Thanksgiving Leftovers – Enjoy them well into January

by Lisa Owen Brown

Thanksgiving is a holiday to spend time with your family, be thankful for what you have and enjoy a large meal full of the tastes of the fall season. If your family is like mine, you have enough food for 30 when you are only feeding 10. That means a lot of food is leftover. We can only eat so much turkey, mash potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce before it gets old. To make the winter holidays a breeze with meals already prepared in the freezer we use some of the leftovers to transform them into other meals.

If you have a lot or a little leftover from Thanksgiving why not take some time and make some additional meals that you can store in your freezer all the way to January. We are a family of 5 and when I create meals I pack them in serving sizes of 6. If you are a single college student, retired couple, or family of 10, you can pack these meals in pre-portioned sizes.

For some recipes we have tried and enjoy, click on the links below:

Turkey, Bacon and Swiss Sandwiches
Turkey Noodle Casserole
Turkey Shepherds Pie
Turkey Corn Chowder
Turkey Pot Pies 
Turkey Pockets
Chicken Stuffing Bake
Crockpot Cranberry Chicken
Vegan Pistachio – Cranberry “chicken”
Butternut Squash Lasagna
Cranberry Muffins
Crockpot Cranberry Apple Porkloin
Cranberry Sauce Scones
Cranberry Banana Bread

Feel free to substitute any thing in these recipes for a homemade items. You can make your own Cream of “something” soup, biscuits, and stuffing (made in the crock pot and could be gluten-free with rice bread.)

So gather the family and make a few dishes to enjoy later on in the season.  Save yourself some stress of trying to figure out what you will eat on those busy winter holiday nights.