Forget Christmas in July. Around these parts we’re having Thanksgiving in May.

You see last November I had accumulated enough points at my local grocery store to qualify for a free turkey. However, since I was not hosting Thanksgiving that year, I didn’t actually need to cook the turkey right away. So I got the free turkey and put it in the freezer.

Fast forward six months and I was reading a great article in a magazine about getting yourself organized. One piece of advice was to create a list of everything you had in your freezer and post it on the freezer door. This would help you to meal plan based on what you’ve already got frozen, which should help you save money in the long run. While inventorying the freezer, I found the turkey.

Lucky for us not too much time has passed–according to the USDA, you can safely freeze a whole, uncooked turkey for up to one year. I’d actually thought that this number was closer to six months, which is why you found us cooking a Thanksgiving turkey this weekend.

We’ve got lots of plans for working that turkey into meal plans this week. Today, I might make turkey salad, by chopping the meat, and adding mayonnaise, chopped celery and dried cranberries, and serving it as sandwiches. On Wednesday, Cinco de Mayo, we’ll likely have shredded turkey tacos to celebrate the day. And one night we may have a traditional Thanksgiving-like dinner, with warm turkey, canned cranberries I have leftover from the fall (canned goods last for years) and cooked vegetables.

Do you have anything sitting in your freezer that you ought to work into your meal plans this month before it goes bad? Let me know what you find and how you ended up using it.