It's a grim slog, my friends.  That turkey is not looking any more beautiful as the days go on.  It takes up a whole shelf in the fridge.  Nobody wants to look at it anymore.  But for you, gentle reader, we push on. Once more, into the breach!

We're trying out recipes for your leftover turkey from all sorts of periodicals.  To read our first two leftover suppers, click here and here.

This time we're going to dip into USA Today.  On November 23, they got the editors of Eating Well and Cooking Light to offer some healthier recipes for your Thanksgiving leftovers.  They include Greek salad pitas with feta spread and turkey, creamy carrot and sweet potato soup, and cream of turkey and wild rice soup. 

We're doing the turkey soup.  I did appreciate their attempts to give you something to do with leftovers other than turkey - yesterday's samosas also used up some mashed potatoes, but often these articles focus solely on the bird.

The recipe:

Saute some celery, carrots and shallots.  (Okay, they also wanted mushrooms, but we didn't have any and we don't really like them.)  Throw in a quarter cup of flour and salt and pepper for a few more minutes.  Add four cups of reduced sodium chicken broth and bring to a boil, scraping up all the good stuff.  Add a cup of quick-cooking wild rice and simmer until it's done, 5-7 minutes.  Throw in three cups or so of your turkey, half a cup of sour cream and some parsley if you have it and cook until heated through.

The results:

The verdict:

Much better than the turkey soups I've had before.  It had a nice meaty consistency to it and the rice added a very nice nutty flavor.  Thumbs up all around. 

This one actually did away with some turkey!  Enough for us to say guiltlessly that we are done.  We'll boil it and make it stock, because we refuse to look at it for one more day.

What did we learn?  Well, all the recipes were actually quite good, but every single one of them made me think, you know, this would be better with chicken.  In fact, I think I'll revisit some of them the next time I roast a chicken and need something to make the next day. 

I was honestly hoping some of them would be awful so I could make fun of them, but no - they were all good ideas.  However, the soup is the only one I'd really say wasn't trying to hide the essential turkiness of the turkey.  They'll all go in my post-Thanksgiving armory for next year.

You can see any of these articles at the Periodicals Department.  We have them in print, and you can see both the Real Simple and the USA Today articles through one of our databases.  Ask us how!

My best tip?  For Christmas, do beef tenderloin instead.