Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / How to Turn Leftovers into Fancy New Year’s Meals 2026

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How to Turn Leftovers into Fancy New Year’s Meals 2026 · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:00
  Nancy May: Hey, Sylvia.
• 0:01
  Happy New Year.
• 0:02
  It's 2026.
• 0:03
  Can you believe it?
• 0:05
  Sylvia Lovely: No time has just gone by too fast.
• 0:08
  Nancy May: Absolutely.
• 0:09
  And speaking of time, I don't know about you, but I look in my
• 0:12
  refrigerator and I immediately think, okay, that was Christmas.
• 0:17
  That was the holidays.
• 0:18
  I mean?
• 0:19
  I don't want it to turn green, but what do I do with all the leftovers?
• 0:21
  Oh my
• 0:22
  Sylvia Lovely: I know, and you know, there's some really good stuff in there.
• 0:25
  And then there's some stuff that's maybe not so usable, but if
• 0:28
  you're like me and I'm a leftover queen, I don't like to waste food.
• 0:32
  And you know, they say like 30 to 40% of leftover.
• 0:34
  Christmas and New Year's stuff gets thrown out and I'll admit I do some of that.
• 0:38
  'cause sometimes what I do, I don't know if you do it or not, I'll have
• 0:41
  stuff left over from like Christmas and that's like seven or eight days later.
• 0:45
  It's
• 0:45
  probably not even good for you.
• 0:48
  Nancy May: Right.
• 0:48
  Of course.
• 0:48
  When you said 30 to 40% of holiday food gets tossed, I'm
• 0:52
  thinking No, not the fruitcake.
• 0:55
  Sylvia Lovely: oh U
• 0:56
  Nancy May: oh, oh, wait a second.
• 0:57
  you think about dips and everything else like that.
• 1:00
  Dips are one of my favorite leftovers.
• 1:03
  There's something about.
• 1:05
  Dip that I like a couple of days later, especially with carrots and
• 1:09
  celery jokes, kind of makes me think that I'm starting the diet early
• 1:13
  And my mom used to have this dip that she made with saucy.
• 1:17
  SSUA dash SEE shrimp cocktail that used to come the little tiny juice
• 1:23
  jars with the lids, and they had little teeny tiny shrimp in them, and
• 1:27
  she would use that with cream cheese.
• 1:29
  And God, I could just eat that and nothing else.
• 1:32
  But a couple of days later it was even better.
• 1:35
  So, yeah.
• 1:35
  Sylvia Lovely: oh, I know.
• 1:36
  And you know what?
• 1:37
  Just uh, burst your bubble.
• 1:39
  They're not lower in calories.
• 1:41
  Nancy May: Oh, not because I'm using the carrots in the
• 1:43
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 1:44
  There you go.
• 1:44
  I've done that too.
• 1:45
  Or pair things up with Turkey.
• 1:47
  Nancy May: or it's a day later, so therefore the calories must have
• 1:49
  fallen out of the fridge somewhere.
• 1:51
  Right?
• 1:52
  But what do you do with leftover cranberry sauce?
• 1:53
  I have no
• 1:54
  idea what to do with
• 1:55
  that.
• 1:55
  Sylvia Lovely: oh, I got a great idea on that one.
• 1:57
  cause there's a lot of combos now of like bacon and maple syrup and stuff, I mean,
• 2:02
  it's really going on out there, right?
• 2:04
  So when you're putting together that Turkey sandwich, which by the way is a US
• 2:07
  kinda thing, people do Turkey sandwiches a lot and they have to dress 'em up, right?
• 2:12
  So one of the ways, getting back to your point about, calories.
• 2:15
  Well, Turkey has barely any calories, so you just put that big old Turkey
• 2:20
  slice on the bread, and then you layer on some of that delicious dressing
• 2:25
  Nancy May: Stuffing.
• 2:26
  Stuffing.
• 2:26
  Oh, we gotta get your oyster dressing.
• 2:28
  Your oyster is
• 2:28
  Sylvia Lovely: I know and you didn't, you failed me.
• 2:30
  Okay.
• 2:30
  So anyway, yeah, you got another chance, a 2026 chance, But, put a layer of dressing
• 2:36
  and then try some cranberry sauce.
• 2:38
  like a sweet and sour almost, and sauce is good, right?
