Leftover Chronicles #1

I fired up the kitchen this weekend and dealt with the most of my holiday leftovers. The turkey, bones and all, found its way rather predictably into a soup, to which I added barley, cranberry beans, and carrots. Tasty, but it took forever to make the soup stock. Soup is definitely a project you should begin at least in late morning if you want to eat before 10:00PM.

The leftover stuffing seemed to me the perfect filling for a wonton. At first, I planned to make turkey soup with stuffing wontons. I thought the wontons might also be good by themselves, pan- fried and served with some kind of dip made from the leftover cranberry sauce. Unfortunately a whole lot of other people in Seattle decided to involve wontons in their leftover creations, because there was not a package to be found at my grocery store on Sunday. I'll head back tonight and see if they've restocked. The filling is ready, though it doesn't taste quite as good as I thought it might.

I still have some leftover pumpkin puree, though I dispatched most of it in two loaves of pumpkin-pecan bread. Here's the thing I've found about pumpkin: it has a really distinctive flavor before you bake it into something, but that flavor doesn't really carry through to the end product. I used a mix of canned pumpkin and puree I had made myself. The canned pumpkin does seem to have more concentrated flavor--I used just canned puree in the ice cream I made, and it retained that tangy flavor. Perhaps homemade pumpkin is best in its pure form and used as a filling for pasta or base for soup. Someday when I have enough counter space to make pumpkin ravioli, I'll let you know.