Turkey Leftovers

The best part of cooking a turkey is the leftovers!  For the last 15 years, I always had a craft show the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday.  I would always cook a turkey, a large one so there would be plenty of leftovers for the next 4 days. After my family picked over the carcass like a vulture might pick over road kill, I would make Posole  Soup.  Now that's what I'm talking about!  My favorite part of cooking a turkey!

Posole is a traditional Mexican dish from the pacific coast region of Jalisco. A  soup that's usually made with pork, hominy, garlic, onion, chili peppers, cilantro, and broth.   In my version, I make a broth of the turkey carcass, smoked ham hocks, celery, and onions.  The key is getting the broth right.  Here's my recipe for Posole.

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Posole Soup

1 turkey carcass

2 smoked ham hocks  (with meat on them)

1 med onion chopped

2 stalks celery chopped

Salt to taste

Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer for about an hour.  Strain broth into another pot.  Pick off the turkey and pork meat and set aside.  Discard the rest.  Be sure to get the broth right!

To the broth in the pot add:

The reserved meat

2 shredded carrots

1 sm onion diced

1 can hominy (without the liquid)

Cook just until carrots are tender.  It shouldn't be long at all.

Serve the pot on the table.  Garnish soup with thinly sliced cabbage, chopped cilantro, sliced radishes, lime slices and tortillas.  You'll be in heaven!

Soup Anyone?

My husband Barry dislikes yams or is it sweet potatoes?  Why, I can't figure out.  How could anyone not like yams or sweet potatoes?  Whenever presented on the table, he will pass them by.

Yam and Sweet Potato

Though interchanged, the yam is  unrelated to the sweet potato.  The yam is a tuber from the lily family, whereas the sweet potato is of the morning glory family.  Both are very tasty, the yam being sweeter with a deeper orange flesh, or is it the other way around?  Both are loaded with nutrients, with the sweet potato outshining the yam only slightly.

I was telling this to a  friend who, like my husband was not fond of yams.  She told me whenever she disliked a vegetable, she would search for a recipe using that particular vegetable, hoping that it would appeal to her.

Great idea!  She told me about a yam soup recipe that she made and liked very much.  I thought I'd try it.  Lo and behold,  my husband ate and enjoyed it.

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This recipe for yam soup came from the magazine "Something Extra"  put out by Raley's and Bel Air Supermarkets.  It's easy.  Try it, you won't be disappointed!

Yam Soup

4 strips bacon, cooked and cut into bits

2/3 cup onions, chopped

2/3 cup celery, chopped

2/3 cup carrots, chopped

4 cups chicken broth

4 cups chopped fresh yams

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Saute vegetables in bacon drippings about 10 minutes.  Add stock, yams, salt, pepper and cinnamon. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes, covered.  Puree soup in a blender.  Add bacon bits and simmer 10 minutes more.

If you dislike yams or sweet potatoes, and you decide to try this recipe, let me know what you think?

Mac & Cheese

Macaroni and cheese would have to be my hands down favorite food of all time.  Not the box kind, but the genuine homemade kind.

I grew up in a small country town in Northern California, which had a one-room schoolhouse. My siblings and I attended there. After I finished first grade, we were bussed to school in the next town.  . 

Every Friday was macaroni and cheese for lunch day. Different Mothers would bring macaroni and cheese to school.  Many would bring it made from the box.  My mother didn’t do boxes.  Everything she made was from scratch.  Her macaroni and cheese was the best!

Fast-forward 50 years.  I still love macaroni and cheese.  Guess what?  My husband hates it!  It was the first dinner I prepared for him when we were first married.  He graciously ate it, but it came out later – please don’t fix that for me again!  So now I rarely fix macaroni and cheese except when he’s gone, and when he is gone there is no question about what’s for dinner, no question at all.

My mother's recipe is still the bomb!

Bamma Lou’s Macaroni and Cheese

1/2 pound macaroni
(I like using penne rigate, or mostaccioli)

2 cups shredded cheese or more (Colby works fine)

1 egg

 1 ½ to 2 cups milk

Salt and pepper

1.  Cook macaroni to package directions
2.  Preheat oven to 350-degrees
3.  Layer in baking dish half of macaroni.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Sprinkle half the cheese on top.  Repeat. 

4.  Mix egg with milk (you may want to add a little salt to milk mixture) and pour over macaroni just until milk reaches top of macaroni (not cheese)

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes in 350-degree oven.  Remove foil last 5  minutes to brown.

P.S.  Macaroni and cheese is not a dish I would prepare for someone with cancer.  It isn’t easily digested.