Need Freezer Space and a little more

When we renovated our kitchen a year and a half ago we bought another fridge and put the older fridge in the basement. We decided that it was also time to dispose of our deep freezer because always had a lot of frost build-up and the foods were getting freezer burned. We figured we could do without a deep freezer and just live on the freezers in the fridge. Well, now I regret our decision of not having a deep freezer (well, tossing out the old deep freezer was a wise idea since it was not energy efficient and not doing its proper job in freezing our meats). I want to get another deep freezer because we have maxed out the space in the two fridge freezers and can't take advantage of any deals on meats or stock up on BBQ meats and burgers for the summer.

A couple of weeks ago there was a great deal on some beef short ribs, pork side ribs and some other meats. I knew we didn't have any space in the freezer but I couldn't resist a great deal. What's a girl to do? I knew I had to make room in the freezer. Then it hit me! I had a turkey in one of them. What a great way to make space. I took the turkey out and I instantly freed up 1/4 of the freezer. I put it in the fridge to defrost. It took over a week to defrost (thank goodness). Even as I cut off the packaging I noticed small chunks of ice in the cavity of the bird.

This is how I prepared the turkey. I took out the giblets and neck (I threw them out even though I could have used them to make a yummy gravy). I scrubbed it with sea salt and rinsed it under cool water. I thought to myself, what kind of stuffing should I throw into my bird? I brainstormed quickly and decided on a "everything but the kitchen sink" stuffing, thus freeing up more fridge space. A lemon, a bunch of parsley, garlic, celery and carrots. It keeps the turkey meat nice and moist with a hint of flavour from the stuffing ingredients (I learned this from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook). I sprinkled seasoning salt, steak spice and a Tuscan spice blend (from The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean). I then placed uncooked slices of bacon over the bacon (a little trick a friend told me 15 years ago).











This is how the turkey looked going into the oven (preheated at 350 degrees F):

And this is how it looked after 2.5 hours:

Remove and discard the bacon (my mom gobbles them up). I mixed the pan drippings, fat separated, with the gravy mix. The mix I use is the Nestle TRIO brown gravy mix - the best I've tried so far.

Hubby's rating: He doesn't like turkey but this time he raved at how tasty and moist it turned out.

Cook's rating: (that's me!) Delicious.