Something about chicken pot pie conjures images of snow days when I watched others shovel snow from while I sat on the other side of the picture window all warm and lazy. My mom never made chicken pot pie; perhaps it was too exotic for middle Wisconsin, yet that’s how I remember it – snow day, chicken pot pie. Given that I live in Los Angeles now, I think through entertainment, and cannot think of chicken pot pie in any other way but this:
You know all the sage, nutty, and buttery righteousness that’s packed into holiday stuffing doesn’t have to get tossed when the post feast diet kicks in. The diet that falls between the last Thursday of November and the first holiday party.
Here’s a salad that combines your leftovers into a savory and healthy salad without any of the guilt:
Have you dumped the gravy yet? This is no time for relapse if you’re going to fit into that holiday dress.
Restraint is never been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. By the time we’ve churned out great grandma’s noodles and Aunt Betty’s famous sweet potatoes, included treasures from our in-laws and traditional must-haves, and added new embellishments (see me about failed corn bread stuffing), there is enough food on the table for legions of guests. Leftovers disappear in the days following usually in glops of gravied sandwiches and microwaved menageries.
Stuffing cakes turn a savory side dish into an open face sandwich with intention. By forming cakes out of leftover stuffing and then browning on both sides in a lightly oiled pan (or not because most stuffings are loaded with melted butter), leftovers get a new attitude.
Here at crunchtime we believe today’s leftovers are tomorrow’s ingredients at least it’s a whole lot easier justifying not cooking for a night. Note: Store turkey slices in chicken stock to retain its moisture. No dried out turkey for us.
Happy Thanksgiving and the days to follow.
Trying to eliminate that elusive word “perfect” from my vocabulary after spending a lifetime in search of it. It likes to hide behind things like puberty, stocky genetics, and kettle chip cravings while showing up like a mirage in photoshopped models, Botox, and this one. Before I press delete, I have tell you about a way I discovered to cook fish and chicken on the grill that turns outperfectflawless every time.
If you have the blues this year, maybe you should look no further than your plate’s palate. We pitched the virtues of colorful foods for Thanksgiving one year ago. But breaking the beige takes practice; so we thought let’s bring it back one more time.
I like to gravy it up as much as the next person, but over the years, our Thanksgiving spreads – stuffings and biscuits and marshmallowed casseroles awash in gravy on a plate of shame -have begun to look more like desert landscapes and less like real food. My mom used to affectionately refer to it as ‘beige gravy’ as though the color of sad was a selling point. It’s not that beige ever stopped us from eating and eating.
Thanksgiving, much like my first pregnancy, has becomeanother reason to eat as much as we want. This was not the plan of our forefathers. They were hungry, cold, and dying of illnesses when they established Thanksgiving as a time to exchange their sparse foods with Native Americans. These foods offered the only measure of vitamins and minerals that were available in the season, and fats gave them girth to survive the frigid New England winter. I think it’s time to admit that we’re not pilgrims anymore and can stop eating like we might not get another meal.
