Thanksgiving, Christmas, or whenever — there is always a place for leftovers at the table!
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I can express with unapologetic joy how much I look forward to the days after the mega food holiday.
But not because of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Because of the leftovers.
The joys of cooking, in by book, continue well after Thanksgiving. You see, I’m one of those people who loves to cook all the live long day from scratch. And I love everything about the entire process of cooking from scratch: the shop, the prep, the cooking, and even the cleanup (I love the soothing mise en place of it all, knowing that everything is rightfully back in its place.)
What I love just as much as cooking food is eating the food that I cook. And that includes the leftovers. After putting all of that love into what I just cooked for myself and for my family, I do my best to minimize how much of it goes to waste.
Eating leftovers after Thanksgiving is always the highlight of my busy food year. I can’t say enough how much I love, love, LOVE sweet potato pie. (Sorry, not sorry to pumpkin pie!) One of my favorite food things, I hold dear delicious memories of eating my mother’s sweet potato pie every Thanksgiving as a kid. I remember thinking so many times between delectable bites that hers had to be the best sweet potato pie in the whole wide world.
Because I seldom eat sweet potato pie during the year, I look forward to having a warm slice of it, or two, with a generous dollop of whipped cream after my big meal, even more than I look forward to watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the National Dog Show. (A big CONGRATS to this year’s winner, Soleil, the elegantly beautiful Belgian Sheepdog!)
Later on, I rejoice, knowing I will wake up the next day to savor another piece of luscious sweet potato pie, or two, for breakfast. Whipped cream at the ready.
The homemade stuffing I make using masa instead of cornmeal, giving it a delicate, silky mouthfeel, and collard greens with smoked turkey are always waiting on deck as tasty chasers soon after the pie.
I happily eat holiday leftovers as is. But to spice things up, I do more than just settle for making turkey sandwiches.
One of the first dishes on my holiday leftovers menu: a huge pot of turkey enchilada soup, an easy detour from the chicken enchilada soup I prepare pretty frequently. Making soup is a great way to use up a good portion of turkey meat. I normally use the breast meat, but meat from the thighs works just fine. Sometimes both end up in the soup. So does the flavorful stock that I make from the turkey carcass, with plenty left over that I store in the freezer for later use.
Some of my other go-to meals after Thanksgiving are turkey fried rice, turkey pot pie, and turkey enchiladas, each meal again offering an easy protein swap for meals that I regularly make and eat.
Leftovers aren’t any less flavorful, despite what some might think. More often than not, leftovers are even more delicious the second time around. Or third. Or fourth.
It’s unfortunate that so much of the food we eat, including leftovers, goes to waste.
According to a recent segment on CBS Sunday Morning about leftovers, approximately 320 million pounds of food was wasted this Thanksgiving. This shockingly high number equates to 267 million meals that could have been given to people who really needed it.
Think about that.
Think about how many hungry people right here in America we could feed, not only on Thanksgiving Day but every day from the tons of food we throw away without a second thought.
Among those featured in the segment were Chris Morocco, food director of Bon Appetit and Epicurious. Morocco loves leftovers for the same reasons as I do: For the magic of it. For the transformation. For the satisfaction of making something out of nothing. Cooking has always felt magical to me, from watching my mother cook with wide-eyed amazement as a young girl to working my magic in the kitchen cooking for my own family.
For those of us with refrigerators as stuffed as our bellies from all of the food, glorious food left over from our Thanksgiving feasts, there is a very important reminder regarding how long leftovers should be kept in the fridge. In these inflationary times with affordability high on the menu, that old saying “Waste not, want not” couldn’t be more timely.
Affordability is not a “hoax” nor is it a “con job.” Prices keep rising. People are hurting. For some, the possibility of having to stretch leftovers for as long as possible to ensure food is on the table is not a stretch of the imagination by any means.
That being said, hip-hop artist Piles was right. There is an expiration on leftovers.
According to the CDC and the USDA, the guideline for leftovers is to consume food within three-to-four-days after storing them in the refrigerator. You can also freeze your leftovers for up to four months. Your homemade stock, too. Just be sure to use clean, air-tight containers to keep your food as fresh as possible to prevent contamination.
The simple act of not throwing away our leftovers can only serve to serve us all well. Whether we reheat them to stretch a meal, create tasty new dishes, rehash old food memories while whipping up new ones, or donate them so that others can eat, there is always a place for leftovers at the table.
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