A Thanksgiving Feast (and what to do with the leftovers)

It's been a long time coming, but here it is, my Thanksgiving post. This year I ended up having to go to 3 turkey dinners! I'll tell you a bit about the festivities at Adrian's house. Every year his mom amazes me by cooking two enormous feasts -- one on Thanksgiving and the other that Saturday.

The feasting always begins way before the meal. All day there are fabulous appetizers sitting out that you just can't resist eating. Hummus, veggies, artichoke dip, cheese, crackers, spinach dip, pumpernickel bread, fruit... You end up pretty full before the meal even begins.

Just a few of the munchies

One of the reasons there is so much food is because Adrian's family is huge. Here is the giant table, which really wasn't a table at all. Adrian's dad got creative with sawhorses and plywood. 

This was actually a small gathering. There are usually more people and an even longer table, but none of Adrian's siblings could make it to the first dinner. His nephew, Matthew, made some fancy place cards for everyone. Matthew's was of course the best :-)

In addition to the scaled back table, the turkeys were much smaller this year. Turkey #1 was only about 30 lbs. this year, and turkey #2 was a bit smaller than that. :-P I'm kidding, of course. These birds were enormous, but last year there was a 40 lb. turkey! Those have to be specially ordered from a turkey farm. I don't even know what normal turkeys are supposed to look like anymore. My dad had a 10 lb. turkey at his dinner, and I thought it was a chicken!

The glorious Turkey #1

Carving the beast

Turkey #2

As you can imagine, such enormous turkeys have to cook for a long time. Usually 12 hours or more. Adrian's mom usually gets up at 3 or 4 am to get it started. It also takes up the entire oven. 

In addition to the turkeys, there are always tons of other side dishes -- a mountain of mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, several varieties of stuffing, corn bread, corn casserole, pumpkin soup, the family's traditional green jello, green beans, etc. etc.

Mmm, corn bread

Just when you think you could not possibly consume any more food, and you're sitting on the couch groaning as your rub your bloated belly, dessert comes out. The Thanksgiving dessert isn't nearly as ridiculous as Christmas (there aren't 800 cookies yet), but there's still plenty. We had the usual pumpkin pie, and my mom made a nice lemon cake (yes, she comes to Adrian's too). 

Only 2 pies this time...

With all this food and feasting, there are bound to be leftovers. Somehow we ended up with a ton of them. After eating 3 Thanksgiving dinners, you don't necessarily want leftover Thanksgiving dinner, so I tried to come up with ways to revamp the food and not let it go to waste. 

One thing I did was turkey chilli in my fancy new Crock Pot. I'd been wanting a slow cooker, and upon seeing this beauty at Kroger (yes, the grocery store has appliances!) for 50% off, I made Adrian buy it for me. It was supposed to be for Christmas, but I decided it needed to be used. Anyhow, I shredded the leftover turkey meat, and cooked it up with some onions, pinto beans, kidney beans, corn, zucchini, and crushed tomatoes. I really enjoy making chilli, although I've only done it twice now. The seasonings are really great, and both times I've tried different things in it and liked it. For example, I threw in the zucchini and corn this time, and did black beans with kidney beans last time. Plus, it gives me the excuse to eat fritos. I really like chilli with fritos. 

Yay, Crock Pot!

Aside from the turkey, we were left with an enormous container of mashed potatoes. Adrian's mom mentioned to me that she often used the leftovers in soups, so I gave it a shot. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I think this turned out pretty tasty, although there was still way too much of it leftover for several days. I simply started with the mashed potatoes and added some chicken stock. The stock thinned out the potatoes to make a thick, creamy broth. To that I added onions, chunks of potatoes, and broccoli. Topped off with cheese it was yummy. 

Thanksgiving is only a prelude to the Christmas feasting. I think for the entire upcoming week I'll be eating. Not only that, but I'll be cooking too. I'm in charge of most of the meal at my dad's so I'm pretty excited about that. Expect a post on that next week.