Forget Tradition
If I couldn’t sit down to a turkey dinner with all the trimmings on Thanksgiving with my family and friends, I was at least going to cook one for myself and neighbors. Just a little ol’ 17-pounder for four of us. After cutting out the backbone, it whittled down of some of the weight, but even smaller, whole birds take longer to cook than a pair of halves.
That is the fun of roasting a turkey for me—the all-day cooking affair while the big bird roasted away. But this year I barely had two hours to make mashed potatoes, dressing, brussels sprouts, and gravy. The cooked pumpkin for the pie languished in a Pyrex measuring cup due to my reduced kitchen time. I didn’t even bake dessert until the following day. Look on the bright side, I told myself, this just stretches out the feast.
It’s a week later and I’m eating more than my words. The leftover trimmings and pie are long gone save for a gelatinous lump of gravy in a plastic tub I had planned to have over waffles as my mom would always make when I was a kid. Lacking a waffle iron I figured I’d stoop to grabbing a box out of the frozen case at the co-op on my way home from market. They had blueberry waffles, keto waffles, gluten-free waffles, and cauli-waffles. That’s why the leftover giblet gravy is still in the fridge.
Over the last week there have been turkey melts, turkey tacos, turkey quesadillas, turkey in salad, turkey salad, turkey omelet, and turkey straight out of the plastic bag because I was too lazy too do anything else. As of this moment, there are 22 ounces—over a pound of turkey breast still in my refrigerator. I’m sure if it managed to slip out of my hands while I was standing on the front porch my dog would eagerly make it disappear, but as a former turkey raiser I know the amount of work it took to get that bird on my table and it’s not going to the dogs.
The truth is I can not choke down one more morsel of my leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Putting aside my aversion, I’m going to slice down what is left into single portions and freeze it along with all the other shreds of pulled pork, pot roast, lamb, and goat I’ve cooked far too much of to eat myself. Until the pandemic I never realized how much of my meals I shared with others in my travels throughout the week. It’s difficult not to share when I’ve been blessed with an abundance of food and my love of cooking and baking. But with the year of social distancing and isolation the opportunities to share have dissipated.
Every now and then I step aside from tradition and am not saddled with the dilemma of what to do with all of the leftovers. Last year I slipped out of town over Thanksgiving opting for a duck breast and a tin of caviar as my holiday feast. This year my sister and her husband chose a rack of lamb. I should know this lesson by now as throughout my years of growing turkeys for market I’ve listened to couples debate turkey versus something else for the holidays. My favorite was when a husband reminded his wife that their children would not be home that year and she could cook whatever she wanted. Needless to say, I did not sell them a bird.
So I flubbed on the pandemic Thanksgiving. I’ve still got two weeks of holiday cheer to wind through in December. What unconventional meal could I cook that would meet the need to feel special about? A full tray of urchin roe, a lobster, more duck, foie gras? Or I could pull out my Thanksgiving turkey scraps and use the time I’d spend cooking doing something else I enjoy. Whatever I decide to do, you can bet this time it’s not going to leave any leftovers.