The Great Turkey Challenge

I don’t like turkey. There are several reasons I don’t enjoy this gigantic meat globe, and I am not about to go into details. Just let’s leave it at the bare facts: turkey is not my cup of tea.

This Thanksgiving I was spared off the Turkey duties, thanks to my generous and hospitable family, so I didn’t have to deal with the leftovers and the inevitable post-Thanksgiving hide-the-turkey marathon.

Just as I thought I got it easy, my husband decided to go through his corporate freezer and brought home the entire smoked turkey breast, still on bone and frozen. Fine, I thought. I have a toddler who likes this sort of stuff, so I’ll just use it as “deli meat” in her wraps. However, upon defrosting and inspecting the post-holiday booty, I was convinced that there is no toddler in the world that would agree to eating white meat boredom day after day without raising a mutiny.

So now I am facing the only two choices that an honest person would have in this situation:

• let it silently rot in the fridge and one day just toss it in the garbage bin
• surrender to poor children are starving in Africa guilt and start thinking something

I chose the latter, and immediately found myself scanning the almighty Internet for palatable turkey options. Then I thought, hmm, this might be one of those great challenges that life throws at you to see if you can really swim. Suddenly white meat boredom started looking more like a creative culinary project to me, and now I am hooked. Of course, when you have unlimited options, the challenge seems a lot less interesting, so I was compelled to create some simple rules for my turkey challenge to avoid Iron Chef type situations, where main ingredient is being carefully hidden between hundreds of exotic produce varieties.

So, in the next few days, I will be using up all of the remaining turkey (about 3-4 pounds of it) in a variety of ways.
The only two rules are:

1. I have to use what I have at home. No special grocery store runs.
2. Turkey should be the main protein, not the supplement. In other words, I can’t make lamb risotto and toss in a handful of turkey in the end, just to use it up.

Let’s see how it goes.

See Turkey Challenge related posts here:

The Great Turkey Challenge, Day One: Tangy Turkey Salad

The Great Turkey Challenge, Day Two: Turkey, Mushroom & Lentil Soup

The Great Turkey Challenge, Day Three: Turkey Bake with Dill

The Great Turkey Challenge, Day Four: Curried Turkey & Asparagus Salad