Turkey Gets Its Revenge

Here at the Rookery, Thanksgiving is just the two of us. Be that as it may, the perverse price incentives of the supermarkets this time of year mean it costs me less to buy a whole turkey than a small chunk of turkey. I can't bring myself to spend $9 on a two-pound turkey breast roast when I can get a whole turkey for around five smackers, so we have lots of turkey leftovers. This situation is not helped by my logic of "At 29 cents a pound, if I'm going to have leftovers, I might as well have lots of leftovers." So I bought a 20 pound bird for something like $5.50. According to Butterball, that will feed a family of 15.

Thanksgiving leftovers are usually the second-best part of Thanksgiving (best part being the non-leftover stuffing). This year, though, we spent Thanksgiving on starch restriction, and as astute celebrators of Thanksgiving will no doubt know, starch is an integral part of the traditional menu. There are ways to work around mashed potatoes. Mashed cauliflower will never fool another potato, but it is not half bad, especially with plenty of cheese. Cranberry sauce can also be worked around with a crock pot, three pounds of apples and a pound and a half of cranberries (doesn't gel, but it still makes a decent condiment and dessert). The rest of the menu, though, is pretty much off the menu. I refuse to defile stuffing by making a carbless mock stuffing, and even if I could have the sweet potatoes, there is no sweetener-free workaround for the marshmallows. I did try something called "Quick and Easy Crustless Pumpkin Pie," slightly modified to use fruit juice instead of the water and sugar the recipe called for. That is a mistake that will not be repeated. Certain things are just not meant to be de-carbed. I can only hope the recipe turns out better when you follow it exactly.

All of that adds up to lots of leftover turkey, and no leftover anything else. I have spent the last several nights seeing how many ways I could integrate turkey into dinner without having "Turkey Dinner." I have discovered something. No matter what I make turkey into, leftover turkey insists on being one thing and one thing only: soup. Turkey marinara plated up as Italian Turkey Soup. Tonight's attempt at Salsa Turkey--turkey, tomatoes, hot peppers, garlic and onions baked in a casserole dish with no added liquid--came out of the oven as Mexi-Turkey Soup. No matter what I do to it, all I get out is variations on turkey soup, and that is without breaking into the five quarts of turkey broth that I made out of the carcass.

If the gobblers can't fly to freedom, they appear intent on drowning us posthumously.