It’s never too early to practice your Thanksgiving skills! In our house Sunday is our cooking day. We like to make some meals so that if we get busy we are not tempted to eat out all the time. On Saturday we decided to try grilling a 12 lb turkey. This is more than enough meat for 2 people.

Grilled Turkey

Ingredients:

• 1 Whole Turkey
• 1/2 Cup olive oil
• 2 Tbsp Fresh Rosemary
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Garlic

Process:

1. Place coals on the grill and allow them to heat up and get ashy for 30 minutes.
2. While the grill is heating, prepare your turkey
3. Remove neck and giblets form the turkey and remove extra skin.
4. In a bowl mix olive oil, rosemary, salt, pepper and garlic.
5. Baste the turkey all over very well. Get under the wings, inside, top and bottom. *Optional- tie his legs together. (you may not want to stuff your turkey because cook time would be very long.)
6. Separate coals into two piles and place a drip pan in the center.
7. Add 12-15 pieces of coal to the pile and cover place the grates on top.
8. Grease the grates with oil.
9. Place the turkey (breast side up) on the grates over the drip pan.
10. Allow the turkey to cook for 12min per LB.
11. Every hour add some coal to keep the temperature of the grill between 250-300 degrees. Try not to open the lid of the grill unless you have to.
12. Breast meat should be at around 170 degrees and thigh meat should be around 180 degrees. Once the turkey is at the correct temperature, remove from the grill and let him cool for a while.
13. Carve and serve!

Once the turkey is cooked, you can use it for so many things. We have it in salad, for breakfast with eggs, sandwiches, hot with veggies!  Enjoy!

Ground Venison

1- Put Venison in a skillet (frozen or thawed)
2- Turn temperature to medium heat and stand by constantly chopping and mixing the meat until it is light brown. Don’t let it burn or get too well done.
3- Make a meal out of it- add taco seasoning, pasta sauce or whatever you would do with regular ground beef.
*Can be refrigerated for up to 3 days*

Venison Tenderloin

I used 1 12oz Venison tenderloin but you could use any size that fits in your crock pot. You may need to adjust the measurements if you have double the size tenderloin.

1 Venison tenderloin (or beef)
1 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
1 TBS fresh Rosemary
1 Tsp Garlic
1 Juice of whole Lemon

Place water in the crock pot. Turn crock pot on LOW. Add Tenderloin and all of the ingredients. Mix the broth and meat around a little so that nothing is clumped.
Allow to slow roast for 4-5 hours depending on the cook you prefer. Tenderloin should be brown but able to pull apart without a knife. Check it after 4 hours and go from there. If you are using a larger tenderloin you may need to cook for 8 hours. The key is to not let it overcook. If it starts to get blackened edges pull it out. I served this with some sauteed carrots and asparagus.

Sauteed Carrots and Asparagus
Place olive oil in a skillet, just enough to coat the bottom of the pan.
Place Carrots in the pan and sprinkle with Salt, pepper, old bay or Cajun seasoning (make sure you are getting sugar free if you are paleo!)
Once the Carrots are tender and a little browned remove them and throw in the asparagus and cook until tender- Brandon likes his mushy so we cooked his a little longer than most prefer.