Turkey Enchiladas

I almost always make a batch of turkey enchiladas when I cook a turkey. I've posted my recipe for turkey enchiladas on the main CheapCooking site so I won't repeat it here. You can use canned enchilada sauce of course, but I find the homemade sauce just as good and it gives me the flexibility to just keep cans of tomato sauce in the pantry. With a can of tomato sauce, I can make enchilada sauce or spaghetti sauce, whichever I need.

Tonight, I chopped up the turkey and grated the cheese as the sauce heated up. I always think it's better if it's simmered a bit. I dipped the first corn tortilla in the sauce, laid it on a plate, put a bit of chopped turkey and grated cheese--but when I went to roll it up the tortilla just fell apart.

Then I remembered. I put all the tortillas in my cheap little Styrofoam tortilla warmer and popped it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. The tortillas were perfectly softened and rolled up easily.

Creamed Turkey with Cheese

Serve this over mashed potatoes, toast, English muffins, cornbread--whatever!

1/4 cup butter
1 small onion, diced (about 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup milk
2 cups diced turkey (or chicken, of course)
1/2 cup grated cheese (optional)

Melt the butter. Add the onion and cook until softened, stirring. Stir in the flour, stirring constantly and let cook a few minutes over medium heat. Stir in the chicken broth and milk, stirring constantly. A whisk works well for this. Heating the chicken broth and milk helps make things go smoother here.

Let this cook until simmering, stirring frequently. Simmer at the lowest possible bubbling point until thickened a bit. Stir in the chicken. Add the cheese if you want. I've made it often without any cheese but it's a nice touch if you have it. Taste and salt and pepper as needed.

You can serve this over toast, mashed potatoes, corn bread and so forth. It's just a nice comfort food, warm and smooth. The kids love it.

Ham and White Bean Soup

Got some leftover ham? Here's a great easy soup. Nothing complicated. Sometimes simple is good.

1 pound white beans (Great Northern or small white ones)
water
1 onion, diced
2 cups ham, chopped or diced
salt and pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight or just cook a bit longer. Or you could do the "quick soak" method, which seems an awful lot like cooking a bit longer to me. (Cover the beans with water, bring to a boil, cover, turn off the heat and let sit for an hour.)

Cover the beans with about 1 1/2" of water. I also used the leftover potato water (from boiling potatoes for mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving).

Add the onions and ham and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook the beans for about 2 hours. Salt and pepper to taste.

Leftovers: The Blessings of Thanksgiving

For all the work that hosting Thanksgiving dinner is, the payback--in addition to the great company and food on the big day itself--is that you get your choice of leftovers!

Since I'd cooked a turkey and a ham, I had lots to share and sent packets home with nieces and nephews. In fact, the Hefty people had recently sent me more of those Serve N Store containers and this was a perfect use for them. Never mind that they were in Christmas red: they were perfect for packing up leftovers and sending them home safely without losing any of my good containers!

Turkey Sandwiches

Yesterday I made up my first batch of turkey sandwich spread. This is so simple but my kids love it and it tastes great. Chop up some turkey, add enough mayonnaise to moisten, and chopped dill pickles to taste plus a bit of salt. We used up some of the leftovers rolls and made sandwiches for lunch, topped with leftover cranberry jelly. Mmmm!

French Toast
One of my guests had brought brie and sourdough bread. Lots! As good as it was, I was left here with several loaves of really good sourdough bread. This morning, I sliced it up and made French Toast with all of it, freezing what we didn't eat at breakfast. You hardly need a French Toast recipe but here's about what I did:

1 cups milk
3 eggs
dash of salt
1 tsp of sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of vanilla

Blend it all up. Dip the bread in and make sure it soaks in. Fry in a bit of butter, turning so it gets browned on both sides.

Turkey Soup
I have not yet made my turkey broth. By the end of the day on Thursday, I was too tired to deal with it so I packed up all the bones and such and threw it in the freezer. One day this week I'll make turkey broth, refrigerate it overnight, skim the fat, and then make soup with some of it and freeze the rest for another batch of soup later.

I might make ham and bean soup first in fact. We've been nibbling on the ham. I'll dice and freeze the rest today, in portions suitable for soup or scrambled eggs and ham, or quiche.

I also still have some leftover mashed potatoes. I'll most likely make these into potato pancakes and fry them up for breakfast. Most other side dishes have disappeared in lunches and dinners by now. In the past I've added leftover scalloped potatoes, onions, green bean casserole, and roasted vegetables to soups. Those are often the best soups--and yet are never quite the same twice.

Edited later
I did make ham and bean soup. I also made creamed turkey and served it over the leftover mashed potatoes.

Preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner

Saturday my mom was visiting so we sat down and "made the list." The list of what dishes we would be serving. We browsed through a few new recipes we'd each pulled out, rejected some, kept others. And we have, of course, past dishes that have to be repeated (my mom's creamed onions, for example, and my sister's green beans). I'm doing a turkey and a ham because we have to have turkey and the girls asked for ham as well. My brother started this "two meats" thing a few years back and now everyone's spoiled. He's done prime rib and whole salmon or turkey and rib eye steaks or other such combinations.

Today I did the shopping. Ugh. As much as I love to cook, I really dislike shopping. I made myself go out to Costco and battle the crowds primarily because I knew they'd have good reasonably priced turkeys AND I was hoping to get a large ice tub thing to hold the wine and sodas and such. Struck out on the latter but did bring home a turkey only 4 pounds bigger than I'd wanted. ;) Leftovers are good!

The menu as it stands includes the creamed onions and green beans, plus a corn souffle from a nephew and his fiance, pies from various folks (including apple, pumpkin, cherry, and blackberry), appetizers ranging from spinach dip to melted Brie and French bread, turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, a new sweet potato and maple syrup dish I saw, roasted root vegetables, cooked carrots, and more I'm sure I'm forgetting right now. No one will be going hungry!

I love planning this meal. And lo and behold I fit the turkey and the ham in the frig today. I'll need to NOT add anything else to the frig in the meantime, but for now we're doing okay!

Leftover Chicken

Earlier this week I had roasted a whole chicken for dinner. We had more left over than normal and events conspired such that it wasn't eaten up at lunch either. I've done two quick dinners with some of it that were both big hits.

Chicken Burritos
leftover cooked chicken, skin removed
green salsa
taco seasoning
refried beans
chopped tomatoes
grated cheese
sour cream
flour tortillas

I took some of the chicken and heated it with half a jar of green salsa and a bit of taco seasoning. I had bought a mix in a jar from Costco and it is nice for quick stuff like this, although I prefer to just mix up my own and probably won't buy it again. If you don't have a mix, sprinkle on a bit of chili powder, cumin, and garlic powder. Add some water if you're salsa is more chunky than liquid so you can simmer the chicken. Pull it apart with two forks once it's warmed (or cooked through if you start with a raw chicken breast, which also works well), and let it simmer in the sauce while you grate some cheese, heat up some beans and tortillas, and get the table set.

Chicken King Ranch Casserole
My youngest daughter loves the King Ranch Casserole. Typically I make a full recipe in two 9x9 pans and freeze one for later, but tonight I just roughly halved the recipe. I didn't actually halve the whole thing though, since I didn't' want half a can of tomatoes or chilies left. I didn't have the Rotel tomatoes that make this so good but can testify that a can of diced tomatoes and a can of chilies works great! I used a can of cream of mushroom soup because that's what I had.

1 leftover chicken breast, skin removed, chopped
1/4 cup of chopped onion
1 tsp oil
1 can of cream of something soup (or make your own of course!)
1 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes
1 4 ounce can diced green chilies
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
6-9 corn tortillas, torn into pieces

Saute the onion in a bit of oil until soft, 5 minutes or so. Stir in the can of soup, the chicken, the tomatoes and chilies (or a can of Rotel tomatoes). Stir and heat through.

In a 9x9 pan, lay 1/3 of the torn tortillas, spoon 1/3 of the chicken mix over the top, and sprinkle 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat two more layers: tortillas, chicken mix, cheese. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

You can freeze this after mixing and before baking, but the corn tortillas get a bit mushy. We don't mind them that way but others might.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Halloween has progressed far beyond what it was when I was a kid. Back then, the costumes were mostly homemade. The pumpkins were mostly homegrown. And the carvings were definitely homegrown. No fancy templates. No fancy tools. We got a kitchen knife and scraped out the insides with a big kitchen spoon. Now, you seem to find most kids dressed in plastic store-bought action "figures" and "characters," pumpkins are bought at the grocery store, and the jack-o-lanterns are likely to be more elaborate than a project I would have done for school!

But pumpkin seeds. Whether you buy or grow your pumpkins, carve a simple scary face or a haunted house complete with a witch out front, dress up as a ghost or a character from Desperate Housewives, pumpkin seeds are still the king! After all that sweet candy, some salty pumpkin seeds taste just right. It's too late for this year, but if I remember to write this up now, you're likely to find it next year when you're looking online with that bowl of gooey pumpkin seeds sitting on your counter.

2 cups, roughly, of pumpkin seeds, picked clean of large bits of flesh
2 Tbs butter, melted
1/2 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Stir this all together then spread out on a shallow baking sheet. Bake at 275 for an hour or so, stirring occasionally until the reach the desired crispness.