Day 39: What to do with Leftovers (Turkey Casserole and Soup)

Every time I opened the refrigerator these last few days, I have been faced with a giant bag of leftover turkey. As I mentioned on Day 37 (Christmas Eve), The Ex made a holiday lunch that included a very large roasted bird. Since he doesn't like dark meat, I brought home a very large leg as well as most of the underside of the turkey.

Googling the words "leftover turkey" yielded some interesting results but the award for what I thought was most clever goes to Better Homes & Gardens. On their website I found the following three fun and flexible recipes:

• Catchall Casserole
• Whatchagot Soup
• The Anything Frittata (I didn't make this but I like to do things in threes so I am listing it here.)

The premise is simple. Rather than listing specific ingredients, these recipes give quantities of categories of ingredients with instructions on how to prepare and cook the dishes. This is perfect for a pantry shopper like me. My soup and casserole consisted of the same primary ingredients: turkey, chopped onions and carrots, frozen corn and edamame, seasoned with a few cloves of garlic and poultry seasoning. (I like to use poultry seasoning around this time of year; I always associate sage and thyme with the holidays.) Since I was starting with dark meat, which tends to be very greasy, I blanched the cut up turkey meat in boiling water and then rinsed well before adding it to both dishes.

I added some Cream of Mushroom soup, milk, and rice to the casserole. I don't normally keep condensed soup on hand; I prefer to make my cream sauces from scratch. But this summer my son was only cooking things from the Campbell Soup cookbook and so I stocked up on a few of the more popular soups. Leftover cornbread stuffing went on top.

Since I didn't have any tomato paste or onion soup mix for the soup, I flavored it with Braggs Liquid Aminos and some cooking sherry I found in the back of my refrigerator. We're not eating the soup tonight so I will add cooked pasta to it tomorrow, just before serving.

The Results

Both kids loved the casserole and had seconds. Neither of them like dark meat but thanks to the blanching and rinsing of the meat, and the creamy, delicious sauce, they didn't seem to notice it all.

Ratings

• Difficulty: Easy
• Time to prepare: 45 min each for the casserole and soup
• Prognosis: Definitely will be trying these recipes with different leftovers in the future.

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

The day's tally: $0
Total this week so far: $77
Total this month, to date: $142.19