A No Waste Thanksgiving

Most of us in the U.S. are blessed with a generous amount of leftovers after Thanksgiving. And if you are like us, you make even more so there are even more leftovers. I figure since you are doing the work already, you may as well do just a wee bit more to get a lot more leftovers. Good return for the time investment I say. I love that you work, work, work really hard between a 24 hour period and you are left with a mountain of food. God is good, and I don’t ever want to forget that!

So I wanted to share a few things we do to use up as much food as possible. I hate for any food to go to waste!

My mother-in-law takes the giblets and simmers them in water to make a broth in case any is needed for gravy, and then strains off giblets and feeds them to the dogs.
When I bake or crock-pot a whole turkey, I don’t clean out the crock-pot. I just take out all of the meat and leave the bones and skins in, cover it with water and make a perpetual broth. I will keep one crock-pot of broth going for an entire week. It’s practically free broth since it’s made entirely out of scraps. The only cost is the use of the crock-pot. Through the week I throw in the vegetable scraps of celery, carrots, garlic, and onions. And then I use the broth in a couple of recipes below.
If you are having a traditional Thanksgiving leftover meal the next day, having the easy access perpetual broth is so convenient so you can easily add moisture to dry food. I throw a little broth on the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing to moisten them up if needed.
Of course there are the traditional turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches made with leftover rolls. The family LOVES the turkey rolls.
The bits of leftover pie pieces can be thrown on oatmeal or steel cut oats for a special breakfast.
You can use leftover cranberry sauce for Thumbprint cookies. We also just love it on toast. And I still can’t get over this cranberry sauce recipe. AND it makes the house smell SOOOOO good!

Then the shredded turkey can be used in SO many different recipes. My favorite fast and easy shredded turkey recipe is Turkey Nachos. You really don’t need a recipe for it. Load ’em up, and heat ’em up!

Then we make a Leftover Turkey Soup. If there are extra mashed potatoes leftover, we throw those in as a nice thickener. The green beans can be thrown in, too.

My kids’ favorite leftover is Turkey Pot Pie. This is another great recipe to throw in leftover mashed potatoes. Do you end up with a boatloads of leftover gravy like us? This is the perfect recipe to use it up~and you don’t need any overly processed cream of _______(fill-in-the-blank) cans to use!
Another great shredded turkey recipe is Turkey Tetrazzini. This recipe is even dairy-free and made in the crock-pot.