In our home the day after Thanksgiving starts with an amazing breakfast made up of ricotta pancakes, cinnamon french toast, fruit salad, and coffee… Lots of coffee! My family enjoys Black Friday like another holiday so we need all the energy and fuel we can get!
After a day of shopping and deal-hunting we have a lunch-dinner…since we had such a big breakfast we usually eat at around 4 p.m. which is too late for a lunch, but early for a dinner, so we combine the two – and we also combine all of the leftovers from our Thanksgiving dinner to make a delicious meal.
One trick I love to do with stuffing is to make what looks like muffins! In a bowl beat 1 egg and 1/3 cup of cream or milk for every cup of leftover stuffing. combine the egg and cream mixture with your stuffing in a bowl and mix well. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners and scoop 2 tablespoons of your stuffing and cream and egg mixture into the cupcake liners. Then take one cup of your leftover mashed potatoes and put them in a bowl with a quarter cup of milk, and add a pinch of salt then mix well. Using a teaspoon put a dollop of the delicious mashed potatoes on top of your stuffing muffins. Then bake for 25 minutes at 300 degrees and what you get out of the oven is a delicious easy to eat a muffin with lots of flavors – and you can take them on the go for your Black Friday shopping!
Another trick you can try with your leftovers is the delicious Thanksgiving turkey sandwich! Think of this as your Thanksgiving meal between two slices of delicious ciabatta bread.
Let’s begin with ciabatta bread which I buy at my local Wholefoods. Take two slices of the ciabatta bread and lay them flat on a cutting board then spread your cranberry sauce on each slice like you would spread mayonnaise. To one slice add a few pieces of turkey, 2 tablespoons of stuffing and one tablespoon of mashed potato… I also add a slice or two of tomato to give the sandwich some moisture. Take the other slice of ciabatta bread and cover the sandwich – this is another great way to enjoy all of the wonderful flavors of Thanksgiving in a delicious sandwich! Which when wrapped in Reynolds tinfoil is also another convenient way to have food on the run while you’re Black Friday shopping.
An additional way to use your Thanksgiving leftovers would be my version of a pot pie! Using a 9 by 13 pan, layer turkey on the bottom, then your mashed potatoes, then stuffing, then cranberry sauce – and for the top you can either use a raw mixture of Jiffy cornbread mix, or you can also use a raw mixture of Bisquick biscuits – essentially you can layer either of them across the top and then bake according to the package directions and it makes a beautiful crust on top of your delicious Thanksgiving ingredients!
Happy day-after-thanksgiving everyone!