Thanksgiving Leftovers Are The Best!!!

Today's bonus episode is going to be about various ways you can utilize your Thanksgiving leftovers by creating various meal ideas to keep you from discarding any food and why you should always be thankful to have leftover food!!!

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Local Food Pantries For Food: https://www.feedingamerica.org/

Local Food Pantries For Donations: https://ampleharvest.org/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Are you a huge wrestling fan. Do you enjoy watching
a WWE. If so, then check out Wrestling Discussions, my
second podcast that's available on all streaming platforms where I
discuss WWE topics. So tune in today.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Welcome everyone to this bonus episode of Aspiring Discussions. I'm
your host, Ashley Janey, and I just want to give
thanks to God for blessing me to do another bonus episode,
and I want to thank you all for your support
and patience as well. And I hope you all enjoyed
your Thanksgiving and you didn't eat too much turkey or
dressing or maybe too much macaroni and cheese. I'm all so,

(00:57):
I'm sure you are read today's bonus to know that
I will be discussing what you can do with your
Thanksgiving leftovers, So let's do it. So I'm sure you
all know that food is always better the next day
as far as taste goes, because all of the season
it's really blend in together, making the food even more enjoyable.

(01:18):
And the reason why I wanted to release this bonus
episode is because I learned yesterday from watching it from
watching the news that approximately three hundred and twenty million
pounds of food I wasted on Thanksgiving. And that's a
lot of food to be wasting, especially with the way
the world is now when you have a lot of
people out here starving and don't know when they would

(01:40):
get their next meal, and you also have people out
here having difficulties with putting food on the table. And
the sad part about it is most of these people
work regular jobs plus over time plus another job. It's
still struggle to put food on the table. It still
can't qualify for assistance. That's making them go so food

(02:00):
pantries and're hoping they can get enough food from the
pantry because I'm sure as a hit or miss, it's
like you either get a nice selection of food or
you don't because the expiration date is right around the corner,
or they may have a limit as to what you
can take that day or what you may not be
able to get it. So it's really sad. And you

(02:20):
also have a lot of people that lost their snap
benefits or had their benefits reduced, making it even more
difficult to shop for food, you know, because food is
already expensive as it is even for one person. So
if that person's benefits have been lost or reduced. Now
I ask more pressure and unnecessary stress on that person

(02:42):
to eat or feed their families, And in my opinion,
it's unfair and wrong because no one should have to
worry about food, go to bed hungry and waking up
irritable and being mad with the world because they're because
they're hungry. So I pray for those individuals and pray
that God can blame them with a way to give food.
So that's why it's so crucial to just you know,

(03:04):
count your blessings and be thankful for what you do
have in your refrigerator. Rather it is lunch, meat, milk, bread, eggs, jelly,
and etc. Be thankful because look how hard it is
for people to eat out here, and why people should
not throw away any food. And while you cherish those
Thanksgiving leftovers, because you got some people that would love

(03:25):
some leftover turkey, dressing, mac and cheese, cranberry, salce, green beans, greens,
and etc. So if you have any leftovers, take advantage
of it because you never know what life may throw
at you. You know, you could be eating good this
day and have nothing the next day. So you know,
one thing about leftover is that makes them so useful

(03:48):
besides better flavor is that they can be versatile. So
let's say you have some extra turkey pieces left, you
could save those to make turkey sandwiches breakfast sandwiches. And
you can also make a turkey salad where you just
cut up the churk, the turkey, the ad, mayo relish
pimentos and the variety of seasonings, so that's definitely a

(04:09):
plus and there, and if there is no meat left
on a turkey, you could save the carcass and make
some chicken noodle soup or cream a chicken soup by
using the carcass to make a stock for your soup,
and you can make it. And if you make extra,
you could freeze the stock for up to six months
to use to use it for future use. And then

(04:30):
if you have extra dressing or stuffing that you may
that you may have, you could freeze it to eat
it again for Christmas or New Year's to preserve it.
But you just have to give it time to thaw
and the refrigerator for about three days. So all you
have to do is warm it up in a microwave,
the oven, or in the air fryer for about a
few minutes. You know, if you like cranberry sauce, you

(04:53):
I definitely savage in my opinion, because I cannot eat
that because number one is too bitter to me and
I'm too I don't like the texture of it, but
I know it has its benefits. But only time I'm
consuming cranberries is if I'm drinking cranberry grape juice. And
you know that's because the grape juice balances out the

(05:13):
bitterness of the cranberries. But if you do like cranberries
and you have extra suce left leftover, you can make
a cranberry chutney, which is a thick sauce where you
can add spices and citrus to it, like orange zest
or orange or orange juice, and you compare it with
a turkey sandwich. You can use it as a topping

(05:33):
for oatmeal, and you can add apples to it too,
and you can add it as a top into vanilla
ice cream, or you can make a salad dressing out
of it. So those are pretty much ways you can
use cranberry sauce, and you just have to get creative
and find various recipes online on how to make it,

(05:54):
and you can watch YouTube videos of how to make
it as well. Now, if you have any leftover mac
and cheese, you can definitely add broccoli to it, or
you can add bacon, chicken or leftover turkey to it,
and you could add bread crumbs to give it to
give it that extra texture. Or you can make some
deep fried mac and cheese bites, or you just take well,

(06:16):
you just take some of it and roll it into bites.
But you want to do this when a macaronia cheese
is cold, so you could roll it up into individual bites.
Then you would just dredge it in flour, dip it
in buttermilk or egg wash and sauta and bread crumbs,
and then you could fry it. And you can also
bake them too, and then once they're cooked, you can

