Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

People are complicated. Love is not.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Democrats are back in array!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Open Thread: Leftovers, the Best Part of Thanksgiving

Open Thread: Leftovers, the Best Part of Thanksgiving

by | 102 Comments

This post is in: , ,

…For the Seddiq family of northern Virginia, Thanksgiving is always an event. Immigrants from Afghanistan, they first arrived in America in the 1970s. To accommodate the entire extended family on Thanksgiving, the Seddiqs organize a potluck banquet at a rented hall. Family member Mirriam Zary is a lawyer and well-known food blogger on Instagram and TikTok. Her passion for traditional and contemporary Afghan cuisine is evident in her social media posts. Mirriam believes that, for observant Muslims, the concept of gratitude is never restricted to one day…

As the second and third generations of the Seddiqs came of age in the family’s new country, Mirriam wanted to include both America and Afghanistan in an innovative infusion. Hence “Thanksgiving Biryani” was born. Combining the main rice ingredient with the spices and flavors of fall, such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and raisins, along with root vegetables such as butternut squash and carrots, Mirriam creates the perfect balance of the aromas of her two homelands. The dish is vegan but can serve as a side to turkey.

Some families of other immigrant communities take a slightly different approach. Shahed Amanullah, an entrepreneur and developer of the halal food app “Zabiha,” is attending a Thanksgiving banquet hosted by his mother, an immigrant from Pakistan, where only “the traditional American” dishes will be prepared. Shahed describes his mother as a “Thanksgiving purist,” but, since he will be taking on the task of cooking the turkey this year, he insists that he will “spice it up a bit.”…

Puerto Rican Thanksgiving reflects the cultural syncretism of the Caribbean island and its complex relationship to the United States. The traditional turkey would be considered bland in comparison with the endless flavors that abound in Caribbean cuisine, and bland food is no cause for celebration. Nilsa MĂ©ndez relocated from Puerto Rico to Chicago several years ago. Thanksgiving for her means gratitude and family, and one way of expressing this is an elaborate method of cooking turkey. For starters, the giant bird lies in a marinade of sofrito — a blend of aromatic ingredients finely chopped and sauteed or braised in cooking oil with various spices. Nilsa then cooks a dish of “arroz con gandules” (rice and pigeon peas, a staple in Puerto Rico). The rice is flavored with a traditional adobo spice mix that consists of granulated garlic, onion powder, salt, black pepper and oregano. It may also contain citrus zest and/or turmeric. The rice is then stuffed in the marinated turkey. The result is a moist, flavorful cut of poultry that needs no gravy for taste and texture…

Thanksgiving is an all-American holiday and one for which, most of the time, there’s little division between different generations of immigrants. Not all families celebrate, but many do. For these families, the changes to the traditional feast seldom face objection or resistance. Infusion and inclusion are accepted as the natural outcomes of immigration.

“Would it be better if we stayed in our villages and guarded the recipes of meals? Maybe,” says Mirriam. “But we didn’t. We are here now and this is our home.”


(h/t Ozark Hillbilly)

… “Our findings are the first real indication of complex cooking – and thus of food culture – among Neanderthals,” said Chris Hunt, a professor of cultural paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University, who coordinated the excavation.

Hunt and his colleagues have even tried to recreate one of the recipes, using seeds gathered from nearby the caves. “It made a sort of pancake-cum-flatbread which was really very palatable – a sort of nutty taste,” Hunt said.

The burned food remnants – the oldest ever found – were recovered from the Shanidar Cave site, a Neanderthal dwelling 500 miles north of Baghdad in the Zagros Mountains. Thought to be about 70,000 years old, they were discovered in one of many ancient hearths in the caves…

“We present evidence for the first time of soaking and pounding pulse seeds by both Neanderthals and early modern humans (Homo sapiens) at both sites, and during both phases at Shanidar Cave,” said Dr Ceren Kabukcu, an archaeobotanist at the University of Liverpool, who led the study.

“We also find evidence of ‘mixtures’ of seeds included in food items and argue that there were some unique preferences for specific plant flavours.”

The research, published in Antiquity, adds to mounting evidence of plant consumption by both early modern humans and Neanderthals, in addition to meat. Wild nuts and grasses were often combined with pulses, such as lentils, and wild mustard.

