I know.  You don't even want to think about it lurking in your fridge, do you?  Okay, maybe some of you just loooove picking over a turkey carcass - this post isn't for you.  This is for the rest of us who just can't face that thing, but yet the family barely touched it and there's still seven pounds of meat on the carcass.  You've already had all the turkey sandwiches you can stand.  You're done with Thanksgiving in its original form and now you just can't bear to throw the bird away with one breast still on it.  We can help!

I'm going to be your guinea pig.  I know that by the time these go up, it will be too late for your turkey, but there's always Christmas and the freezer and next year.  I've picked out some recipes from those omnipresent "what to do with the leftovers" articles you see every year around the holidays, and I'll tell you if you should try it or not.  (I am not making turkey tetrazzini.  Don't even go there.) 

We'll do one a day for dinner until that thing up there is finished, one way or another, and at the end we'll make stock together.  Actually, my mom will do a lot of it, since I sprained my foot on the way back from Thanksgiving dinner and I am not going to try to negotiate a grocery store on crutches.  Go Mom!

Today we're looking at Bon Appetit's November issue.  The article on page 73 is "Leftovers Done Right," and of course the pictures are gorgeous.  There are recipes for turkey pot pie, barbeque pulled-turkey sandwiches and turkey empanadas.  You can see a slideshow with the recipes on their Web site, if you like.  We're making the sandwiches.

The recipe:

The recipe is really a recipe for barbeque sauce and cole slaw, and while both were fine, if I were to do it again I'd either use my own recipe or use a storebought sauce that I know I like.  The sauce was okay - tomato puree, bacon, cider vinegar, brown sugar, chili powder and cumin - but it wasn't awesome enough to go through the trouble of making it from scratch.  The slaw is very basic - just mayo, cider vinegar and celery seeds on your cabbage.  

The results:

Kind of messy, but that's what you get with a barbeque sandwich.

The verdict: 

Pretty good!  My dad said "It hides the turkey pretty well," which is pretty much what you want here.  It was easy, even with making your own sauce, and it was pretty tasty (although like all barbeque sandwiches, it completely disintegrated by the end and had to be finished with a fork.)  With a good premade sauce it would be even easier, and let's be honest - the whole point of figuring out what to do with the rest of the turkey is to not go to the grocery store and to not put a lot of work into cooking anything.  I just made a feast for eight on Thursday, and there's no way I'm going out of my way for the leftovers.

I'll give it four out of five stars.  I'd make it again, but I think their approach is a little odd for leftovers.

The drawback:

It only takes two cups of turkey to serve four, which didn't even make a dent.

Next up: turkey samosas!  (With added "can't find ingredients at the grocery store" fun!)  Don't miss it!

Periodicals is your one stop shop for recipes!  We get all the usual magazines (Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Good Housekeeping, Southern Living, Weight Watchers, Vegetarian Times) as well seasonal special issues and recipe sources you might never have considered.