end of the week

My sister leaves to go home shortly. It was really nice to spend such a long time with her. Grimm is totally smitten with her and I do not look forward to the whining that will be happening when she leaves.

Family Christmas Dinner went well. I have a TON of leftover ham. I foresee mac and cheese with ham in my future.

I also have the carcass from the christmas turkey that I need to make into soup. I will probably do that today after sis leaves. This is also how I use up the dark meat from the turkey as normally my sister and I are not dark meat eaters when it comes to roast turkey, but I think it does add a nice depth of flavor for soups and stews.

Need to go do a bit of grocery shopping as well. That will happen before I set the soup on to cook.

This coming week I need to get the Fleur polling out. Also need to see about checking if the hotel that has rooms for 12th night allows dogs. If not it doesn't we won't be going to 12th night and I will have to ask someone else to run the meeting. Until they have all their puppy shots the boys can't be boarded.

Should also think about making a dress for 12th night. Use some of the fabric I bought at war.

We shall see.

Wonder if the girls would like to go to the movies today. Should look to see what's playing.

Yum

I don't consider today's cooking to be part of the Great Recipe Experiment challenge but it was new in a sense.

I made turkey noodle soup today using the carcass from Christmas' turkey. My discovery is that brined turkey makes great soup stock. I didn't need to add much of any other spices. The turkey had the brine spices and a couple cans of chicken stock was perfectly seasoned (well I added black pepper to the bowl I had but most people don't like the amount of pepper I put in things so I tend to flavor for others and doctor my individual servings).

I have plenty of soup now. Tomorrow I will dig out my gladware and portion out generous servings for freezing. It's a version of MMS (Mom Magic Soup) so I want to have portions for when I get sick.

Tomorrow I want to try a new recipe that I found for using leftover ham. It's called "Red Rice with Ham" and seems to be a variation of red beans and rice (without the beans). While at the store today I also got the ingredients to try a recipe I found yesterday that is called "Chicken Saltimbocca". Normally Saltimbocca is made with veal, but this one is made with Chicken and basically is Italian Chicken Cordon Bleu. Luckily it doesn't require much prosciutto as it's a lot more expensive than I thought.

On a side note... for those who know wine... can I substitute Liebfraumilch for Marsala when cooking? I'd rather not go buy another bottle of wine for 1/3 cup when I have several bottles of Liebfraumilch in the house. I also have a chardonay as well.