Hunt said: “Because the Neanderthals had no pots, we presume that they soaked their seeds in a fold of an animal skin.”…

(And yet some complain about the primitive cooking facilities at our in-laws’ gathering.)

(h/t NotMax)

This is no ordinary cake. Composed of three layers of corn bread, interspersed with sweet potatoes, marshmallows, and stuffing, frosted in mashed potatoes & gravy, and finally topped with a Cornish game hen, this cake’s a Thanksgiving feast

(I’d rather eat a Neanderthal pulse flatbread with wild mustard… but that’s just me.)

Reader Interactions

102Comments

  3. 3.

    Steve in the ATL

    We talked about my new recipe, Thanksgiving vegan biryani, and how immigrants bring their flavors to this American tradition.

    Whatever the pilgrims brought to the original thanksgiving was brought by immigrants, no?

  5. 5.

    raven

    You must be physic! As I mentioned upstream, I just got back from a long day on the water and Garden Girl fired up a huge plate of leftovers! I was fishing with a family and a dude name Marcos who is Brazilian. It took quite a while to get the fish cleaned and, as I was leaving, I said to him “Man, there were not nearly this many brown folks down here 20 years ago”. He busted me a big hug and said “dude, I like you’! Priceless!

  6. 6.

    Anyway

    Gonna stick to trad chix biryani. One of my coworkers always brings some for potluck and it’s the first thing to go. Good stuff.

  8. 8.

    Suzanne

    I love biryani. Much more than the traditional American side dishes.

    Saving that video for next year.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    along with root vegetables such as butternut squash and carrots,

    Ummmm… butternut squash is not a root vegetable.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Shahed describes his mother as a “Thanksgiving purist,” but, since he will be taking on the task of cooking the turkey this year, he insists that he will “spice it up a bit.”


    Please do. I would love to try that smash up.

  12. 12.

    Salty Sam

    No turkey soup or sandwiches for me-  I’m having my second bowl of leftover dressing/potatoes/turkey and gravy, mooshed together in a bowl, buttered roll on the side.

    Food coma #2 coming on


  13. 13.

    Suzanne

    I swear to the FSM
.next year, I am making a crockpot of soup the day before and then I can have that and skip all the other stuff.

    I went to hot yoga this morning, then did a 45-minute ride on the Peloton, and fasted all day. Now having a salad. Finally feeling normal.

  18. 18.

    Mai Naem mobile

    The feast cake sounds disgusting. Marshmallows do not belong near anything savory. The biriyani sounds really good and is making me hungry. I could just make a quick crappy version of it but I’m feel too  lazy right now.

  19. 19.

    eclare

    @Steve in the ATL:   I googled.  Def not my taste, I don’t think they would “go” in a 1920’s Craftsman bungalow, but they look very easy to move.  Hope your daughter squirreled them away for you.

  22. 22.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: I have a 1920 Craftsman foursquare and my Eames chairs look great. (I got mine when they didn’t sell at a charity auction and they were seriously below this price.)

    Styles can mix and look great. The Cooper Hewitt, the national design museum, is in the former Carnegie mansion. It’s so awesome.

    I need a coat rack and I was looking for a freestanding version of the Eames hang-it-all today. Couldn’t find one. Feh.

  26. 26.

    eclare

    @Suzanne:   That is an amazing chair!

    I do have a very modern glass and metal coffee table in the living room to offset the more traditional furniture.  It works!

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    Turkey carcass is currently being converted to soup stock, a turkey barley soup being our traditional Sunday last-of-leftovers meal. Which reminds me of one of my favorite post-Thanksgiving stories: Michael Dukakis had for many years made soup after Thanksgiving, and one year the Boston Globe did a story about it. In that story, he offered to take any and all unwanted turkey carcasses off people’s hands and make soup from them
. That Friday, his daughter did a live-on-Twitter report as one carcass after another after another appeared on their doorstep, eventually reaching something like a couple dozen dead and stripped birds. I was following it in real-time and relaying to my parents and we were just dying with laughter.

    True to his word, he made ALL THE SOUP and donated it to a local senior center.

  34. 34.

    Suzanne

    @eclare: As I have a toddler, I had to put my modernist masterpiece of a coffee table away, as the entire thing would have to have been covered in foam to make it babyproofed. I bought a padded ottoman thing from someone on Facebook Marketplace to use until she’s not so
..three. I might get something new in a year or two, since I feel like we need an oval or a rectangle in this house, and that one is a square.

