I was by myself -- my family gathered last weekend, and all my friends in New York were out of town. I decided to still go ahead and make a traditional meal, even though it was just for me -- smaller-size batches of the trimmings, and only a turkey breast. I even found a couple of tiny cake pans at a cookware store and made myself a tiny layer cake (chocolate with a pumpkin cream cheese filling).

I also had a whole sliced and glazed delicata squash (a small one, so it was perfect for just one person); some stuffing that didn't quite come out how it was supposed to (I forgot the beaten egg), but was still edible and tasty, so I'm not fretting; mashed potatoes spiked with cream cheese and sour cream; and homemade cranberry relish (my family grows cranberries, so I have so many recipes).

The meat has already been stripped off the turkey carcass, and I've already made the turkey stock. I have some turkey, cranberry sauce, some of the stuffing, and the leftover squash for lunch today, along with a small slice of the cake. I am going to make some kind of a turkey shepherd's pie for dinner sometime this weekend, using up the rest of the mashed potatoes and a good portion of the turkey; the stuffing will last another day or so, and I can use up the turkey meat in stews or quick casserole-ish dinners (cook some rice in turkey stock, throw in some turkey meat and some cooked vegetables, voila).

we don't have a ton of leftovers--looking forward to making fajitas with the turkey meat tonight!

We had Thanksgiving at my dad's so the only leftovers we got are the things I brought: lots of PIE! The dinner crowd was cut in half thanks to illness and traffic, and half the remaining crowd was diabetic, so...I had 3/4 of an apple pie and about the same of a pumpkin cheesecake. They came into work with me today, though, and my coworkers seem pleased.

Some leftovers... but more importantly, some pumpkin puree sitting in my fridge! Do I make more pumpkin bread or experiment with something new?

Like empresscallipygos, it was just me but I still made myself a full Thanksgiving feast, just with a turkey breast only and smaller portions of the sides. It gave me an opportunity to try a few new recipes and overall it was a success (there's a full review of the results on my blog).

I'm looking forward to a couple of nice open faced turkey sandwiches (the best Thanksgiving leftover meal in my opinion) and I'll probably do a turkey pot pie or some nice turkey noodle soup.

You can see pics of my meal (before and after) on my Flickr pages: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shanalee/tags/thanksgiving/

I spent it at my BF's parents' and his mom did most of the cooking, I made scalloped potatoes from a recipe found on cookstr.com (http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/scalloped-potatoes)

In addition we had some cheese and cracker before the meal, roasted turkey, mushroom gravy, sauteed asparagus with feta, green salad, greek salad, pasta salad, roasted sweet potatoes, ground beef stuffing, and for dessert, apple strudel, chocolate cake, bundt cake and fruit gelatin.

As for leftovers... turkey, little greek salad, most of the desserts.

Anokha: why not try the pumpkin tiramisu featured on top chef this week? http://recipes.mt.bravotv.com/top_chef/season_5_1/episode_3_3/pumpkin_tiramisu.php

Hmm... funny, I watched "Top Chef" last night and didn't even think about trying to replicate the pumpkin tiramisu. Maybe because it sounds too out of my league :-/ It's definitely an idea, though!

I cooked the panfried pasta and butternut squash. However, I'd expected the squash to have disintegrated into a schmeer on the farfalle pasta, but I still had chunks of squash in a sea of pasta. It tasted ok but I'd expected the tastes to meld together. Maybe I missed a critical step. Or maybe like Icarus I flew too close to the sun trying something too far from the norm. Next time I will test drive the recipe (this was a Plan b recipe when the first squash recipe was too watery)...Alas.

I made 2 sugar and spice pumpkin pies and they were delicious. As per usual, I had a difficult time with my crust (it tends to tear on me as I am rolling it out) but managed to piece it together enough to make it look pretty just the same. Our stuffing (sausage with fennel and roasted butternut squash) was also a big hit. We ate at my mom's and we are already almost done w/the leftovers we took home. All-in-all, a great holiday spent with my family and great food!

Anokha, another recipe that I made again today is this pumpkin crumb cake. You don't have to do it in individual cakes; I patted it out into a 9x13 and baked for about 50 minutes and it was so great!

t-giving was AWESOME. we pulled off a 100-mile thanksgiving. our turkey grew up less than a mile from us, was slaughtered on tuesday, we picked it up on wednesday, it was in the oven on thursday. the wheat in the biscuits and pie were ground in front of me at our local farmer's market during the summer. the veggies were all from our csa (winter share) and summer stock from the farmer's market. local dairies came in handy for cream in part of the meal and cheese as an appetizer and for eggs.

so leftover turkey is already partitioned for two stews (in the freezer) and turkey meatballs for tomorrow night. the leftover mashed potatoes are for brunch in the morning. the peach chutney we used instead of cranberries was on the leftover biscuits for breakfast this morning. the stuffing is good on it's own and is around for snacking. the leftover baked squash was mashed for a pie shortly after dinner... so with a few hour delay we ate that after our feast.

I made a Thanksgiving (or rather, day after Thanksgiving) dinner for 2. Cornish Game Hem, mashed potatoes topped with turkey gravy, roasted balsamic vegetables (thanks Trader Joes!) and a cranberry conserve. It was nice and simple but there was TONS of food!
The BF brought his leftovers home, so all I'm left with is some mashed potatoes and a huge bowl of cranberry conserve. I'm not sure what I can make with that, but I'm pretty certain I'll be eating the cranberry conserve on it's own for the next week; it's THAT good!

We have enough leftovers for a few more sandwiches.
I made a homemade tofurkey with apple nut stuffing with all the usual vegetables. The cold tofurkey is making some awesome sandwiches & I may make a thai curry with any vegetables still around tomorrow.

Recipe here- http://www.emxero.com/2008/11/29/my-first-thanksgiving/

My Thanksgiving meal was so yummy. We brined our turkey and raosted it fast. It was so flavorful and juicy. We had chestnut stuffing, carmelized onion-balsamic gravy, roasted brussel sprouts, a green salad, and piquant cranberry sauce in which I used red wine instead of water.

So far with the leftovers I made turkey pot pie using the turkey and gravy with some veggies and put drop biscuits over the whole thing. I also made pulled turkey sandwiches with turkey simmered in homemade BBQ sauce served on hamburger buns.

I need to go take stock of my fridge, but off the top of my head, I have:
- Four slices of pancetta (note to self: 2 oz. is not 1/4 pound)
- About a cup or so of raw butternut squash
- a big bowl of leftover, shredded chicken
- a sweet potato, lettuce and a bunch of radishes
- rosemary
- pumpkin cake, crumb cake and pumpkin-parmesan bread

I also have lots of snacks/hors d'oeuvres left over. Rondele cheese, chorizo and hummus. I won't have to shop for a while!

Could turkey possibly be the driest, most flavorless meat known to man? This time around I threw a drumstick and the dry a** breast meat I had into a broth (courtesy of a veggie bullion cube), along with some carrots, onions and dill (at the end). I added some leftover brown rice to make a soup. For the next incarnation of this meal, I pulled out the meat, and shredded it for tomorrow (to use in a salad)...Hopefully I'll be done with after that, as I don't know how much more I can take!

Repurposeful Jeannine-The key to getting a moist turkey is to deep fry it. We will never go back to roasting after deep frying a turkey this year.

Nothing beats a turkey sandwich on a biscuit for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving. We had a lot of leftover dessert so I single handedly ate half a jewish apple cake on Friday. Two days of pure gluttony.