Thanksgiving Leftovers

We always end up with leftovers from Thanksgiving and there are only so many times you can reheat leftovers as is. And we really don’t like wasting food, so we’ve developed some creative ways to use up our leftovers – shepherd’s pie and tom kha turkey (a variation of tom kha gai, the broth, coconut milk based Thai soup).    I hope that these ideas will be helpful for you in using up some of your leftovers.

 

If you are wondering about the photo, the pumpkin tart is still making appearances.  That was my slice for dessert.  I don’t think I could get tired of eating pumpkin tart.

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A Local Thanksgiving

We have a tradition of gathering in Sunriver, OR for Thanksgiving with about 10-12 friends that are also Oregon transplants. This is my 10^th Sunriver Thanksgiving and Matt’s 12^th. We rent a big house that fits all of us and everyone pitches in with some part of the meal either by making a dish or cleaning up. It is one of my favorite weekends of the year. The last few years, we have made more of an effort to use local foods. We even won a Farmaid contest last year.

We neglected to order a turkey from Deck early enough this year so when we contacted them, they were all gone. We tried a few other potential sources with no luck, so our turkey this year was from California. Besides the turkey, most of our other main ingredients were local. A detailed ingredient source list is below.

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Pumpkin love

I think I have always loved pumpkins.  They say fall better than anything and I love fall.  My grandma made delicious pumpkin pie (something I have never been able to figure out) and my sister Ally makes the most amazing pumpkin bread.   (Was than an obvious hint?)  Our CSA has an annual farm tour before Halloween and they plant a pumpkin patch just for the occasion.  We always pick a couple Cinderella pumpkins for pumpkin muffins, my annual attempt at pumpkin pie, and homemade pumpkin ice cream.

We baked our pumpkins last night (after scooping away the stringy bits and saving the seeds), let them cool and then scooped the flesh away from the skin.  Rather than putting the scooped out flesh in the food processor to reduce the stringiness like years past, I used our food mill that I purchased this summer for tomato sauce.  This removed all of the stringy pieces and made a beautiful puree.  I am so glad that my $70 splurge is good for tomato sauce, applesauce, and pumpkin puree.  With all the puree made and seeds saved, I set to work at making some local pumpkin treats.

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