Thanksgiving Leftovers, and the New Plan!

So, I've been meaning to start a blog for sometime now. I even signed up the blog name a long time ago, but then, well, life happened, and I never really got to it. Lame. However, I have been continually inspired by the likes of Erin, Kate, and all you crazy people who can keep up blogs. So. Here we go. 

I recently made myself a New Years Resolution. A month early, but that's ok. If I set my own timeline I'll stick to it right? I've been wanting to cook more, and now I feel like I might actually have the time to actually do it. I didn't want to get over ambitious, so the new plan is to cook one brand new thing a week. It doesn't have to be fancy, just something I've never cooked before. 

My new plan sort of this started with Thanksgiving. I was super proud to make an entire Thanksgiving dinner on my own. I made a turkey, stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, corn, parmesan snap peas, broccoli, carrots, pumpkin pie, and caramel walnut pumpkin cheesecake. Yay. 

But it wasn't really until after Thanksgiving that I actually thought up this resolution. So, I'm going to start with Thanksgiving leftover creations instead.

First, Mashed Potato Pizza. I LOVE this stuff from Pizza Luce. However, as there is no such place here in NYC, we figured what better to do with leftover potatoes then make pizza?? We always have Trader Joes pizza crusts in the house, so I used one of those. The pizza was topped with the garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli, grated cheddar cheese, and Trader Joes Turkey Bacon. On a side note, turkey bacon is awesome. It tastes like bacon but is minus the grease. Fabulous.



This turned out surprisingly well, though Alex said it needed more salt. We topped it off with some sour cream and were good to go. Mashed potato leftovers, finished. 

The second, and most important thing to get rid of was the turkey. I made about a 13 pound turkey, and with only 4 people, we had a lot left. Even with two very hungry boys. Thus I set out today to make a turkey stew. I considered making turkey stew with dumplings. My mom does this and it's really yummy. However, the supermarket in our neck of the woods doesn't sell Bisquick. And I wasn't quite up for making dumplings from scratch.  What our supermarket does sell in terms of mix was this: Jiffy. I think the package looks like it was made in the 1960's. If you look really close you can even see one of the ingredients... lard. Gross. I know. I didn't see this until I got the 67 cent box home. 



This is why I didn't make them into dumplings. I was scared the mix was going to be horrendous. I didn't want to spoil the stew. But, I figured, what the heck? I made them into biscuits. Because, why not? It was actually super easy. And, don't tell anyone. But they were really freaking good.



They went perfectly with the main course, leftover turkey stew. I was really pleased with how easy this was to make. I boiled all the leftover turkey stuff with an onion and a bunch of herbs, mainly parsley, garlic, rosemary, thyme, and whatever other spices I have on my counter. (You will quickly learn I never actually measure spices when cooking. Unless maybe for baking. I just kind of throw them in.) 

After it boiled awhile, I took out the bones, pulled off the meat and tossed it back in. Then I added 4 potatoes, some chopped up carrots, about a cup of white rice, two cans of peas, a can of corn, more garlic, and more random spices, simmer about an hour, and Voila! Tasty yummy soup. And enough to last us a week.