The only problem with going to someone else’s house for Thanksgiving is that you do not end up with leftovers. So today Richard and I decided that the only way to remedy that was to go get ourselves a turkey and cook it, and then whip up a few of the easier sides.

The smallest turkey we could find at the store was about 13 pounds. That is a lot of turkey for two people, but hey, turkey freezes, and it would definitely give us leftovers. Thankfully the whole turkey was not frozen, so as soon as we got home from the store, we opened it up and pulled out all the giblets, and rigged up a roasting pan out of the pan we normally use for lasagna, and that worked out just fine. I stuffed it full of chopped onions and gave it a quick massage with some oil, and then popped it into the oven, and a few hours later, it was done.

The turkey came out absolutely perfect. We ate it with mashed potatoes and walnut-topped sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce. The cats were all quite certain that turkey was a Thing for Cats, but we cleverly distracted them with plates of wet food in a different room and managed to get through dinner without any ‘assistance (the kittens are still learning the concept of ‘no paws on the table’).

As for the leftovers, the two of us stood at the kitchen counter, side by side, once the turkey had cooled a little bit more, and armed with a large knife and a large fork and our bare hands, we managed to strip it bare. There are now two large bags of turkey meat in the freezer. And then I decided I might as well take advantage of having all those bones, so I rummaged in the fridge and pulled out some carrots and some celery that was starting to go a little limp, and I put the bones in a big pot and covered those with water and added the celery and carrots and most of the onions that had been stuffed inside the turkey cavity, and covered it up and let it simmer for a few hours, and then, once I drained out the stock and dumped out the random bones and veggies and such, I finally decided to give my pressure canner a try.

I got the pressure canner for my birthday, but until today I have not used it because to be honest, it scares me a little. I think the problem is that I grew up hearing stories about pressure canners failing, leading to messes of epic proportion, and so there is this tiny part of me that is sure that it *will* explode on me. But we dragged the canner out of the box and we read through all the directions several times, and I checked and double-checked the information on canning stock on the USDA canning sites, and then, I crossed my fingers and turned on the heat, and off we went. Midway through the process Richard headed off to a write-in, leaving me alone with a potentially explosive contraption (ha ha), but never fear, everything worked out just fine. All my jars sealed perfectly and nothing exploded. I am still trying to decide if this means that I can quit worrying about it, or if this is just the pressure canner’s way of luring me into a false sense of security so that next time I will be completely unprepared for it to wreak its chaos upon me. Hmm.