (twice, using leftovers from a veggie fajita lunch with my first niece and some Ro-Tel of my own).
Today for lunch, it was the last of the turkey meat, fresh broccoli florets, leftover red rice (from the Post 36 fundraiser on Friday), and some of the cranberry jelly. Oh, and toast points, for a little crunch.
I still have two pints of broth in the freezer, too.
Not a bad haul from bird bones.
It just shows to go ya: Appearances can be deceptive.
Don't count something as worthless before it truly is all used up.
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.