• 2:42
  Your Turkey and your cranberry sauce can make up for that
• 2:45
  layer of stuffing that I love.
• 2:47
  And then you have bread, of course.
• 2:49
  So you have bread, bread, bread,
• 2:49
  bread.
• 2:49
  bread bread
• 2:50
  that's kind of good, I like it.
• 2:52
  Nancy May: speaking of trying to cut calories in the New Years, which
• 2:55
  is, I think everybody's thinking, oh my god, bathing suit season.
• 2:57
  Where's that bikini?
• 2:58
  Ha I passed that years
• 3:00
  ago, but
• 3:01
  Sylvia Lovely: Uhhuh, Uhhuh.
• 3:03
  Nancy May: even, still, so I think the leftovers, or I'm gonna guess
• 3:06
  at the leftovers down south, are a little different than the ones
• 3:09
  that I grew up with up north
• 3:11
  because, north I'm thinking we still have the potatoes and everything else
• 3:15
  like that, but spinach, like cream spinach y don't like cream spinach.
• 3:19
  So I don't do that.
• 3:21
  And I'm thinking of, creamed
• 3:23
  onions.
• 3:23
  The pearl onions.
• 3:24
  we do that up north.
• 3:25
  That's not a big thing or the candid yams.
• 3:28
  Do you do candid yams?
• 3:29
  Sylvia Lovely: absolutely.
• 3:30
  It
• 3:30
  would not be a table without that.
• 3:32
  Oh yes, that is.
• 3:33
  really good stuff.
• 3:34
  Well, how about Black eyed peas?
• 3:35
  Nancy May: You know, I didn't even know what a black IP was
• 3:38
  till I met a Southerner up north.
• 3:40
  Sylvia Lovely: Well then you've been having bad luck for no reason.
• 3:42
  You should have had those.
• 3:43
  And my mother-in-law, you couldn't get out of her house without
• 3:46
  eating at least one black eyed pea.
• 3:48
  Now you are gonna have 'em leftover.
• 3:49
  'cause most people don't like them, so you gotta stuff them into something.
• 3:53
  And how about soup?
• 3:54
  Okay, soup's a good
• 3:55
  place.
• 3:56
  Or later on I talk a little bit and we talk about, Turkey Tetrazzini.
• 4:00
  Hmm.
• 4:01
  Okay.
• 4:02
  Cream sauce, a few Black eyed peas stowed away in there.
• 4:06
  See, imagine what your life will be like when you start eating a black eyed pea
• 4:10
  Nancy May: I've, I've, gotta become a southerner.
• 4:11
  I say gator girl down south.
• 4:13
  Or collard greens.
• 4:14
  That's another thing I'd never heard of eating those up
• 4:17
  north,
• 4:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Those are so good.
• 4:19
  Nancy May: But
• 4:19
  you have to cook them in bacon grease, right?
• 4:21
  Sylvia Lovely: Absolutely.
• 4:21
  Bacon is a big deal.
• 4:22
  Okay.
• 4:23
  You gotta eat your bacon.
• 4:24
  Nancy May: and pork is a good luck food for the first of the year,
• 4:26
  as I understand, because pigs root going forward where chickens and
• 4:31
  Turkey is probably not good luck because they scratch backwards.
• 4:34
  So that's a little bit of the good luck foods.
• 4:36
  Sylvia Lovely: It may be a health food, but eating too many slices of honey
• 4:40
  baked ham is probably not good for you.
• 4:42
  It's the kind of ham you can just like strip off a piece and just walk through
• 4:46
  the house like you would a brownie and just nibble on honey baked ham.
• 4:51
  I mean it's just so good.
• 4:53
  It's like candy or mac and cheese, all those.
• 4:56
  Things.
• 4:57
  but you know what you eventually do, and that's why we call this segment
• 5:00
  kind of conflictedness, because you wanna be a good person and eat up
• 5:04
  what's in that refrigerator, right?
• 5:06
  that's what we owe to the world.
• 5:08
  You know, those turkeys died for us, those ham bones, all of that stuff.
• 5:12
  So eventually the war is going on inside of you, the conflictedness, and then
• 5:16
  finally it's like, well, I owe this to the world to go ahead and eat these leftovers
• 5:21
  Nancy May: And you owe it to the Turkey and you owe it to the pig,
• 5:24
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Oh yeah.
