Turkey Soup! with Sugo Italian Seasoning

Each holiday we find ourselves with a pretty good stockpile of leftover turkey. It seems like a good idea at the time to bring home a giant storage bag of turkey from Nana's house, but after that coveted turkey sandwich we need a game plan for the rest of it. This recipe is flexible to whatever you end up having on hand. If you don't end up with any bones for the stock, you'll need to use pre-made or purchased chicken stock instead of water. But don't let all that run you off. It takes a while, but it's really easy and so worth it. In this one we use our Sugo seasoning because the herbs and fennel seed go amazingly well with poultry. If you don't like fennel, or have a cajun fried turkey to deal with, you can use Creole seasoning instead.

OK. Here we go.

What you will need:
Left over turkey meat and bones (remove skin)
2 C of water per serving of meat that you have to work with (1/4 C meat = 1 serving)
1 tsp Sugo Italian Seasoning per 2 C water
1/2 C barley or brown/wild rice (for an 8-12 C pot)
1/4 C chopped veg per 2 C water - carrots, celery, onion, etc - whatever was left on that veggie tray besides broccoli can get cut up and thrown in depending on your preferences. 
extra salt to taste
a big pot

What you do:
Boil your meat and bones in the water for an hour. Don't freak out too much about proportions. It's not exact science and you'll have veggies and grains in there too to make it go around. For example: if you have a turkey leg plus 2 C of meat left over, throw it all in a big pot with 8-12 C of water and boil it. Remove the bones and be sure to get all the meat off of them. Careful - it's hot. If you think there might be little bits of bone in there, strain it.
If you never had bones to work with in the first place, just bring your meat to a boil in the right amount of chicken broth.
Add your meat back into the broth (that you made!) plus the seasoning (for a big pot of 10ish cups I use about 2 T of seasoning) and barley/wild rice. Boil to nearly cook the barley - about 35 minutes. Check your broth for salt and seasoning. Add more if it needs it. Add your veg and cook an additional 10 minutes.
You just used Thanksgiving leftovers to make a fabulous soup from scratch. You win at life! You are amazing! Serve it with any surviving dinner rolls and finish off that pie for goodness sake.

*If you want to use white rice or pasta instead of barley, go ahead and throw your veg in at the same time as the rice/pasta and adjust the cooking time to the package directions (white rice=20 min, pasta varies).