Busy Day Dinner

1 Turkey Carcass
1 cup rice
About 4-6 cups water (estimated)
1 can of peas that are going to go bad soon if they aren't used

So I put the carcass in the crock pot, along with the turkey neck. I don't like to waste parts of the turkey if I can use them! When it was good and soaked and warm, I picked all the meat off with my fingers. Ow! It was hot! But your fingers work MUCH better than a fork.

That left me with water and chicken. Some of the water I put in was saved from when I'd boiled the neck and giblets together in a pot. I just put the neck and water into a container to save for later, and now is later! What do I do with turkey giblets? I eat the liver and give the rest to the cats.

I added the rest of the gravy to make a good broth, and added some chicken boullion and a quarter cup of golden sherry just to make sure it's a good broth. Then I put in the rice and the peas.

I started the carcass heating at around noon, and it's a little after 2:30pm now. Supper is at around 5:30, which should give plenty of time for the rice to be rice and the alcohol to cook out of the broth. It's in a crock pot on high, doing its thing. I shouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Around 5:30 I'll heat up the rest of the rolls from the turkey dinner and serve them with the soup/stew/mash/whatever comes out.

The crock pot shows it's value whenever you are not going to have much time in the afternoon or evening to prepare dinner. It also does if you are going to kind of feed people all day as they go in and out. On Mondays my kid has Children's Choir right around the time that I'm usually cooking. Sometimes my mother brings him and my youngest sister, sometimes I bring him and my youngest sister, and sometimes we go together and chat while they're singing. In the latter two cases, the best meal is one that I can start before I leave and is safe to leave in an empty house. I balk at running the oven when I'm gone. The crock pot, however, is safe.

You can crockpot cheaper cuts of meat because several hours of slow-cooking in fluids will soften up just about anything. If you're doing that, I personally recommend doing it on high to make sure the stuff is heated safely. If you're running it overnight, you probably want it on low.

I love soup in particular in the crock pot because you can start it early and just add stuff whenever you think of it. It'll take a while longer to cook, but it'll get there! As long as you've got enough liquid in there, you can't really burn anything. Meat, rice, barley, certain kinds of beans, just toss a handful in and let it think about soup for a few hours!

As you can guess, I don't cook to recipe so much as I put things together with a creative flair that sometimes goes wrong and often turns out alright. So when I mention what I cook and how, expect a lot of leeway!