Yes. I used a whole turkey carcass, lots of water, some salt, half an onion (it was already cut and in the fridge) some carrot peelings (not a lot) and onion skins, and a few stalks of celery that were getting soft but otherwise okay. I may have added a little parsley, too. I forget. (I have some parsley growing outside.) Not a lot of any of the veggies, it’s mostly turkey-flavored.
And i just put it in the fridge. It was finally cool enough that it probably won’t overwhelm my fridge. (A gallon and a half of nearly boiling water is not a good thing to put in the fridge, despite what some posters keep saying.)
I’ll chop up a couple of carrots and some turkey meat just to give the soup some texture. Along with the butter beans and barley.
I like the idea of a sour component. Cranberry is traditional (and we all like it.) Spinach salad is an interesting idea, though. I could do yuppie salad: baby spinach, craisins, goat cheese, and nuts, except no one but me would eat the goat cheese. Hmm.
I do sweet potatoes with apples - Granny Smiths are good. I peel both, cut them into roughly equal- sized slices or chunks, saute them in butter, and layer them in a casserole dish, grate a little nutmeg over them, and pour in maple syrup (how much? Dunno - enough?). That gets baked, covered, until the sweet potatoes are softened (20 minutes to half an hour, depending on how big the dish is). No marshmallows.
Heh, my advantage is that when I render the Thanksgiving carcass is that it’s cold enough now that I can put the whole slow cooker insert out on the catio for a few hours before putting it in the fridge. Right now (8:30pm) it’s 20F with maybe a half an inch of snow. But I won’t have my ex-turkeys until Sunday, and it’ll be a bit warmer by then.
Maybe some cotija for the cheese? Similarly crumbly, the nice color contrast, but it’s very mild and salty so it’s normally inoffensive to anyone who is okay with dairy.
I assumed, considering the age of the song and the ritziness of some of the other options (the gifter can get lords to show up leaping at their command) that the rings are gold; and picked those, on the grounds that I expect I could sell them for more than $100 and in the meantime they wouldn’t be in the way. I do have room to plant the pear tree, but I don’t know what I’d do with the partridge, and it seems unpleasant to leave it out there until the coyotes got it or even to ask my neighbor to shoot it and dress it for dinner (Though they are in season, I just checked. For some of the other birds, there’s no legal hunting here; otherwise, for any of the birds, same problem. I have no suitable housing for them.) – plus which unless it’s a really unusual cultivar I could buy a pear tree for considerably less than $100.
And what I’d serve with that turkey soup would probably be asparagus and homemade mostly-whole-wheat bread. But tastes vary.
True. I’ve got some in the freezer which I put up last spring. But not everybody’s got the freezer space; and not all those that do have asparagus growing. And it’s better fresh – though IMO it’s pretty good frozen.
In my young, single days, Nine Ladies Dancing would have been an alluring option - depending, I suppose, on just what kind of dancing we’re talking about.
But, yeah, one doesn’t have to feed or clean up after golden rings, and they can very easily be converted to cash money.
This all reminds me of my boorish FIL and his boorish brothers. Every Christmas in the past we had at Grandma’s house included the annual recitation of the 12 Days of Christmas, complete with laminated cards for each item. You get a card, you have to sing that part.
My boorish FIL frequently makes sexist and gross comments and gets a kick out of making his relatives uncomfortable, so of course he selected “Nine Ladies Dancing” with a leer.
During “Eight Maids a Milking,” boorish Uncle jumped up with a flourish and squeezed imaginary breasts, presumably to get the milk out of them.
My son had no concept of what was happening, but he went absolutely bonkers over the numbers on the cards, and promptly stole “Five Golden Rings” from Grandma - though that’s supposed to be her line.
I really wish I didn’t have to hang out with these men. Fortunately, Christmas is canceled this year, owing to Grandma’s infirmity, and I suspect last year was the last year I will ever have to watch perverted oafs bumble through that song.