Triple Bacon Club Sandwich

This triple decker sandwich is packed with bacon! Starting with crisp bacon strips, tender slices of Canadian bacon, and an amazing Bacon Basil Tomato Mayo spread--this recipe is perfect for a game day crowd or a satisfying solo lunch with a good book.

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The Ohio Pork Board asked me to write a post about bacon. I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this. I mean, bacon. A crisp slice of bacon, crackling as I bite into it and then dissolving in my mouth . . . well that's bliss right there. Creating this recipe was truly a pleasure, and I hope you enjoy re-creating because it's easy to make this restaurant-quality dish right at home!

Deep Dish Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizza

Thanksgiving leftovers (turkey, cranberry, stuffing and sides) tucked under a blanket of colby jack cheese for a deep dish pizza version of the traditional leftover bake.

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I've been sharing Thanksgiving recipes lately, including my Round Up of Thanksgiving Recipe Round Ups (that is a mouthful, in oh so many ways). As much as I adore a table full of side dishes, that means there are inevitably leftovers.

My favorite way to have Thanksgiving is to enjoy the main meal midday, then let everyone fix a plate of leftovers for dinner. Subsequent days bring turkey sandwiches, perhaps on a Multigrain Cereal Bun spread with Cranberry Salsa. But my current favorite way to enjoy leftovers the day after Thanksgiving is in a deep dish pizza.

Even though I suck at planning out weekly menus, having a routine Friday Night Pizza Night means I know what's coming up at least. After I learned How Not To Make Lou Malnati's Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza I got creative trying other methods. My deep dish pizza confidence grew to the point that I made 2 versions of post-Thanksgiving deep dish pizzas. Here's the first one.

This pizza has a bit of nearly every Thanksgiving side, in small spoonfuls scattered across a base of mashed potato-spread pizza dough. As I'm glad to eat everything together, this is a fun way to do that while making the most of the veggies that our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers put their heart and soul into producing.

Tatsoi Fried Rice with Turkey

Farm share tatsoi quickly cooked with leftover turkey and egg in a fast & easy fried rice.

Tatsoi was a new vegetable in the farm share box last season. I'm delighted to realize that after 9 years of enjoying Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares I am still surprised by the contents of the box. [We start year 10 in a couple of months!]

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I followed Tip #1 of my Five Tips to Feed Your Family from the Farm Share and made something familiar--fried rice. Usually when I prep cabbage type vegetables for stir frying I'll chop the thicker stems to cook with the onions, and add the sliced leaves later in the process. Not so complicated with tatsoi.

We've had tatsoi in the farm share box both as a bag of leaves and as an entire head. [The head is more photogenic.] Either way I just rinsed the individual leaves and tossed them into the skillet--no extra chopping necessary.

I like to repurpose leftovers into a new meal, so I used a hunk of leftover turkey breast--though you could use chicken, ham, beef, pork, tofu or additional egg for protein. I'd be lying if I said the rice was leftover--I had my daughter start the rice cooker at lunchtime so I could come home and chill the cooked rice before I needed it at dinner--starting with cold cooked rice helps the grains to remain separate in a fried rice. Lately I've been lazy been simmering my stock for a long time, long like 8 hrs, so my turkey stock shown in the photo was at the Chicken Jelly stage. Instead of gathering garlic and ginger to season the fried rice, I used prepared hoisin sauce for an easy flavor. It's one of Lydia's ingredients for a Perfect Pantry. The first time I made this my daughter enjoyed the leftovers for lunch. When we got tatsoi again it was time to photograph the ingredients and write it up for the blog--yet my daughter enjoyed the leftovers for lunch again!

She's stealing the food while I'm trying to photograph it!

For other recipes using Tatsoi . . . well this is the first one for this blog. I suppose I should add a Tatsoi category to the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient at some point, though all I've done with it so far is fried rice. Over and over. In the meantime, I'd recommend hitting the Bok Choy Recipes Collection or the Cabbage Recipes Collection.

Turkey and Kale Divan

Has Kale Gone Mainstream?

If I'm combining kale and a can of cream of chicken soup in a casserole kale has surely gone mainstream.

This combination was not my idea--I credit my spouse for it. You see, his favorite casserole is Rice Casserole, or as it's known outside our family, JEN's Divine Turkey Divan. Our kids now make it, following the instructions on this blog, as one of their stock entrees.

When you first learned to read, re-reading beloved books helped you to develop reading fluency. In a similar way, making the same familiar recipe again and again can help beginning cooks to be comfortable in the kitchen.

With this thought in mind (that the kids could make dinner) I picked up all that was needed for Turkey Divan. I intended for the kids to make this while I was out of town, but instead I returned with a giant bag of kale from my Dad's garden only to find all the ingredients untouched and plenty of take out containers in the fridge. Harrumph. When I offered my spouse a choice between Fast CSA Greens and Pasta--to use up some kale--or Turkey Divan, he ask if it would work to substitute kale for the broccoli. He's a smart man.

Thus far there are 356 recipes posted on this blog. This is the 3rd one to use a can of cream of chicken soup but the 13th one using kale. Everything in moderation. For more recipes featuring kale, please see my Kale Recipe Collection.

Turkey, Cranberry, and Mashed Potato Pizza

Thanksgiving leftovers as pizza toppings--mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce dotted with turkey and topped with feta and cheddar cheeses.

