Thanksgiving Leftovers - Ideas for Recipes

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! My day was a great mix of touch football with the whole family, and a huge feast. After we stuffed ourselves with turkey and potatoes we are hunkered down into a food coma and watched a movie together.

But back to all that food--there is so much leftover! This seems to happen every year, and I have some ideas for what to do with it all that I'd like to share. And no, you don't have to freeze it!

Turkey is perhaps the easiest food to use up. From making turkey sandwiches, turkey nachos (really tasty), turkey pasta sauce, and turkey soup, there are lots of ways to sneak leftover meat into a variety of family meals.

Here's my favorite Turkey soup recipe. Not only does it use turkey, but it uses leftover stuffing to make dumplings for the soup. So good and easy. It only takes some time to make the stock, but the taste of homemade stock is worth the wait.

Now, what about all of those potatoes? The New York Times recently had an article with ideas for leftover potatoes, including a tasty recipe I can't wait to try for fried potato, salmon, and spinach patties. Or check out this easy mashed potato soup or wake up with a tasty mashed potato omelet.

Cranberry sauce is another item that I tend to always have a lot of leftovers. Maybe because I make one myself, and then have the canned smooth jelly kind since my middle child Henry does not like any texture to his sauce. Anyway, this recipe here for cranberry muffins is a great way to use up extra sauce instead of letting it just sit in the fridge.