Mama, this one's for you!

I remember being young(!)-er at home and there was sometimes things that my parents would do, that I said I wouldn't do or I would do differently, or at least I thought this at the time.  Some of them revolved around food :), surprise, surprise.  While my Mom did lots all the cooking, she always had to be pretty conservative and efficient with the food. Not much went to waste, and even waste meant that the dog was fed.

Yesterday I started a quest to make my first ever turkey soup.  I've done chicken noodle, but don't really remember having to go through such a process.  I decided to attempt as real to true homemade turkey soup could come. I don't really remember exactly how Mom made it, I never really watched closely at what went into the food.  While I could have asked my Mom how to do it, I decided to google a recipe and see what I came up with.  Well, what do you know, I found a recipe with Eastern European roots. Basically the same thing as my Mama and Grandma's have been doing for years, naturally, as we are all Eastern European descent.

So, yesterday, I threw everything into my big soup stock pot (one of my aunt's gave us as a shower gift), the turkey bone, water, and veggies with peppercorns. Let it boil for 6 hrs and put it in the garage overnight (just like Mom always did, flavour is amazing the day after!). So, today, I brought it in the house, sifted everything from the broth, veggies/meat/bones, everything out.  As you can see I wanted to save as much broth as I could, so I put it in colanders with bowl beneath. Then came the dirty work, the thing I said I'd NEVER do when I was in my own kitchen.  I'd watch my Mom pick that chicken or turkey right apart, right down to the bone, saving every little piece of meat, even the meat of the neck, YUCK! Her hands were greasy, ugh,  I was always disgusted with it.  I would say at the time in my head, "at my house, we would eat what was easily accessible off that bird and the rest was going in the garbage", there was no way I was gonna pick those things clean.

Well, never ever say Never.

It wasn't as bad a process as I thought.  I picked and sifted. I was pretty determined to make this soup true to recipe and the smell of it simmering yesterday had me even more determined. Today we'll throw the actual meat, fresh carrots and noodles back in the pot, add a few more seasonings and TASTE!!

I'm delighted to try it, hopefully early this afternoon!!!

Thanks Mom for showing us to not be wasteful, every good gift is a gift from God, even if you have to feed your kids neck meat ;).
(no, i didn't put the neck meat in the soup :/ feed it to the stray cats out back ;)...all the cat lovers just balked, I'm kidding!!)

love you Mom.