This has to be the best part of Thanksgiving… well…  besides all the other best parts, that is…  It’s hard to top a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing on squishy white bread, but the turkey soup is something I look forward to the minute I start thinking about a turkey.

It’s a childhood-memory-thing.  Soups were definitely a mainstay growing up and I can see that big oval pot my mother used to cook down the carcass and make her soup.  Everything went in it.  Just as I make it, today…

I started by simmering the carcass all day yesterday.  I threw in a couple of bay leaves, a quartered onion, skin and all (the onion skins help make a nice, deep-colored broth) and the ends of celery and carrots, and a bit of sage.  Those trimmings you’d probably toss make for great soup stock.

After straining it, it went into the ‘fridge.  Today, I scraped off the thin layer of fat and started heating it.

To the pot I added about 3 cups of turkey gravy and then chopped carrots, celery, potatoes, a lot of turkey meat, and all those partial bags of frozen vegetables… peas, corn, green beans, and spinach.

A bit of salt and pepper was the only seasoning it needed.

Soup really may be the easiest food to make – and in our house, at least – the perfect comfort-food when the weather starts turning cold.

I froze half the broth for another soup, another day.  I haven’t made Mulligatawny in quite a while…..