Hello and Happy Holidays!
What a crazy time of year in a crazier year. Traditionally, for Thanksgiving, my husband and I are driving 3 hours east to split time between his and mine families. Usually it is something like dinner and hanging out from noon-5 with his family and then drive to visit my family for desserts and bedtime. Then the next morning we drive the three hours back home and relax the rest of the day.
This year was quite different. We did not visit anyone or travel anywhere. Instead, he and I made our own turkey dinner with all the fixings. This was the first time we have ever undertaken making a turkey or having a full on, fancy dinner.
I will not regale you with the tale of our cooking except to say that it tasted hella good. It was ultimately a success, despite any snafu’s we may or may not have ran into. This was our menu, plus or minus a few tweaks:
- Roast Turkey
- Sage and Sausage Stuffing
- Turkey Gravy – homemade experiment, I do not have recipe to link to for it, but it was hella good
- Green Bean Casserole
- Rapid Rolls
- Apple Pie
Can you tell we have an obsession with Serious Eats?? We did a decent job of making a dinner just big enough for the three of us but of course there were some leftovers. How do you make an 11-pound turkey for three people and NOT have leftovers?? We could have just reheated everything and eaten it like it was originally served but I was feeling adventurous (when am I not?? Ha!). Here are some of the new meals we made up with those leftovers:
- Turkey noodle soup
- Sweet potato pancakes with maple syrup
- Stuffing waffles with gravy or maple syrup (dealer’s choice)
- Turkey sandwiches with gravy
Obviously, some things we ate the way they were intended, like the green bean casserole and the apple pie. But why reinvent the wheel for everything?
Let me tell you, homemade turkey noodle soup after having made turkey stock from the carcass is easily the best thing ever. I did not have a recipe I followed per say but it was inspired by the Binging With Babish’ chicken noodle soup episode. I have made his chicken noodle soup before, so I had an idea on how to make stock and soup from scratch. The sweet potato pancakes and the stuffing waffles were purely inspired by my desire to make everything breakfast friendly. The waffles were easily more successful than the pancakes. Pancakes really need a recipe to follow is my assumption. And, of course, what is Thanksgiving without leftover turkey sandwiches? I introduced my husband to the idea of dipping them in gravy. (I legitimately do not know how he has gone this long in his life without someone introducing using gravy on a turkey sandwich. Truly mind-boggling.)
So, there you have it. What we ate for Thanksgiving dinner and how we handled all the leftovers. Maybe next year our families will let us do more than make sweet potato casserole. Although I do make a bitchin sweet potato casserole….
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