    I am having much fun with this house. I’ve been sharing the improvements/restorations/reveals we’ve done on my FB page. Maybe, if we ever finish, I’ll do a blog post.

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … TechTimes:

    Cocaine is a substance with a medical application but also poses significant abuse and addiction hazards. According to a report from NewScientist, biochemists have recreated the cocaine-producing biochemistry of the cocoa plant in the tobacco plant.

    Unpicking the Coca Plant’s Biochemistry

    The intricate biochemistry that causes coca plants to produce cocaine has been unpicked and recreated in a tobacco plant relative, the report stated.

    […]

    Sheng-Xiong Huang and his colleagues at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China have discovered a way to better understand the substance by introducing two previously absent enzymes known as EnMT4 and EnCYP81AN15.

    Using these two enzymes, the team of biochemists genetically transformed Nicotiana benthamiana, a relative of the tobacco plant, to generate cocaine. They discovered that it could create 400 nanograms of cocaine per milligram of dried leaf, or roughly 25% of the amount found in a coca plant.

    According to Huang, there is currently insufficient cocaine manufacturing in tobacco to supply the demand on a large scale. He also mentioned that organisms with high biomass and rapid development, like the bacterium Escherichia coli or the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, may assemble the established biosynthetic pathway.

    […]

    Me? I’m waiting for Meta and Twitter to come up with a smartphone screen coating that injects nicotine and cocaine into fingertips of users…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    eclare

    @Suzanne:   I would love to see that!  And as a former toddler and child who continually stubbed her toes and knees on her parents’ hardwood and glass pointy coffee table, you are doing the right thing.  I will stop now or my unreasonable hatred of specific furniture will be revealed.

    That coffee table was evil.

  41. 41.

    Suzanne

    @Steeplejack: I like a mix. I have a lot of vintage stuff. Some of it fairly foofy. I like the modern classics when they’re mixed with other periods and textures and stuff. Otherwise it looks too sterile and uncomfortable. I am into comfort, LOL.

  45. 45.

    Suzanne

    @raven: Hey, I was thinking about you the other day. I was doing a Peloton ride, and the instructor snarked on FISH PICS ON DATING APPS.

    Believe me, it’s a whole meme.

  51. 51.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: ​Same kind of house we’ve got. 1923 foursquare; one of the best room layouts ever. I keep telling people we have an 80-year old house, forgetting that we’ve been here almost 20 years now.​
    ​
    ​

  54. 54.

    Suzanne

    @frosty: Ours is on a journey to get back to where it once belonged!

    We closed on the house on a Thursday afternoon. I left the signing, went to the paint store, then drove back to the house and started tearing the ceilings out. Started hacking the walls apart that weekend. It’s getting there!

  57. 57.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: We put an addition on the back with a family room on the 1st floor and bedroom on the 2nd. A local architect did the plans and designed it so the two 2nd floor back windows still looked out instead of being closed off by the new addition. Very neat design! All the other additions on the street remove the light and air.​
     

    ETA: Also opened up the wall between the kitchen and dining room and replaced it with a counter top and stools. Updated the kitchen and bathroom, refinished floors, fixed drywall, etc. (Wrote checks for all of this actually!) I think we’re done now. Time to repaint!

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I have done it (for bait fish) but never mastered it. A buddy and I used to do it to catch shad on the Mississippi for catfish bait. I actually got to the point where I considered myself “not bad”, which definitely does not mean “good.”

    Sadly, he died of covid a couple years ago.

  63. 63.

    CaseyL

    @Suzanne: I must beg to differ.

    At one of my past places of employment, an employee gave out little bundles of home-made marshmallows for Christmas gifts.  They were a revelation: moist and chewy, with none of that powdery/dusty effect.  I am very grateful home-made marshmallows are hard to come by, because they would be the ruin of me.

    @schrodingers_cat:  You take wonderful photos.  I love the composition of the second one, with the rocks/seawall.

  64. 64.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Nah, he died 2 years ago and the last time we were on the river was 3 years ago, so my memory is a little foggy. But I held the center in my left hand and swung a wing of it over my head with my right. I never could get the spread to maximum but did manage as much as 60% about half the time.