I'm going to share two Thanksgiving Leftovers Pizzas this month. One is for folks who don't want to make a special pizza dough, and the other is for folks who are game to try another of my new concoctions. Let's start with the easier one.

I knew I wanted a layer of mashed potatoes as the base, and after Thanksgiving I made several attempts using my Make Ahead Irish Mashed Potato Casserole. But none of my efforts with actual Thanksgiving leftovers really thrilled me, so I waited until I saw some turkey marked down, threw some other sides in my basket, and tried again.

For this particular combination I made 3 different pizzas--one without any cheese, one with cheddar, and one with feta. The pizza really needs cheese [this Beef & Broccoli pizza works without cheese, though]. I found I preferred the duo of feta and cheddar together.

You know, I don't think I'm going to type any more on this post. As I sit typing it up our newest addition, Robert Barker, is resting at my feet for his first night in his new home. I will share more of his story as I get to know him, but it's enough to say that he needs TLC more than I need to prattle on about pizza.

Thai Turkey Cold Busting Hot and Sour Egg Drop Soup

Fight colds with this Hot and Sour Thai-seasoned Turkey, Carrot, and Rice Egg Drop Soup

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When I was in nursing school, in a previous life, Hot and Sour Soup became my magical cure-all for any bugs picked up at the hospital that threatened to take me down.  I'd swing by my favorite Chinese restaurant and pick up a quart when I first felt a tickle in my throat, and usually by the time I'd consumed the container I was right as rain.

Of course I've moved far away from that restaurant, and had good and not as good Hot and Sour Soups in the intervening lives years.

This soup is emphatically NOT a traditional version of Chinese Restaurant Hot and Sour Soup.  Instead, it's got the hot and sour-ness that I crave when I'm sick, coupled with the consistency of egg drop soup that soothes my throat, along with carrots and rice that comfort me like a good bowl of chicken soup should.  Except this is made with a turkey carcass.  Yes, part of my Thanksgiving turkey carcass if you must know.

This is an excellent reason to save your Thanksgiving turkey carcass in your freezer until you're ready for it.  No sense wasting it on some day-after-Thanksgiving soup when you've got amazing leftovers still in the fridge.  No, save that turkey carcass, along with the bits and bobs of vegetables collected in your Soup Pack, for a Real Need.

I made this soup while in Real Need for Soup.  While I was sharing sunny orange recipes here during HashtagOrangeWeek recently, I was sneezing and hacking my way around the Disney World Parks in Florida.  As if being sick wasn't enough, we traveled to/from Florida in a plane and my ears went wrong shortly after take off and still weren't right a week after returning home.  Add to all of the above I had a cough that made me gag and, well, if you've had kids then you know there are . . . consequences . . . when you are walking around having coughing attacks.  So there I am at Disney, sneezing, coughing, and consequencing all over the place, and hoping to survive the flight home so I could make soup. /rant

Thanking again my well-stocked pantry, I slept in (love my bed) and started this soup the day after I got home.  I was inspired by Lydia's Quick and Easy Hot and Sour Soup with Tofu, Shiitake Mushrooms and Noodles and Tyler Florence's Hot and Sour Soup. Now, normally I like the hands off approach of slow cooker soup stock, throwing everything into the crock pot for a day/night before straining and using.  And while that technique is awesome, there is one drawback--in a slow cooker you don't get the flavor concentration from evaporation like you do in an uncovered stock pot on the stove top.  I cooked this stock for 4 hours on the stove top, until it was reduced by about half [and took a picture so you could see**] then called it good.  Using mostly fridge and freezer items I threw together the rest of the soup, snapped some more photos, and we enjoyed a late lunch.  I was fortified for the rest of the day. And then a few more thanks to the awesome leftovers.

If you're looking for the cold-busting properties of a bowl of hot and sour soup, the consistency of egg drop soup, the comfort of a poultry-filled carrot and rice soup--this recipe is for you.


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Thanksgiving Leftover Remake--Poutine?!

Roasted potatoes topped with cheese curds and gravy, with optional turkey, turning Thanksgiving leftovers into a new meal.

Gravy seems to be an orphan leftover in my house.  We always seem to eat up all the mashed potatoes but not all the gravy.  Yes, I know I can make a Thanksgiving casserole with all the same stuff I just ate moistened with gravy, but I like to find different tastes for my leftovers.  So what do I do with my leftover gravy?

Well, it's the season of excess plenty, so why not make poutine?

[Big Ol' Honkin Disclaimer:  I have never eaten real poutine.  I am not even Canadian--my Canadian mom chose to take a job in the US where she met my dad--though I've got relatives and friends Up in the Great White North. But it seems very wordy to say "potatoes topped with cheese curds and re-heated leftover gravy" when "poutine" conveys the same idea.]

It never occurred to me to make poutine at home.  For this, I give credit to my son.  He and I share a similar affinity for unagi and furikake, so if he wants to try something it's a good bet that I would also like it.

In my house, on your birthday, you get to choose what you want to eat for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dessert.  My son wanted the appetizer for his birthday dinner to be poutine.

Poutine is no amuse bouche.  I had no idea what I was in for!  I'd heard of it, sure, but had no clue that we'd be too full from the appetizer to appreciate dinner!  I decided to try it again, when I had leftover gravy, as a stand-alone snack/meal thing.

Try this if you have more gravy than mashed potatoes!