Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 41: Well, I got a head start on Thanksgiving because my turkey thawed out faster than I'd planned, but because it did, today I will be enjoying what I consider to be the ultimate "comfort food," Carcass Soup. The recipe is dead simple, although it takes several hours to prepare the broth. Quite honestly, the only reason I bother with a turkey is so that I can have Carcass Soup.

Personally, I don't care for drumsticks, and wings just don't have much meat on them, so those are the parts I use for my first batch of broth, along with the neck. Put them in a big saucepan, bones and all, cover them with water and boil them for...oh, about three hours or until there's no flavour left in the meat at all. You may need to add a little more water from time to time, but the idea is to make a rich broth, so don't add too much. When the meat has turned to cardboard, strain it out and feed it to your local mob of crows. If you'd like, you can use the broth immediately, but I usually refrigerate mine overnight so that I can peel the fat layer off the surface before I start cooking the soup (the fat gets poured onto dog food for another meal for the crows). Heat the broth to boiling, add a generous amount of shell macaroni, and cook until almost all the broth has soaked into the pasta. Add some salt and pepper, and you're done! That's all there is to Carcass Soup.

When you're done nibbling at the rest of the turkey, repeat the process with the remaining meat and bones to make another batch. The broth freezes well for later use, like during that January snowstorm you know is coming.