    Enough to get half a minnow bucket of shad maybe half the time. Given another year or 2 and I might have mastered it.

    I miss my running buddy.

  65. 65.

    Facebones

    We started doing thanksgiving egg rolls with our leftovers a couple years ago and now it’s a tradition. Put some turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and cranberry jelly in an egg roll wrapper and then air fry them at 350 for 4-5 min a side. They’re fun and easy and tasty.

  67. 67.

    Quiltingfool

    @Suzanne: You have a Craftsman home?  Oooh, I am so jealous!  The woodwork in those homes is absolutely beautiful.

    I also love Mission furniture, too.  Oak is my second favorite wood for furniture, but my first is walnut


  68. 68.

    Suzanne

    @Steve in the ATL: I love brutalist architecture. Love it.

    One of my prouder moments in the last couple of years was having my photos of the Tower of Voices (from the Flight 93 Memorial) shared on the Facebook group Brutalist Concreteposting. The sky and the light were so awesome that day.

  71. 71.

    Suzanne

    @Quiltingfool: Sooooo. When we moved to PGH, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic (May 2020). We looked at a bunch of houses and everything genuinely nice was expensive. There were a lot of flips in our price range, but being MY HORRIBLE SELF, I kept getting pissed at them for using cheap materials or other dumb choices. So I found one down the street from one my husband liked, a hundred grand less, but with a terrible interior. And more windows on the outside than on the inside. There were all these dumb layers of paneling and flashing on everything, but I just had a suspicion from looking at it that much of the original stuff was there.

    I have been about 90% right. We have uncovered a solid oak banister, oak paneling, leaded glass transom and sidelights, multiple archways, oak floors. We found that the pocket doors are gone and we had those recased. We have two more stained glass windows to reveal, some ceilings on the second floor to replace, and our entryway has asbestos tile flooring under the carpet, which will require professional abatement. There was a solid oak bench, which was gone, and we had a finish carpenter replace it with paneling.

    Like I said, a journey. And still a long way to go.

  73. 73.

    Suzanne

    @Delk: I am not a residential architect, and working in the kinds of projects I do is much less “aesthetic” than most people think. I live in a world of regulations and budgets and spatial efficiency and schedules and details. So I enjoy getting to gawk at fancy expensive modernist houses as much as anyone else.

  74. 74.

    brendancalling

    The biryani sounds good, the turkey and stuffing I had for breakfast was also good, but it’s the leftover pot roast I made the other day that is rocking my world.

  78. 78.

    Danielx

    Had a chimney inspection last week, found that we had a flue fire at some point and flue pipe is buckled, fireplace unsafe to use. Thumbnail estimate is $15k. I’m still debating whether to cry, scream or throw up, or all three.

  79. 79.

    karen marie

    @CaseyL:  My SIL and I tried making marshmallows once.  What a mess!  We had marshmallow all over ourselves, the kitchen, the dog.  We managed to sort of get something that tasted like marshmallows but couldn’t manage to cut them into neat squares, so chunks it was.

  82. 82.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Fambly legend hath it that when my folks got married, Mom didn’t know how to cook – she was one of 12 and her household tasks were cleaning and laundry. (Dad claimed to have taught her – he’d been batching for awhile and there’s no better aid to learning than having to eat your mistakes.) But by the time I was halfway conscious, she’d learned to do some simple things pretty darn well.

    One of them was leftover creamed turkey: After removing all the easy to strip meat, put the carcass in a pressure cooker with water & seasonings for a few minutes, strip the residual meet from the bones and discard the latter, return the meat to the PC, add flour & a package of frozen mixed vegetables, reheat and stir til the stuff thickened and the veggies cooked. Serve over toast. Simple but effective – my brother and I liked it better than most of the bird leftovers (samwitches of thick sliced breast slathered in mayonnaise excepted). Good memories!

    (FTR, no turkey this year except in the escarole soup course – main event was lasagna, salad, green beans & mushrooms [another Mom specialty] and roasted sweet potatoes.)

  85. 85.

    Scamp Dog

    @karen marie: I’ve made a few batches of home-made marshmallows, and I’m done with the commercial version.

    Except for Peeps, my guilty pleasure around Easter.

