Crazy Safe & Ready for an Apocalypse

Sunday...  after church I picked up some groceries and headed home to get it all prepped.

I found chicken at Sam's Club for 99 cents a pound for thighs and drumsticks.  Leon loves the drumsticks and I'm a dark meat kind of gal.  I also picked up a ten pound tube of hamburger.

Once home, I threw all the chicken into the oven and roasted the heck out of it. and let it cool.

Simultaneously, frying up all ten pounds of hamburger.  Made a third of it into taco meat and sealed up 3-4 cups at a time in my new seal mate thingy I got for Christmas!

Even if you jump out of air planes, you do NOT know anxiety until the sealer is sucking out all the air and all of the sudden the juices get pulled out and start rising toward the machine. 

SEAL!!! SEAL!!! SEAL!!!!

I never did get any into the machine but cripes, what a rush! 

Here's my sealer!  Isn't she a beaut?

I also sealed up the cooked hamburger into 2 cup packages as well as 5-6 drumsticks per bag as well as 2 cups of cooked chicken and tossed it all in the deep freeze.

Regarding the freezer, when I got home, I put some frozen pizzas and other freezables out there and realized that there was a huge white garbage bag just sitting in there taking up space.

OHHHH!!!  Those were the turkey carcasses from our big Thanksgiving reunion!  I hauled that inside and started pulling things off and filling up my Instant Pots for turkey broth.

Pretty soon, the turkey chunk was really solid and still way too big to fit in even my pressure canner which can double as a jumbo pressure cooker.  So I put the whole shebang turkey chunk into the microwave for a minute at a time, pulling off bits between each minute.

Oof what a mess.  While trying to pry a turkey wing out of the frozen thing, I BROKE one of my good butcher knifes...  The tip broke right off!  I dug it out of the meat.  Don't worry!  No surprises here!

 I filled up two Instant Pots and two pressure canners with them.  I think there were 5 turkeys in there.  I don't know. It was a big greasy mess.  The microwave & tray got cleaned soon after.

I let them pressure cook with water, salt and some poultry seasoning for 3 hours into a beautiful bone broth, then drained it thru a towel into other containers to let cool.

So yesterday morning, I started filling my canning jars with the broth, cleaning the liners on the pressure canners and got the broth canning.  It took 5 loads but I canned 21 jars, mostly quarts.  Only one didn't seal and I didn't realize that until this morning, so I had to dump it.  I don't feel comfortable leaving turkey broth out all night unsealed...

Call me crazy...  or at least safe. 

So the jars all got cleaned up this morning, the rings pulled off and jars stowed in boxes.  Not quite sure where I'll tuck this batch but I can probably safely make soups until next Thanksgiving.  Broth of any sort is one of the easiest to make and can, so I'll probably keep making it.

Tonight is Taco Tuesday and hopefully all the kids can be here.  I'll stick one of these taco meats in the crockpot this afternoon.  Jen was going to make fish tacos too.  

Maybe I'll open one of my salsas. hmmmm

Do you have any set tradition meals per week that you do?

Quarantine Day 8 (10?) New Benchmarks

 Guess what?  I started my diet last week, FINALLY!!!!  

The first year of grief and then Christmas really got the better of me and I'd gained 20 pounds from the weight I was at Robb's funeral, which had been my lowest in decades.

Today my weight loss was 5ish pounds!!!!  I've gotten down to my weight that I was at Maddy's wedding. WOOHOO!  I'd used that benchmark for a LOOONNGG time.

I am 15 from my funeral weight benchmark.  And I'll get there.  

It's difficult to cut out breads, potatoes and sugar, but I am doing my best. 

I spent 20 minutes yesterday morning, peeling 2 bags of carrots and then dry canned them in my electric canner for 30 minutes.  They look awesome.  Someday when I crack one open, I'll roast them.

