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THIS WEEKS RECIPE
LET’S TALK TURKEY;
BIGGER IS BETTER
Have you looked in your freezer lately? It’s likely, there amongst frozen bags of corn, peas and beans are at least a couple shiny, tinfoil wrapped packages of left over turkey. This current cold spell is the perfect time to transform these tidbits into hearty, bone warming meals.
Turkey has been a mainstay on this continent for hundreds of generations, back when my Native American ancestor inhabited this land there was an abundance of wild turkey roaming from Southern Canada to Central South America. My grandfather would often bag two or three large birds on a hunting trip, and grandmother had the job of cooking and preserving the meat.
As my grandfather would tell it, they hunted for turkey in late fall, before the heavy snows arrived, turkeys could run at high speed over knee deep snow, even a man on snow shoes would find it a challenge to keep up.
Nowadays, while we don’t have the same super lean, (and often tough) wild turkey meat on our tables, the modern turkey is quite a healthy and economical meat, especially for those trying to raise a family on a tight budget. 100g. of roasted turkey provides 17 grams of protein, 265 calories, 25 mg. Calcium and only 15 grams of fat, 0% saturated fatty acids.
There is one thing to remember when buying whole turkey, bigger is definitely better. When you cook a 5 kg. bird and a 12 kg. bird, and remove all the meat from both, you will be left with almost the exact same size and weight skeleton. This means, in every gram over 5 kg. you are paying for usable meat.
Being half Italian and half Chippewa, (Ojibwa), I take from both cultures for these three turkey recipes, hope you enjoy.
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