(06:36):
add parsley on them for color, or Kanye pepper just
to add that spice to it. Then you could dip
it in rent stress them. You know, you can use
Marinara sauce or you can use buffalo sauce. You know,
it's just basically your own preference. And then those are
pretty much ways that you can use leftover mac and cheese,

(06:56):
or you could just freeze it to eat again on
Christmas on New Years. You know, if you have leftover
sweet potatoes, you can mash them up and add them
to a pancake batter to make sweet potato pancakes for breakfast,
or you can make waffles, you know, whatever your preference is,
or you can make muffins or cookies out of them.
And if you like oat meal, you can mash them

(07:18):
up and add it to your oat meal. You know.
So those so there are definitely, definitely, you know a
lot of useful ways to use leftover sweet potatoes. You know,
if you have leftover mashed potatoes, you can make you
can make a mashed potato bowl out of it where
you could just add broccoli, you know, bacon if you won't,
and some cheese and chicken or turkey, and then you

(07:38):
can also add sour cream if you like, and shafts
or green onions. You know, they would pretty much make
a perfect lunch or dinner. You know, if you have
extra gravy leftover, you can use it for salasberry steak
or fried chicken, or if you like or if you
like pork, you can use it for some pork chops,
or you could freeze it for three months to preserve

(07:59):
it for another future use. You know, if you have
extra collar greens or mustard greens, you could freeze them
for future use, or you could eat them with some
chicken and wopples which is my favorite, with some scrambled eggs,
and that would be considered a soul fool breakfast. You know.
If you have leftover ham, you can of course make
a sandwich out of them out of it and you

(08:21):
can have it for breakfast. And some people might may
eat green beans on Thanksgiving, and if you have extra,
you could just make a green bean castle roll out
of it, or you can make a sturf fry out
of it, and then you could also freeze them as
well for the next holidays coming up, you know, and
then some people might have dinner rolls now if you

(08:43):
have extra ones, you can use stuff for bread pudding.
So just let the rolls sit out untilday, I still
let room temperature, and then you would add your cream mixture,
which can consist of heavy cream, milk, almond milk, oat
milk or whatever meat milk or the every free milk
you want to use. And then you can add sugar

(09:04):
or plant based sweetenerse cinnamon, nutmeg, salt to bring out
the flavor, and vanilla ashtrak and also butter, but you
can use salted butter or vegan butter, you know, whatever
your preference is. And you can also add raisins if
you like. And you could just bring those ingredients together
and mix those ingredients together in the pot and bring

(09:26):
to a simmer which is like a low boil, and
you can heat this mixture up in the microwave as well.
You know, you just have to make sure you use
a microwaveable dish and then make sure you check on
it periodically while it's heating up to make sure it
doesn't boil over so you don't have a mess in
your microwave of waiting on you to clean up. And
you know, and make sure if you make the mixture

(09:48):
on the stove, you bring it to a simmer on
medium low heat so it doesn't boil over. You know,
once the mixture is heated, heat it up. You could
break up the bread rolls a half and they have
to be so the bread pudding doesn't doesn't get soggy
and it doesn't take too long to bake in the
oven or the air fry or whatever your preference is.

(10:09):
And just make sure you add cooking spray to the
pan before adding the bread. And once you add the
rolls and milk mixture to the pan, you know, you could,
like I said, you could bake it in the oven
or air fryer into golden brown. And what you can
do and what you can also do is use a toothpick, fork, knife,
wooden skier and assert it in the middle of the pudding. Now,

(10:31):
if the toothpick or whatever you use comes out clean
with a few crumbs on it, then you're good, it's ready.
You know. If the toothpick comes out with wet crumbs,
then that means you need to give it some more
time to ensure that the pudding is cooked all the
way through. And then once it's done, you just let
it cool down and then you could cut a slice
and you could top it with ice cream. You could

(10:53):
do whipped cream or powdered sugar with a cherry on top.
And you could also add chocolate or caramel syrup over it,
you know as well. And you can also add some
chopped cashews, walnuts, or peanuts to it as well. And
another thing you can do with dinner extra dinner roads
is you can make French toasts as well, you know,

(11:14):
and that will definitely be a good breakfast to get
your day started. So overall, as you could see, there
are so many ideas out here, so what you can
do with leftovers, you just have to get creative and
resourceful because the goal is to save as much food
as possible, so you don't have to throw anything away,
because as I stated earlier, it's a lot of people
out here that don't have access to food, or food

(11:37):
may not be affordable to some people, so you just
have to be resourceful as possible. And also if you
have any extra can goods or extra nonperishable foods you
then use, you can definitely donate them to local food
pantries because, believe it or not, you know, food pantries
definitely appreciate donations, especially with everything that's happening with the

(11:59):
cost of food fo on the rise and with people
losing or having their benefits reduced. You know, donations definitely
help because that takes the pressures off of them so
they could feed as many families as possible. So you
could definitely keep that in mind, you know, but definitely
keep those ideas in mind, and I will leave some
recipe websites in the description box, and I will also

(12:23):
leave some information as to how you can find local
food pantries in your area, so you know, like I said,
just count your blessings and try to save those leftovers
as much as possible. So that's gonna do it for
this bonus episode of Aspiring Discussions. I hope I was
able to inspire you all, and I'm sure I probably

(12:43):
made some of you all hungry, which is good because
that's gonna make you all try some of those ideas
using those leftovers. And I will be releasing two more
full episodes very soon, and if anyone is interested, I
do have some merch on my website and I will
the info in the description box. And also please check
out my second podcast, Wrestling Discussions while I talk about

(13:07):
WWE topics, and that's on Spotify as well and all
other streaming platforms. And also my new music video, My
Savage is now available on all streaming platforms and I
will leave that info in the box as well if
you all are interested in checking it out. So again,
thank you all so much for tuning in, Stay safe,

(13:27):
and God bless you all.