I bought a couple turkeys on sale around Christmastime for cheap and am thawing one right now.  I plan to can Christmas in a jar tomorrow or even later today.  That's when the bottom later is raw turkey, then some gravy, then a layer (maybe) of mashed potatoes, and finally a layer of freshly mixed stuffing and pressure canned for meat times.  It'll be great to have pints of that around for a quick meal when I'm feeling Christmassy!  

Last night, when I got off of work, I was disgusted by the state of our refrigerator.  Things get spilled, congested, stuffed in.  I knew we had groceries but didn't know where things were.  So I sat on the floor and started pulling everything out.  Scrubbing every nook and cranny and there were a lot of them.

It suddenly looks like a brand new fridge!  Well except for the duct tape holding the crispers together.  And yep we have groceries!  Just less now.  And that's ok.  

Good thing I didn't take a pic of what it looked like before.

Over lunch yesterday I sewed on the sample wedding dress.  If I ever get out of this quarantine, I can have my first fitting with the bride and if the dress is done by Valentine's day, she'll be dressed to the nines for it!!!  It's going to be so pretty.  

Here is all the tulle overlay that I'm gathering to fit at the waist.

I hope it fits well and all I have to do is make a duplicate in white!  I can do that!

Ok, Back to work.  Lots to do this morning!

Will Wonders Never Cease?

On Thursday, Robb gave Meri a recipe for cream corn and said, "Here, make this for today." 

We didn't expect her to EAT any of it because she has steered clear of corn of any kind since her detasseling days.  But she actually tried some and liked it a lot.

And that brings us to Saturday's adventure.  Well, actually back to Wednesday first I suppose.

But first, just what this was all about.

If I'm dithering, I have a right.  Don't ask me to prove it please. ;)

Meri and 15 of her closest friends (of which she says she has no friends) rented the same hall we used for Friday's family reunion for her own Friendsgiving celebration.  They needed a turkey and her best friend's dad offered a turkey.

It was alive.

Meri and her friend caught, killed, plucked, singed and gutted this HUGE thing by themselves on Wednesday.  Well, with some supervision from the friend's dad, but I think that was purely for his own amusement.

And they cooked it on Saturday.  It took SO long to cook because it was so big but she started early enough in the day that it was done by the time they all wanted to eat. 

Her friends brought sides and they had their own Thanksgiving feast.  And she actually ATE turkey after all that blood and gore!!!
For three days straight!!! and still counting as there is still LOTS of leftovers.

Yes, they named it...

Also, here is my nephew Alex and myself performing The devil went down to Georgia.

Enjoy!  Sorry the view is so poor.
I couldn't get Robb's to upload to Youtube so I videotaped the screen...

Tur-book-ench

The "freaky pilgrim people" have made their appearance as of this morning!!!    Every time I had to go into the garage for something, I grabbed one of them. 

This photo is from a few years ago when we were torturing Maddy.

She hates them and that's why they have a name.

I'm not entirely sure where the turkey is, but I'm sure it's there somewhere.  Maybe when I have more time to look. 

It's not when I'm letting in a dog or three.

Leon helped me sort books the other day from his bookshelf bench in the living room.  There is a huge stack of books that are really for babies, a stack for sentimental books that I don't have the heart to store away, a stack of books that he can read himself, now that he's getting into the reading age, and then a stack of ones that we read to him. 

The little bench shouldn't be so packed anymore.

The bench was made by my uncle/Godfather who died when I was a pre-teen, for his two daughter's play house in their basement.  It eventually went to a daycare that my mom ran and then to me when my kids were littles.  So it has a lot of sentimental value to me.  I've tightened some screws over the years and gave it a paint job when we got it.  It used to be pink.

But the desire to have tidy corners in my house for the holidays has once again hit me.  The craft table got hit too.  It had become a good place to throw things that you just didn't know what to do with in the living room.  The puzzles will have to find another home.

I've got CRAFTS to make for gifts!!

And boy do I!  I can't wait to show you!

But some other day.  I think I know where that turkey is.

Catch you later!