Farm Kitchen - November 26th

Last night, the last of the turkey was picked off the bones and the carcass was put back in the roaster for making soup stock. Along with the herbs, onions, and garlic that accompanied my Thanksgiving turkey, I added some turkey feet, celery, and a little apple cider vinegar. The vinegar helps draw the minerals out of the bones and the turkey feet are high in gelatin. The stock will cook on low, simmering until tomorrow morning - 36 hours total. Then I will strain it, fill old yogurt containers with the nutritious stock, and freeze it.

Since my kids can work on math with only a little assistance from me, I work along side them in the kitchen.  This is my time to get some food prep done; I have about one hour.  This morning I cleaned out some pumpkins and baked them.  Then I scrubbed some carrots that the boys dug from the garden a couple weeks ago. 


Getting pumpkins ready for baking.

Carrots and garden dirt. :)

Clean carrots :)

 

With a few other accomplishments (straining kefir & kitchen clean up) and some interruptions for math help, that's about all I got done in my hour.

After math and before language, the boys and I ran down the driveway and back to get my blood flowing and their energy out! :)  Emily snapped this photo without us knowing.

Later in the day, while I was making lunch, I grated the carrots along with some apples.  I ended up with a whole gallon bag of grated carrots. We will put them on our salads.

Grated carrots

 

Lunch - Mixed greens with grated carrots and grated apples, homemade French dressing, and homemade sourdough bread with our own crab apple jelly.

Around 4pm, I started dinner - turkey soup.  I was in and out of the kitchen while I sauteed garlic, onions, beans, carrots, peppers, and zucchini (all from my garden) in butter.
 

Garden vegetables cooking

Then I snuck some broth from my roaster (about 5 cups).  With the broth in my large soup pot, I added about 8 cups of water, three tablespoons of salt and about a pound of spaghetti noodles and put them on the stove on high.  Once the noodles were cooked, I added more water (about 8 cups), my vegetables, turkey (about 6 cups), and herbs (parsley, oregano, basil, sage).  This made a HUGE pot of soup! 

Turkey Noodle Soup

My wonderful husband came home with this for me today - a Poinsettia plant!

I ended up spending about three hours total in my kitchen today, but I have dinner made for tomorrow night (soup) and for lunch the next day.  That's not all...with all that soup, I will have enough to freeze for at least two meals for the following week.  Also, my lettuce is washed and my carrots are grated.  Lunch will be easy to throw together this week.  I will add hard boiled eggs & grated cheese to my salad as the week goes on.  This will make for quick and easy lunches.  I will also have many quarts of broth in the freezer, ready for a quick pot of soup or an addition to my dog's breakfast. :) The pumpkin puree is in the refrigerator, ready to made into pumpkin butter. 

Well, I am tired.  :)  But it is a good tired.:)  I am going to go soak in a hot chamomile bath while I listen to my husband sing and my children play their instruments.  It's music night at the Housman's house. :)