After hosting at my house there are very few side dishes and they are eaten in a few days. Turkey is served at 1 or 2 other meals and then put in the freezer for the future when we can bear to eat it again. Sweets don't stand a chance of being left over.

I took some turkey, which I don't usually, because lacking those who stayed home sick, there was too much. I only accepted a little. Even after leaving a lot of the guacamole with the host cousin, there was a lot left, and it made two breakfasts. :) I also ate up the carrot dip in a few sessions. Have a small amount of crudité left, and have been using up the sugar snap peas that never made it out of the door. There are chips. I finished the last piece of chocolate pear caramel custard pumpkin pie this morning. It holds (in the fridge) remarkably well. There's still some pumpkin stew from not-TG. Not enough of anything to repurpose or reinvent, which I'm just as glad about. My mother's leftover stuffing (which I can more or less make) is the only major component that I really like left over, and the guacamole is my job, not the stuffing. ;)

I really do not care for leftovers, other than a very few dishes like pasta and pizza. I cooked very small batches of our dishes, enough for SO to have 2 plates of it, as he does not mind leftovers. The only exception was the giant pot of collards I cooked, and with those, I reserved enough for SO to have on his second plate for the next day, and then the rest I split into portions and vacuum sealed it for the freezer, to be eaten throughout the year. There was a small amount of turkey tenderloin left over, and I split it up between our 3 dogs. They each got a couple slices.

I wish I had more pie.

We did have crab for Thanksgiving, although it was in sushi. Still, the sushi had tons of crab in it. In addition, we had teriyaki chicken and other assorted sushi, but the sushi rolls filled with crab were my favorite.

Black Friday we went to Shields Date Garden to buy dates, and we also had lunch there. I had a Cobb salad, and Kevin had a taco salad - both of which were excellent - and huge, and so we had leftovers for the next day. Afterwards, we made pizzas.

I have no problems with leftovers and actually like to reinvent leftovers as something else. Here's how mine went:

T-day, Day 1: full regular turkey dinner, except with a breast rather than whole turkey.

Day 2: turkey sandwiches on my dinner rolls. ok, I lied, turkey sandwiches were day 1 too. :)

Day 3: I decided to try to make a throwback from my youth... I don't know if it was my mother or father that would cook a batch of pasta (usually macaroni) then dump it into a large old crockery bowl, along with hunks of turkey meat, diced canned tomatoes & juice, and chunks of cheddar cheese. Then they'd bake it until it was hot and melty and serve it with cornbread. I made it for dinner and it was so good!!! :) There may have also been one or two small turkey sandwiches eaten that day, but you have to expect that sort of thing. lol!

Day 4: turkey soup. And aside from what I froze earlier to save, it's all done. :)

No crab here, the fishermen won't begin their season until Dec 1 at the earliest. I haven't heard with certainty if it's scheduled to open or not.

Plenty of turkey leftover, mushroom/cranberry stuffing/, gravy which turned out exceptionally well if I do say so myself 😊 There was still an entire pumpkin pie. I put enough turkey meat with gravy in the freezer to have a couple of nights of hot turkey sandwiches available later. We had cold leftovers for lunches, warmed leftovers for dinner for two additional nights after Thanksgiving and at that point I'd had enough turkey. On the third night following, I fried extra small oysters and made french fries. We both ate like we were starving, ready for something different.

Thanksgiving week is quite a line-up here, my anniversary was on Tuesday, then of course turkey-day Thursday, and lastly my birthday on Saturday.

So, we broke down a duck and on anniversary had the breasts, and on Saturday had the legs in a beautiful lemon garlic sauce (adapted Richard Olney's chicken leg recipe)

Leftovers from all of the birds have been enjoyed all week mostly in the form of sandwiches.

So, post-thanksgiving was quite a relief to have my son step up last night and make Japanese Ohitashi , (spinach and dashi broth), with a side of tofu (the tofu was accidentally omitted from the thanksgiving pumpkin curry for my vegetarian daughter). It was very flavorful and healthy tasting after a week of very rich food.

