Am I the only crazy lady who does a "practice" Thanksgiving a few weeks prior to real Thanksgiving just to make sure I remember how to properly roast a turkey? Well, even if I am, I relish in my craziness because 1. I stinkin' love Thanksgiving food so I get to enjoy it twice in a month, 2. It's also my husband's favorite food on the planet so he's pretty stoked on it, and 3. Yes, I really did remember how to roast a turkey, a 15lb turkey y'all! I actually added a new little twist to the process which turned out fantabulously, so I will indeed be implementing this new trick and am thoroughly pumped for real Thanksgiving now! :)
But none of those were even the absolute best part of having a practice Thanksgiving. The absolute best part is what happened overnight following the glorious meal. My kitchen continued to work all through the night to give me the greatest gift of all time: 6.5 quarts of homemade, all natural, lip-smackin' awesome turkey stock. Oh yea, baby. It was my greatest yield to date, in thanks largely to my newest kitchen obsession:
This is one of those appliances I saw once at a party and died with culinary envy. It had three different types of seafood gumbo in it, and I was straight up weeping with joy as I tried each one, carefully spooning them out of their precious little, matching mini crockpots. It was a moment I'll never forget. Yes, I'm emotionally moved by food. Anyway, I was walking through Sam's Club the other day with the hubster and stopped dead in my tracks when we came across this. "There it is!" I exclaimed, "The triple, mini-crock, must-have-it-now, three-different-gumbo-holding, greatest kitchen appliance ever extraordinaire!!!" At least that's how it went in my head. In real life it probably sounded like "It's the-dahoddle-thingamijabbin' crazy cool crockpotty thing!"It had to be mine! So yea, Mama Bella and I are now bffs and that's just how it's gonna be.
Here she is next to Big Mama C as they all work so diligently to make me my much-loved turkey stock:
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| Divvied up the turkey bones between the crocks, added onion, garlic clove, celery, carrot, and just a dash of salt :) |
Here's the giant pot of it the next day:
I froze it all into two-cup portions. Well, not all of it. Some of it I used that very night in some recipes. And some of it spilled. What??? I'm clumsy as all get out, these things happen. Did I cry about it? Well, maybe on the inside, but I was still so pumped at the sheer volume of stock I yielded that it didn't really crush me completely. I lost a little over a cup. In other news, our kitchen floor is totes slanted cuz when it spilled, it all flowed like a sad, slow river right down into the center of the kitchen floor. Awesomeness.
Didn't get any pictures of that though. You can just use your imaginations :)
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Oh and ps, yes, I am fully aware that this is my first post in roughly 7 months! Hiiiiii!! I'm not gonna do one of those classic "Hey, yo, still alive, here's the last seven months of my life summed up into three sentences to catch you up" type of posts that I've done in the past after a hiatus. Instead, I'll be doing something much more fun over the next few posts to catch you up. Stay tuned!
