Thanksgiving in March thanks to the Aerogarden - Day 75

The funny thing about the Aerogarden is that it lets you harvest herbs all year long. Here in the New York area we've had the winter that never seems to end. One day it's a balmy 65 degrees, and the next day we're back to bone-chilling wind chill temperatures.

What's cool about the Aerogarden is that I'm harvesting herbs like it's September. And so I figured, why not cook me up a turkey like it's November?

I knew exactly the recipe I wanted to try--it was this one from Southern Living. Happily, I have the sage, and I have the thyme. 

Here's what the thyme and sage looked like.

I had what seemed like hundreds of thyme springs, when the recipe only called for 3 or 4. So I figured I'd harvest a whole bunch of thyme, and select a few of the best sprigs.

Here's what my cut thyme and sage looked like.

Following the recipe's instructions, I got under the turkey's skin and put the sage and thyme in.

And here's what the completed turkey looked like out of the oven.

The turkey came out amazingly. The herb flavor had a chance to infuse itself into the meat, which made it a lot more flavorful than other turkeys I've made. 

Long story short, we had a very happy Thanksgiving in March...and a LOT of leftover turkey. 

So, that gave me a good opportunity to trim a LOT of sage and thyme, but now the oregano was growing ridiculously large.  

I knew exactly what I had to do: find a recipe for turkey pot pie.

I ended up going with this one, which happened to use oregano and parsley. Sadly, my Aerogarden parsley never got off the ground, as we've established by now, so I ended up using dried parsley. On the other hand, the oregano was doing great.

The rule of thumb when substituting fresh herbs for dried herbs is to triple the amount of herbs. In other words if a recipe (as in this case) calls for 1 teaspoon of dried oregano, the thing to do is to put in 3 teaspoons (1 Tablespoon) of fresh oregano. 

I chop the leaves, and am pretty sure this is way over 1 tablespoon, but I happily throw them all in. 

The result was this turkey pot pie: 

I guess in retrospect I should have taken a whole lot more pictures of the inside, but you can use your imagination. It came out pretty good, and certainly lasted a long time. Although after eating turkey for the past few weeks, I think I'll be taking a break for a while before cooking another one.