Cats can’t complain!

My cats can’t complain! The cats have been feasting!
(inspite of Gracie’s recent exposé)
But after almost a week, I think even they are getting tired of it.

I haven’t been able to blog lately because
——someone gave us a 19 pound turkey, ——
and there are just no Japanese recipes for such a bird,
and
I thought learning about image mapping might come in handy…
(click on each cat to read about how each came to live with us)
Click here if you want to skip the story
and get to the recipe right now!

I say that is a generously sized bird. A friend commented,
— “Confucius might also say: bird most difficult to reciperocate.”—*

Well, the bird was certainly difficult to reduce to its component parts—
almost enough to make one a vegetarian. At least I didn’t have to kill it myself.

— No need to reciprocate: —
Husband works for a family-owned company about 4 hours away from where we live. They give employees a turkey every Thanksgiving
(I believe it might be considerably cheaper than a cash bonus lol).
The family includes something like 12 or 13 children (I don’t know the precise number), who now have spouses and children of their own;
in their eyes one li’le ol’ 19 pound bird is not big enough…

Husband was working in Buffalo, NY around turkey-day so we didn’t get our turkey, and I thought we were safe. But no, one of the family kept it in a freezer until someone had to drive to Ann Arbor. That was sometime between Christmas and New Year when it was almost 0°F (-18°C???) so we put it in the grill outside (no, we have not yet put the grill into the shed) and that was fine until the temperature got above freezing for a few days… and no, there is no space in the freezer.

As I said, the cats can’t complain,
but I wasn’t about to cook 19 pounds of bird meat for only them. Really, I do like to eat turkey! But roasting a bird that size, then spending many following days trying to make it into things that don’t taste like turkey—such as turkey burritos, turkey casserole, turkey pie, or any of the 603,000 references that Google has collected—
is too much to ask!
My plan was to cook the bird 3 different ways from the beginning.

That’s why I was wrestling a big, cold, slippery beast in my kitchen sink with a very sharp knife and extra heavy kitchen shears: breast to roast, thighs and various other chunks not to be named for a French stew,
and legs and wings for a teriyaki treatment.

Phase 1, I began roasting the breast in the oven, but when J got home he lit the grill (yes, in the snow) and smoked it with applewood. It was bigger than I thought so we finished it off in the oven. We had lots of gravy, mashed potatoes, noodles, sandwiches. Not all for one meal.

Phase 2, Dindonnneau au Vin, the French stew was wonderful as always. The recipe comes from Family Circle magazine, cira 1976, which I stole from my mother-in-law.. Googling dinde au vin brings up lots of recipes, mostly in French.
Hover here to read why Googling dindonneau au vin shows only 1 site.

Phase 3, well didn’t happen before the turkey went south…

Please click here
to try this most wonderful recipe for a French turkey and red wine stew.

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