turkey carcass, turkey stock

Thanksgiving, a turkey carcass got thrust at me, thrust at me in a plastic shopping bag.  I slunk home and shoved it in my fridge.  The first thing you need to ask yourself is: do I have a big enough pot?  Turkeys are big birds.  There was room enough in the cavity of mine for a Nerf football.  The second thing you need to ask yourself (and here you need to be very honest with yourself) is: how squeamish am I?  There was a lot of meat clinging to my carcass and getting at it would have been too laborious, rather, was too laborious until I buckled down and really dug in.  You cannot pussy-foot around a turkey carcass.  Clean a large area of your counter and plop that sucker down.  Tear it apart with your hands.  Your hands and one fork are the only tools you need to clean and dismember a turkey carcass.  

    
Once you've got that sucker sufficiently cleaned, i.e. picked through, go ahead and ram it into the biggest pot you have.  You'll notice that I didn't clean every last bit of meat off the carcass.  I could have, and that would have been good, but I could also have vacuumed the floor with a straw that I'd shoved a cotton ball into for a filter.  Very tedious.  Not all that necessary.  Anyway, once your turkey carcass is cleaned, it's easy to make the stock.  Just add some celery-carrot-onion (plus water) to the carcass, bring to a boil and reduce on a simmer.  When mine was done cooking, I put it out on the porch to cool.  The very best thing about winter is cooling stocks on the porch.  Turkey soup tomorrow.  Essence of rutabaga.