• 5:25
  you just gotta do it but it doesn't hurt to be a little creative, right?
• 5:29
  Where you kind of disguise stuff.
• 5:30
  Nancy May: and we wanna start the year off on the positive note, because all
• 5:34
  that we've spent and everybody's spent over Christmas and the Hanukkah and
• 5:38
  the Jewish holidays, it gets expensive.
• 5:40
  Whether it's a party that you're throwing or doing for somebody else or bringing
• 5:43
  the family, it's time to sort of tighten our belts and more ways than one and
• 5:48
  be, fiscally responsible in the fridge or socially responsible in the fridge.
• 5:53
  Sylvia Lovely: you can wait till February to get on the bike.
• 5:55
  Nancy May: the bandwagon.
• 5:56
  Okay.
• 5:56
  Give me a day or so.
• 5:58
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:58
  You gotta give yourself some grace.
• 6:00
  I'm into that philosophy, Give yourself a
• 6:02
  Nancy May: do it.
• 6:03
  Sylvia Lovely: Self-help.
• 6:03
  What about a contest though?
• 6:05
  Nancy May: I'm in for it.
• 6:05
  Let's go.
• 6:06
  Sylvia Lovely: All right.
• 6:06
  So you either say at the end, we'll each name a combo.
• 6:10
  Okay.
• 6:11
  Weird food.
• 6:11
  Okay.
• 6:12
  Eat it or toss it.
• 6:14
  so what's your food?
• 6:14
  Tell me a weird one.
• 6:16
  Nancy May: Well, , I think people eat pizza in between everything,
• 6:20
  so you get tired of the turkeys.
• 6:22
  It's You gotta have a takeout pizza.
• 6:23
  'cause who wants to cook?
• 6:24
  We're tired of cooking.
• 6:26
  Do you, first of all, is there leftover pizza?
• 6:28
  I think there is.
• 6:29
  But do you eat it or do you toss it?
• 6:32
  Sylvia Lovely: I love leftover pizza.
• 6:34
  Nancy May: I had a friend who used to put mayonnaise on cold pizza.
• 6:37
  Like, ugh, yuck.
• 6:38
  Sylvia Lovely: I can eat pizza any time of the day.
• 6:41
  I mean, I love cold pizza for breakfast and it makes other people around me gag.
• 6:45
  Nancy May: Okay.
• 6:45
  All right.
• 6:46
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, I was trying to figure out what you would
• 6:47
  do if you had mashed potatoes.
• 6:50
  So you get, eat it, you get a score.
• 6:52
  so, you know, I was trying to think, oh man, I've got mashed potatoes, I've
• 6:56
  got collared greens, and I've got, Other kind of greenish stuff like green
• 7:01
  beans and Now you said up in the north you never had that collared greens
• 7:05
  are so good though in bacon grease.
• 7:07
  I mean, they're so good.
• 7:08
  Bacon.
• 7:08
  Anything is good.
• 7:09
  So go for it.
• 7:10
  Okay, So here's what I think you would do.
• 7:12
  I think you take your collared greens, you take all your green stuff
• 7:15
  like green beans and whatever else somebody demanded that you have peas.
• 7:20
  anything you have and you mix it all together into a brothy soup.
• 7:25
  Okay?
• 7:25
  Here's the broth
• 7:26
  Nancy May: are you using one of those, sticks that blend it,
• 7:29
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, and then here's what you do.
• 7:30
  you put it all together in that broth where you put the Turkey body,
• 7:34
  Nancy May: Like in a
• 7:35
  crock pot.
• 7:36
  Sylvia Lovely: That's what my son does, and it makes this delicious broth.
• 7:39
  So you mix all of that together, all your greens and your black-eyed peas
• 7:43
  that are left over in the south.
• 7:46
  just, work with me here and on the side to accompany that.
• 7:49
  You don't have bread like you might typically do.
• 7:51
  You have.
• 7:52
  Your mashed potatoes, they're buttering, they're wonderful, but
• 7:55
  you don't wanna just warm them up.
• 7:57
  You put in an egg and some cornmeal and you fry the patties.