Thanks for all of the fun ideas, it's so interesting to hear what others are doing !

I like leftovers and rely on them often to save having to make a new dinner every night.

I don't like mixing ALL the Thanksgiving leftovers together like some people do, so we had seconds on Friday, and I made a big turkey pie on Saturday with lots of veggies and the leftover gravy and dark meat - ate that on Sunday & Monday as well, then on Tuesday, I made a pasta/veggie/ cheese casserole (my take on tetrazzini) with all the white meat that wasn't large enough to slice for sandwiches. Of course there were sandwiches too 😀

Thanks for reminding me that I need to address that carcass now...

You remind me, I have to make my turkey pot pie (frozen raw turkey—a bit of a project to cook before pie). I need peas....

The moment colleenoz mentioned a restaurant for Christmas, I remembered the scenes from 'A Christmas Story' where the dogs stole the turkey and they had to go out for dinner to an otherwise empty Chinese restaurant. :)

I made a double batch of turkey pot pie filling on Friday, It was enough to make five 9" pies. We ate one over the weekend and I froze the rest in quart bags with ~4.5 cups each.

Partymusic, the first time my brother flew to Calif to have Thanksgiving with his first wife's family, he was surprised to find their Thanksgiving tradition was to go out for Chinese food. Meal followed by a walk on the beach, no one cooked anything at all. The family was Italian in origin.

That's funny, morz8. The Italians that I know here do it all at Thanksgiving... roasted turkey AND ham, plus lasagna, stuffed shells, etc. Huge feasts. I have a friend who celebrates T-day by always eating tacos and drinking orange soda. I think it relives a fun T-day from her youth. :)

eta: LoneJack, don't think for a second that I missed noticing you stuffing 4.5 cups into a 4c bag. lol!

Perhaps those were gallon bags - not quart sized?

I suspect that he lives dangerously. ;^) I have squeezed more than 4 cups of stuff into a quart bag plenty enough times, but usually it's with something I can compact like whole blackberries.

I have also been known to take home the family Christmas dinner turkey carcass because they just throw it out 😳 I make stock 😇

Turns out, I detest turkey stock, but I can almost always find a taker for the carcass. ”Really? Are you sure?” Yes, I'm sure! Giving away the carcass is easy. Giving away eight quarts of frozen turkey stock—really lovely stock, objectively speaking—was impossible and I ended up ditching a lot of it down the drain when I was defrosting the freezer. Eating turkey is fine, with peppery gravy, cranberry sauce, etc., or even [gasp!] ketchup (especially on a sandwich) . But the actual turkey flavor? It’s fine for turkey dinner, but I don’t want that funk in my soup!

So, in the last 24 hrs. I've kind of made up for not cooking a holiday dinner this year. I roasted Awesome Chicken, and included some red beets, made ”Buffalo-ish” cauliflower, pumpkin blonds, blueberry apple pie, black sesame baba ganouj, but am moving pumpkin mac and cheese to tomorrow. Waiting on peas for the turkey pot pie. It is so amazing (my biggest thankful) to be over all the little injuries that kept me from cooking that much the last couple of years. ETA, the blonds taste more of the white chocolate than the very roasty favorful pumpkin or the very mapley, dark maple syrup (replacing vanilla and some sugar). They're fine as snonymous treats. They taste nice. Just not pumpkin.

I agree PM, I think Jack lives dangerously. I've packed more than 4 cups in a quart bag too, but it usually something like corn kernels or rhubarb, and I have just a bit more than 4 cups, but not enough to make anything. So I pack it in, LOL. I've never tried it with gravy or soup, though!

Colleen, my turkey dinner carcass also becomes stock, which I save to make the gravy for the next turkey dinner. It's all ready for me to use and I don't have to mess around with a hot turkey roaster, I can make the gravy ahead of time and put it in a thermos like Grandma did or just warm it up. I remember she used Dad's old green Stanley thermos and washed it really well before he needed to fill it with coffee for deer hunting or work the next day.

I kept just enough turkey for a couple of sandwiches and sent the rest of the leftovers home with my girls and grandkids.

Annie