Let Them Eat Stock

I agree with Martha Rose Shulman--after Thanksgiving it is imperative to make stock, and then to relish that accomplishment by making soup and risotto with it for days if not weeks to come. Her recipe for stock is a reasonable approach, and her idea for "what to do with leftovers" is a good one. Unfortunately we do not have enough left over food to be dismayed about this year (the ratio of great food was correctly balanced by number of guests, so while the equation ended up being in the positive, the leftovers were not enough to even fill a refridgerator shelf).

At our house, we cooked 2 turkeys this year. We are going local, so they were born and raised in Wellman, Iowa, had a free range life, and were neither injected nor were they particularly able to be compactly arranged after death. Something about those Butterball turkeys is that they end up in a neat little bundle at the end of their lives--not so with ours. More like limbs akimbo. The good news about that is when we took them out of the freezer, we created enough space to accomodate the stock.

My spouse is so enamored with making stock that we also collect carcasses from friends and neighbors--if someone is going to throw their bones away, we encourage them to bring it to our house instead--we are a home for unwanted bones. If we can't manage to store all the stock in our freezer from collected bones, we freeze the bones in a ziplock bag, providing for future stock. Our rainy day bones. We have 4 turkey carcasses this year, and may get a fifth one if we are persistent.

The idea of turning last night's dinner into tomorrow's soup is a time honored one at our house. However, the post-Thanksgiving soup this year is lentil soup. It can be made in a slow cooker or on the stove. This one is adapted from Staff Meals at Chanterelle by David Waltuck and Melicia Phillips (which is a rich resource for delicious, simple to prepare comfort food recipes):

LENTIL SOUP
2 c. diced onions
4 carrots sliced
2 c. diced celery
4 cloves of garlic, crushed then chopped
2 c. French green lentils (this is a must--no brown lentils, no red lentils--this is the secret ingredient, along with the thyme)
8 c. stock
1 tsp. dried thyme crushed between your fingers as you add to the soup
salt and pepper to taste.

It can all be added at once in the morning or evening into the slow cooker and harvested 6 or so hours later, or it can simmer on the stove top for a couple hours covered. Sometimes a cup or two more stock needs to be added at the end. Makes about 3 quarts of soup.