Thanksgivings with Mom were amazing! She would make lasagna and meatballs as a first course — or sometimes homemade ravioli — a huge sherry scented turkey, two or three kinds of vegetables as sides, stuffed mushrooms, a salad, and dessert. My brother Dom would bring a big bottle of Chianti.
Usually, there were six or seven people, including my sister and her boyfriend and my brother and his girlfriend. Does this sound like a lot of food for six people? Not in our family, and believe me, not one bite of food went to waste! Mom would pack all of us up with huge containers of leftovers to take home. And it was a real treat to eat all of that food after Thanksgiving day and have some to bring to work for lunch.
I think that one of my favorite parts of the feast was the Thanksgiving soup she made from the turkey carcass. Perhaps it was the slow roasting of the bird and the faint scent of sherry that lingered in the bones, but by slow simmering them and adding veggies like potatoes, celery, carrots, onions, and parsnips, you got the “best soup of the year.” Not only was it delicious, but none of that meal went to waste, not even the turkey bones!
I tried to reproduce the flavor of the Thanksgiving soup by marinating turkey wings in wine and roasting them in the oven to flavor the broth. It wasn’t the deep, rich taste that I would get from the Thanksgiving turkey bones, but it was pretty darn good!
Happy Thanksgiving!
This article was originally published on November 27, 2019. Feature image by Brandless on Unsplash.