Hmm.. the turkey was from November 2016, the box of stuffing was from 2013, the can of corn was from 2017, and the instant spuds were from 2008. And…it all tasted (and digested) just fine. I was tempted to break out some of the freeze dried blueberry cheesecake from 1999 but was too lazy.
The take away? You can do a fairly appropriate Thanksgiving meal out of food storage and the deep freeze.
And today? Post Thanksgiving turkey bargains, m’friend.
ETA:
I have a $25 gift card to purchase Butterball products.
My local Albertsons has Butterballs marked down to $0.99/#
Mathematically, it is within my ability to purchase a 25# turkey with absolutely no out-of-pocket cost to me. And I just checked…they have a bunch that are close to that weight.
Turkey soup, turkey chili, turkey sandwiches, turkey gumbo.
It’s about to happen.
Don’t have a long term storage food T Day story. My GF cooked a very nice menu of pepper jack and Cajun sausage filled kolaches, spice rubbed, herb, sausage, and cornbread stuffed turkey breast, squash casserole, cornbread and sourdough dressing, bacon wrapped sweet and sour green beans, cranberry, orange, and chile relish, red skin mashed taters, giblet gravy, and brioche bread.
The frugal part of the menu comes from preparing all fresh from scratch, using stored items such as bulk SAF yeast and baking ingredients, dry spices, seasonings, and condiments etc as well as fresh herbs and garlic from my kitchen garden (I still have basil and thyme growing in my South facing window, everything else is perennial) even the chile peppers were from my garden which JUST stopped producing them.
The raw ingredients were very reasonably priced overall and the whole meal cost less than 2 serving at a fancy restaurant TDay dinner. Not to mention leftovers. If we had used a lot of prepared items and store bought fresh herbs etc at outrageous prices it would have really busted the budget. I guess that’s my version of a prepared TDAY… 😀
Best Regards.
Butterball turkeys are 99 cents a pound at Costco and $15 off so a 20 lb turkey is $5. I bought 55 lbs of turkey for $11.36.
Just had some slices of a home cured and smoked ham… I bought some ‘country hams’ onsale
last yearsome time ago.I smoked one, but you just get 1/2″ of ‘ham’ flavor and the rest tastes like roasted pork, delicious to be sure, but not ham.
LAST Thanksgiving, I was smoking a turkey, so I decided (with enough time) to cure the pork and then smoke it with the turkey. Our guests brought a ham, so I ended up vac sealing and freezing my effort.
Fast forward to today, and it was delicious. Home cured, home smoked, then frozen for a year, and still delicious. And very inexpensive.
What else got eaten this week? Cake mix over a year past “expiration”, times two. Pancake mix from the buckets, in storage for at least a year. Maple syrup, who knows how old. Mustard and MiracleWhip more than a year past…. tasty, frugal, and no running out to the store.
nick
We went to WINCO to purchase groceries for the week. That included a 23 lb turkey. When we got to the checkout, the checker told us if we had a total of more than $106.00, our turkey was free. DW started looking around to see if there was anything else in the immediate vicinity that we could add to the cart to bring the total up, as we were not sure if we had the prescribed amount to have the turkey for free. As the total came up for the groceries, it came to $109 and change. Viola! Free bird!
We had friends over for the Thanksgiving dinner, and it was all Ketogenic friendly. We were told that it was the best Thanksgiving meal, EVER!
Chop turkey meat and lightly fry,add eggs and turkey omlette,sliced turkey over steamed broccoli topped with gravy-turkey divan,turkey ala king,turkey tetrizini,turkey and pasta salad, sorry just had to channel my inner Gump for a minute