  86. 86.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: We’ve got a bunch of Aeron chairs at work.  I’m not impressed with the quality – a bunch of the pot-metal brackets for the various adjusters seem to be easily broken.  And the slide-up-and-down adjustable arms seem very sloppy even when supposedly locked into place.  Maybe the ones we get (which seem to cost us less than half the list price) are made on a different assembly line or something…  :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    CaseyL

    @Suzanne: If I were a few decades younger, I’d love to buy an old place with that kind of promise and spend the time/muscles/money prying the shitty new stuff off.  Since I’m not a few decades younger, I watch other people unearth treasures and enjoy the restoration vicariously.  I love it when they post on YouTube, with room by room before-and-after.

    (When I actually was that young, I had neither the money nor the inclination.)

  89. 89.

    Suzanne

    @Another Scott: The office chair that I really hate is the Herman Miller Mirra. Similar seat to the Aeron but with this perforated plastic back. If you ever wore pants with buttons on the rear pockets, the buttons would get caught in the weird perforated slots and if you weren’t careful, you’d tear your pants.

    My problem with Aeron chairs is that I like to sit cross-cross applesauce, and I can’t spin the arms on the Aeron out far enough to do so. I do appreciate how non-swampy they are, esp. when I lived in a very hot place. Also didn’t experience any weirdness on the fabrics of my clothes.

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    The thing that I will note about the Aeron that I think is great is that the size range is large enough for bigger people who have historically not been well-served by the office chair market. If you reach under the back of your Aeron, near the top, you will feel dots. Two dots means it’s the standard size. There is a small version (one dot) and a larger version (three dots) so the weight limit goes up to 350 pounds. Though that’s not high enough for bariatric furniture, it’s a higher limit than commercial office furniture has historically reached.

  92. 92.

    Dan B

    @Suzanne: I bought a 1905 era house in 1975.  The exterior was mustard yellow with dark brown trim – a horror.  I finally replaced all the cracked plaster, knob and tube, fixed basement leak, awful cut up kitchen, etc.  One day soon after moving in I noticed a window on the outside of the living room.  I went inside and there was no window.  It was a large window.

    People are weird.

  93. 93.

    Quiltingfool

    @Suzanne: Oh, you have found buried treasure!  Leaded glass?  Wow!

    Our first home was a house, built by farmers in the ‘50s.  They did not use good building practices, as we learned after tearing up the floor to replace termite damage.  Example:  the brick chimney was held up by a few wooden boards and a wood 4×4 post.  The chimney is gone now


    On a positive note, the house has oak 2×4 framing.  Very sturdy.

    We did have to tear out old linoleum.  I found newspapers under it, dated from the 50’s.  Some of the political reporting (about Truman) reminded me that the more things change, the more they stay the same
Republicans do not like Democrats.

  94. 94.

    Suzanne

    @Dan B: There were a bunch of concealed windows in our house. Previous owners looked to have done a lot of (really bad) alterations to improve energy efficiency, including covering windows up. REPREHENSIBLE. I’m coming for them all!

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    @Quiltingfool:

    Our first home was a house, built by farmers in the ‘50s.  They did not use good building practices, as we learned after tearing up the floor to replace termite damage. 

    Oh yes. Lots of really terrible houses out there. Some things have really gotten better since builders got good at constructing production housing. Slabs with moisture barriers being one!

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    To be perfectly clear, when I originally linked the video my comment was, shall we say, less than complimentary.

  97. 97.

    NotMax

    Learned early on to give it a hard pass whenever turkey tetrazzini was among the main dish offerings in the college dining hall.

  98. 98.

    sab

    My parents bought a 1921 house in 1966.

    After we sold it to the neighbor “for his inlaws” he tore it down because he was rich and he wanted a bigger yard.

    We had no idea it had steel infrastructure.  That house was not easy or cheap to demolish.

    Our main gripe is there was gorgeous detail that went to the dump. He could have paid for the whole demolition by salvaging the gorgeous bits.

    ETA Oak pannelling everywhere. Wrought iron staircase with oak banister. Carved decoration with fruit in dining room panelling

    ETA gorgeous carved oak fireplace in the living room.

    ETA House sale contract did not allow us to even take the curtain rods.

  100. 100.

    sab

    @NotMax: I love turkey tetrazzini. My husband loathes it. I cook for him, so we never have it.

    ETA Been so long I am not sure I know how to make it.

Comments are closed.