Special note: I mentioned in this post that I would try to find a picture of our first Thanksgiving turkey. I looked for it, but found this one that liked even better. It has nothing to do with anything. I just wanted to post it. I particularly liked the picture of Don Lauro.
Lorena and I lived in Boynton Beach, Florida after we got married in early October of 1992. We invited a Mexican couple from the west coast of Florida to our home for our first Thanksgiving dinner. Neither of us had ever cooked a turkey before, so I took that task on while Lorena did most of everything else. It was great. We still have pictures and even some home movies of the whole thing. I will try to put up one or two of those pictures later today. At any rate, our dinner with Rodofo and Dinora was a great success. After they left, we decided to try to make turkey soup. We called Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah for some instructions, put the turkey carcass in a pot of water on the stove and ended up with what we thought was the best turkey soup ever. I took all the credit for that.
We have failed abysmally to duplicate that effort ever since, until this year! Lorena does not agree with me. We put the carcass on the stove to simmer on Monday morning. I was going to make gumbo, but for some reason I got busy and Lorena ended up doing all the work (some people would say, “as usual”). She called Grandpa Milo. He told her what to do. She did that, but thought the soup was way too bland. Of course she is Mexican and almost everything we cook here is way to bland. She added a bunch of more spices of the picante variety and we ended up with what I believe is the best turkey soup, ever. Even surpassing the soup we made right after we got married. The said part of this whole tale is that she does not remember how she did it. We are going to try again at Christmas time when Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah are there, but this time we are going to write it down. I hope we get it right.