Housekeepers' Chat: Using the Thanksgiving Left-Overs

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

Housekeepers' Chat Friday, November 27, 1931,

Subject: Using the Thanksgiving Left-Overs. Information from the Bureau of Home Economics, U.S.D.A.

Have you looked in your refrigerator this morning? I wonder if it looks like mine. Mine is full of Thanksgiving left-overs. It contains the remainder of the turkey, for one thing. A small bowl of cold mashed potatoes, for another. And a few buttered onions. There are also some of the coarse, outer leaves of lettuce. (The smaller inside leaves were used yesterday in the salad.) Also some of the large outer stalks of celery left when the tender heart pieces were taken out to serve with the olives. And there's about half a pumpkin pie left, enough to give just a sliver to each member of my family.

Well, the Question before the housewife now seems to be what to do with a collection of food like that.

There are about three moves she can make in the situation. First, she can make over these left-overs into new, tempting dishes. Or, second, warm them up as they are and eat them dejectedly, just from a sense of duty, knowing that they shouldn't be wasted. Or, third, for lack of ideas, let them stay where they are until cleaning day arrives, and then throw them out.

The last two moves are not recommended to the wise and thrifty, for they mean leaks in the household pocketbook. It's never good economy to eat something you have no appetite for. And, of course, it is wasteful to throw out good food. But transforming the odds and ends into a delicious new dinner—that's art and good business at the same time. As a business man would express it, you're turning what might otherwise be wasted into something you can "sell" to the consumer, who happens, in this case, to be your family.

So here's a menu planned for utilizing the contents of any refrigerator that looks like mine this morning. I hope it will give you some ideas for using not only the Thanksgiving left-overs, but also those from Christmas, New Years or any other big dinner.

Are your pencils ready for use?

There are two possibilities for the main dish in this menu. The one you use will depend on how much of the Thanksgiving fowl you have left. If you happen to have a good-sized amount, slice the meat and serve it cold. There's nothing better. Brown potato cakes—baked or fried—made from the left-over mashed potato, can go with the platter of sliced fowl. But if your turkey was well used yesterday and there are only odds and ends left, better cut these up in the gravy and combine them with the mashed potato to make a shepherd’s pie.

All right. The menu: Either sliced cold fowl and mashed potato cakes; or shepherd’s pie using the small pieces of turkey, the gravy and mashed potatoes. That's for the main dish. Then, fried egg plant. Then, creamed onions or creamed celery, using either the left-over buttered onions or the left-over celery stalks. Then, jellied grapefruit salad. The small cup of grapefruit left can be made to go around by making a gelatin salad of it. If the lettuce leaves are too large or imperfect to serve as they are, shred them with scissors.

Finally, there’s that little bit of pie. Even a small piece of pumpkin pie can be dressed up and made into a hearty dessert by serving it with whipped cream and tart jelly. Bits of bright currant jelly are especially good,

There's our left-over meal, Quite different from the original meal. Yet just as tempting, in its own way, it seems to me.

Here's the menu once again. Sliced cold turkey and mashed potato cakes, or, Shepherd’s pie; Fried eggplant; Creamed onions or celery; Jellied grapefruit salad; and Pumpkin pie with whipped cream and tart jelly.

That shepherd's pie is a good dish to remember whenever you have both mashed potatoes and meat left over. And the recipe for it is—Of course, you know where. In the green radio cookbook.

As for the jellied grapefruit salad, that's not in the cookbook, so I'm going to give you the recipe right here and now. This is another recipe worth remembering. Whenever you have any bits of left-over fruit that you don't know what to do with, you can combine them and make a delicious jellied fruit salad. Nine ingredients for this gelatin salad;

2 tablespoons of gelatin
1/2 cup of cold water
2 cups of boiling water
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
2 tablespoons of grapefruit juice
1 cup of orange juice and pulp
1 cup of grapefruit sections

Let me read that list once again. (Repeat.)

Soak the gelatin in the cold water for 5 minutes. Add to the softened gelatin the boiling water, salt, sugar, lemon and grapefruit juice, and orange juice and pulp. Chill the mixture. When partly jellied, add the grapefruit sections, turn into a cold damp mold and put in a cold place to set. Turn out on a bed of lettuce and serve with mayonnaise or cream salad dressing.

How then our meal is planned. So let's consider a few general ideas about using any left-overs at any time of year.

These odd bits, amounts of food too small to go around, may be combined with other left-over food or they may be extended. How? Well, by serving them in cream sauce or tomato sauce. By molding them in gelatin, as we did the grapefruit. Or by combining them with foods like rice, potatoes, bread-crumbs and so forth.

Take meat, for example. Meat is a sufficiently important item on the expense account to deserve some serious thought in making it over.

The end of the steak doesn’t have to be given to Fido to use it up. It can be used to make many different, ever-so-good dishes. You can put it through the meat chopper and then add it to tomato sauce, or mix it with rice or gravy. The recipe for corned beef hash in your cookbook is also a good one to use for meat left-overs. If you cut off the end of the steak before you cook it, and save it for another day, you can combine it with enough round steak to make a meat pie with biscuit or pastry crust. Or, you can make a delicious stew with lots of gravy or vegetables.

As for chicken, you can make chicken a la king or chicken pie with only a small amount of left-over fowl if you add pork or veal to it.

And rice, macaroni, potatoes, bread or vegetables can make a very little meat go a long way.

Season made-over dishes well. Garnish them attractively. Serve them daintily. And they will be as popular as any other kind of food. And very kind to your pocketbook.

Here is a week gone already. It’s time to prophesy events for Monday,

A specialist at the Washington State College has some helpful information on electric stoves. Have you ever used electricity for cooking? Would you like to hear some of her ideas on the subject? All right. We'll talk them over. And we’ll also have our usual Monday menu and recipe.

Bureau of Home Economics, Using the Thanksgiving Left-Overs, U.S.D.A, 1931.

U.S.D.A.

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