Canning Turkey

I’m not a fan of turkey. I tolerate it at Thanksgiving, mainly because there’s plenty of other stuff I can eat. But I do not like turkey leftovers and I’ve tried every way imaginable to cook it and I just don’t like it.

Last year after Thanksgiving, every time Vince left the house alone, he came home with a turkey that was on sale. I think we ended up with 6 of them in the freezer. That is A LOT of turkey. I smoked on thinking I might like it. My dad always smoked a turkey at Thanksgiving when we were growing up. Mom would grind the leftovers and make a turkey salad that was so good. I’ve never been able to make it like she made it . . or like I remember hers tasting. I was ok eating the smoked turkey the day we smoked it but couldn’t eat the leftovers. Then I injected another one of them and we used the air fryer. It was pretty but . . still tasted like turkey. We still had four left in the freezer. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them but I was thinking about sneaking one in the trash can every now and then just before the trash man arrived.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, Oscar decided to stop eating his dog food. It was after I got back from Louisiana but we had been on the go and I had been busy with the garden getting caught up and Oscar had been spending a lot of time in the crate and I’m not sure if he was just feeling really nervous about the amount of time he was spending with me or if he really didn’t like the dog food. I’ve always felt like when they got hungry, they would eat but I would never let a pet go more than 24 hours without eating.

I had just canned some chicken and one of the jars had a bent lid that I hadn’t noticed so it didn’t seal. I made some rice, chopped some steamed broccoli, raw carrots, added a boiled egg, some pumpkin, a few blueberries . . not sure what else I added but Oscar wasn’t really thrilled to eat that either. After about 24 hours, I realized he would eat if I sat down on the floor beside him while he ate. I figured I would do it for a few days but then that was my limit. After about two days, he decided that food was pretty yummy and I no longer had to be right there by him while he ate.

Then, I remembered . . turkeys in the freezer . . good dog food! I put one in the fridge and after a few days I was going to roast it. I prefer to use the electric oven since, for the most part, electricity is free (solar panels). The upstairs wall oven is the only electric oven I have and I wasn’t crazy about heating up the upstairs to roast that turkey for 3 hours. Then I remembered the electric roast! I was able to stick in the basement garage and roast the turkey using electricity without heating up the house. Vince pulled the meat off the bones and I stuck it in the fridge. I don’t want to freeze it so I’m going to can it in pint jars. A pint jar of canned turkey will get mixed with half a package of chicken livers, the rice, pumpkin, blueberries, broccoli, eggs, carrots, flax seed meal and whatever else I remember to put in there.

More than one way to use up four turkeys in the freezer . . and let’s hope Vince doesn’t bring home a car load of them this year if he finds them on sale.