{"id":101209,"date":"2024-12-02T11:08:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T16:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=101209"},"modified":"2025-12-01T11:48:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T16:48:38","slug":"what-to-do-with-your-final-thanksgiving-leftovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/what-to-do-with-your-final-thanksgiving-leftovers.html","title":{"rendered":"What to Do with Your Final Thanksgiving Leftovers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega provides recipes to use up the last of your Thanksgiving leftovers, just as your family is tiring of turkey. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Every year, Thanksgiving means hours or even days of cooking and the resulting dirty dishes, pots and pans. There\u2019s only one problem with all of the work that goes into preparing and hosting Thanksgiving dinner: what to do with all the leftovers.<\/p>\n

My favorite line spoken by the narrator in the 1983 movie A Christmas Story<\/em> has to do with the turkey dinner, in this case prepared for Christmas. The mother (played by Melinda Dillon) has placed the half-cooked turkey on the kitchen table before going to retrieve an item from the basement, and in the minute that her back is turned the neighbor\u2019s dogs storm into the kitchen, take the turkey and run back to their yard. The narrator comments, \u201cNo turkey! No turkey sandwiches! No turkey salad! No turkey gravy! Turkey hash! Turkey a la King! Or gallons of turkey soup!\u201d Let\u2019s face it, a turkey dinner is synonymous with leftovers.<\/p>\n

By now, you\u2019re probably tired of serving your Thanksgiving leftovers. So, what can you serve that is different? At my house we don\u2019t have many creative ideas for leftovers, so I searched newspapers for recipes to help me.<\/p>\n

What Can I Do with Turkey?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aside from \u201cturkey salad, turkey gravy, turkey hash, Turkey a la King, or gallons of turkey soup\u201d what recipes can help to lessen your turkey abundance? To start you could try some recipes found in this 1987 newspaper article, including Scalloped Turkey, Turkey Corn Chowder, and Hot Turkey Sandwiches with Mushroom Sauce.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Evansville Courier and Press (Evansville, Indiana), 25 November 1987, page 10<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"An<\/a>
Evansville Courier and Press (Evansville, Indiana), 25 November 1987, page 10<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"An<\/a>
Evansville Courier and Press (Evansville, Indiana), 25 November 1987, page 10<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Think that Thanksgiving leftovers are a new problem? This 1912 newspaper article proves otherwise and provides a recipe for a scalloped turkey dish. This use of the word \u201cscallop\u201d has nothing to do with seafood \u2013 instead it refers to a dish covered in breadcrumbs.* This plain scallop recipe includes alternating layers of breadcrumbs or leftover stuffing moistened with milk, with a layer of meat, salt, pepper, and \u201cbits of butter\u201d with breadcrumbs as the final layer. The cooked casserole can be served with leftover gravy.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Evening News (San Jose, California), 19 November 1912, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Turkey Sandwich<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019re like my brother who looks forward to the days after Thanksgiving when he can combine the various leftovers into one oversized turkey sandwich with mayo. If you have a lot of turkey and not much else, consider this 1979 sandwich idea: Curried Turkey Salad (also works with chicken).<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Rockford Register Star (Rockford, Illinois), 22 November 1979, page 47<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Leftovers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week I\u2019ll be working on creative turkey recipes including sandwiches and enchiladas to use up any remaining leftover turkey. So, weigh in: do you enjoy the leftovers almost as much as the original meal? Do you have any favorite leftover recipes? Tell me about them in the comments below.<\/p>\n

* \u201cScallop,\u201d Cook\u2019s Info (http:\/\/www.cooksinfo.com\/scallop<\/a>: accessed 17 November 2017).<\/p>\n

Explore over 330 years of newspapers and historical records in GenealogyBank. Discover your family story! Start a 7-Day Free Trial<\/a><\/p>\n

Note on the header image:<\/em><\/strong> turkey sandwich. Credit: Vancouver Bites!; Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega provides recipes to use up the last of your Thanksgiving leftovers, just as your family is tiring of turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":101218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12427],"tags":[19013,2020,44,2701],"class_list":["post-101209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-recipes","tag-food-and-recipes","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-thanksgiving","tag-turkey"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/photo-1202-2024-featured-graphic-turkey-sandwich.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101209"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101220,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101209\/revisions\/101220"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}