I’m Fixing to Go Out and Shoot Us a Turkey for Thanksgiving

I’m fixing to go out and shoot us a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Way back when I was a little boy, that’s what my daddy would say early on Thanksgiving morning. So back then, instead of how today we buy a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuff we don’t need in order to get a free $12 turkey, he would go out in the woods and get us a fresh free one, while my momma pulled up some free onions and carrots out of her garden.

This turkey hunting wasn’t as easy as it might seem, because a wild turkey can run up to 55 miles per hour, but they seemed to be more in abundance back then than they are now. It was no simple matter to clean one either. A turkey can have as many as 3,500 feathers.

Although juicy and tender turkeys are the main course on today’s Thanksgiving menu, this was not always so. The goose was the favorite bird at harvest time in merry old England. Historical artifacts also tell us that in 1621 the colonists at Plymouth and the Indians probably had seafood, deer and wild foul on their Thanksgiving menu. But roasted turkey eventually replaced roasted goose as the main course because wild turkeys were more abundant and easier to find than geese, and probably more pleasing to the taste buds, too.

After my daddy snared us a turkey and my momma dressed it, not only would we enjoy it on Thanksgiving Day, but also for days to follow.

My daddy liked to make turkey hash in a big black skillet with bits of turkey, chopped up hot peppers, onions and potatoes, and a little butter. Then serve it up over open faced biscuits for breakfast.

My momma would stretch that turkey out by making some turkey soup the next day. She would put the carcass in a pot of water, add onions and salt and simmer it for a couple of hours, then she would separate the broth and add some carrots, rice and onions to it, along with meat salvaged from the bones, and simmer it some more until all the vegetables were tender. It was mighty good on a cold morning.

She would save a cup of the aforementioned broth and some of the meat scraps for her turkey pot pie. After covering a big backing pan with rolled out pie dough, she would fill it with a mixture of turkey broth, turkey scraps, sauteed onions, carrots and cubed up potatoes and some peas. Then she would cover it all with a pie crust and pop it into the oven until it was golden brown.

I remember eating that turkey soup and pot pie for several days after Thanksgiving. So, you see, back then we ate leftovers from the leftovers.

About the only leftovers we eat today are turkey sandwiches, which I like with cranberry sauce instead of mayonnaise.

I’ve enjoyed Thanksgiving Day in a lot of places, but it doesn’t matter where you are because places are all the same. It’s the people in those places that are fixing to make it special.