Ahhhh...Turkey Soup

We had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving this year, with family from Iowa and Minnesota. I’m so thankful to the Lord for bringing us all together for two days. We celebrated Thanksgiving and my father’s birthday, and we had a great time visiting and sharing meals.

There were seven of us in our little two-bedroom townhome, and our kitchen table seats six comfortably, but no one complained about being cramped. We have a sofa bed in the living room, a futon in the basement, and a twin bed plus a twin air mattress in the second bedroom upstairs. And I’m so thankful that my husband installed a shower in the main floor bathroom over the past year or so. That gave us two complete bathrooms for people to use for showers in the mornings. Oh, and we had two dogs, too, both our little schnauzer and their one-year-old German shorthair.

I roasted and carved the turkey the day before, as I mentioned earlier on this blog. That helped a great deal with getting thing without as much fuss on Thanksgiving day. I also assembled the stuffing in the slow cooker the day (chilling it in the fridge until it was time to cook it on Thursday). And I made two kinds of cranberry sauce (one with sugar and one with Splenda). The whole wheat rolls were made beforehand, too, baked a couple of weeks ahead of time and frozen until we needed them. That just left the potatoes, vegetables, and gravy on Thursday, and I had lot of help in the kitchen from my family that day.

My relatives from Iowa were very generous to bring three kinds of delicious homemade pies—homegrown cherry, regular pumpkin, and low-sugar pumpkin. They also brought cookies, Kringla, and little turkey-shaped treats made from candy and crackers…We were all very well fed for the holiday.

After all that cooking, my tendency would normally be to stay out of the kitchen for a while. But my father and husband and I all love homemade turkey soup. So we boiled the turkey carcass, which I had saved after removing most of the meat, to make a wonderfully rich and flavorful broth. I also added leftover broth from the giblets and neck, and leftover defatted drippings from the turkey roasting pan. Then I chopped a bunch of carrots, celery, onion, and potatoes…Or rather, my dear father helped me to chopped them while I worked on removing the last of the meat from the bones after boiling them for a few hours. (It’s amazing how much meat you “harvest” from the bones this way.) I also threw in a generous amount of minced garlic, plus sage, thyme, garlic salt, and black pepper to taste.

You really don’t need a recipe for this soup. You make it with generous amounts of vegetables and meat, and then add seasonings until it’s rich and flavorful. Simmer this on the stove until the vegetables are tender, but not soft. At our house, we’ve all agreed that we love this soup as much as the roasted turkey, especially when I add my mother’s Danish Dumplings to the pot!