Christmas dinner leftovers.

I am sure everyone has lots of Christmas leftovers and some may be wondering what to do with them to make them desirable once again. If you don't like re-eating the same meal several times then you definitely need to be creative with your leftovers. 

Making soup is a great fix. Boil up all your turkey bones and make your own delicious stock, which you can fill with lots of your left over vegetables and maybe some new ones too. My husband is a fan of the turkey sandwich which is a great way of using up the meat. Toasted or soft bread, mayonnaise, stuffing, cranberry sauce, turkey. You can also add green leafy matter or bacon for some crunch. Another way to use up the meat is in a curry. Admittedly you have to make the sauce in advance and just drop your meat in at the end, so in this instance using a jar of curry sauce works well. Or put it all in a pie!

Our Christmas dinner this year was a wonderful array of pot luck dishes, with a fantastic butternut squash and coconut rice dish, some mashed potatoes and cauliflower (which were half of my sister-in-laws vegetarian shepherds pie), steamed fresh green veggies, mashed turnip/carrot/parsnip and even some home made cranberry sauce which my Mother-in-law made using orange juice! And turkey. I have been more than happy eating the vegetables over and over again, and sometimes just making a new meat to go with it. The rice dish my sister-in-law made was my favourite; it had roasted butter nut squash through it, shallots, fresh ginger, fresh lime zest and juice and coconut milk! Such a wonderful medley of fresh flavours popping all over! I am going to re-create this a lot in the future and experiment with things to serve it with. Maybe satay chicken or lamb skewers and a mango salad? Another old trick we used to do back in the UK was to make 'bubble and squeak'. This was traditionally mashed potatoes and cabbage I believe, but we pretty much add whatever left over vegetables we had to the mashed potatoes, which you form into flat, circular shapes (like a puk) and fry in a little oil to get a crispy patty. We used to eat them plain, with tomato ketchup, I think even a little blue cheese would set them off well!

Happy leftover creating!