• 8:01
  Nancy May: Oh, that's kind of interesting
• 8:03
  Sylvia Lovely: and you have that soup, and you don't even taste the
• 8:06
  colored greens or the black-eyed pea.
• 8:07
  It's all part of that brothy soup.
• 8:09
  what do you think?
• 8:10
  Nancy May: well, this sounds very interesting because that mashed
• 8:13
  potatoes with the, you said cornmeal
• 8:16
  Sylvia Lovely: I put in cornmeal.
• 8:17
  Don't even follow a recipe.
• 8:19
  Just put in an egg, stir it up, that's the binder.
• 8:22
  and then, you have a little bit of corn meal.
• 8:25
  I guess some people might use flour, but I like cornmeal 'cause it gives it that
• 8:28
  kind of crunchy taste and it is delicious.
• 8:31
  Nancy May: So we had the episode, a couple weeks back on blended families
• 8:36
  with Magdalena Dy berg, she was talking about latkes, which are potato pancakes.
• 8:41
  This is kind of a southern version of a potato pancake, I would say.
• 8:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 8:46
  There's versions of that everywhere they have the big Swedish.
• 8:49
  Influence in Duluth in Northern Minnesota.
• 8:52
  And they were having a Christmas festival and Ross was telling me about
• 8:55
  buying, I what is their version of that?
• 8:57
  It's a potato cake,
• 8:58
  Well, Locks are also for the Jewish holidays, basically taking home fries.
• 9:03
  Or hash browns like taking hash browns and.
• 9:05
  So you eat it or
• 9:06
  Nancy May: well, you know, I, probably would eat the potato, but
• 9:08
  the other doesn't sound so good to me.
• 9:11
  So I think you got a
• 9:12
  50 50 there.
• 9:14
  Sylvia Lovely: nah.
• 9:14
  Nancy May: Do you have one more?
• 9:15
  Sylvia Lovely: I guess the only one I can come up with is that
• 9:18
  soup is just such a life saver
• 9:21
  ' Nancy May: Oh, I would agree.
• 9:21
  Sylvia Lovely: cause you can put so much stuff in it.
• 9:24
  And it makes me think of Kentucky Bergue where the old saying is if there's a snake
• 9:28
  on the branch of the tree and you got the pot of Bergue, that's steaming away.
• 9:33
  If the snake falls in, so be it.
• 9:35
  So don't try this at home.
• 9:37
  Nancy May: I like the name Bergue because it sounds very Oh-la
• 9:41
  la versus just Turkey soup.
• 9:44
  So I
• 9:45
  would say that's an eat it.
• 9:46
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, really?
• 9:47
  Yay.
• 9:48
  Nancy May: o of course.
• 9:48
  With a popover on the side,
• 9:50
  Sylvia Lovely: There you go.
• 9:51
  and you know, desserts are another thing.
• 9:52
  Like you get a, piece of cheesecake, somebody will send like two or
• 9:56
  three different kinds of pies home and stuff, and those go quickly.
• 9:59
  Nancy May: have pie for breakfast.
• 10:01
  Sylvia Lovely: oh, me too.
• 10:01
  and quiche.
• 10:02
  You can do a lot with quiche.
• 10:05
  you can put any kind of meat in a quiche like, it calls for bacon,
• 10:09
  but I put ham in it sometimes,
• 10:11
  Nancy May: You can put those collards in there.
• 10:13
  and
• 10:13
  quiche is really good.
• 10:15
  Cold,
• 10:15
  Sylvia Lovely: It is.
• 10:16
  how weird we are.
• 10:17
  Nancy May: Well, let's take a quick break because we've got some other ideas for
• 10:22
  leftovers because let's say, gotta do a little looking back to move forward.
• 10:26
  Stay tuned.
• 10:27
  We'll be right back.
• 10:29
  Sylvia, we're back with some ideas for leftovers and we did the
• 10:33
  contest thing.
• 10:34
  They,
• 10:34
  eat it or toss it,
• 10:35
  Sylvia Lovely: And I believe I won.
• 10:37
  Nancy May: Yeah.
• 10:37
  Well I think you did too.
• 10:40
  You didn't gimme the chance, yeah, let's talk about some other interesting things.
• 10:45
  So a thing of the south, but I think this is also of the north too, are fritters.
• 10:50
  My dad used to love fritters.
• 10:52
  Anytime he heard about fritters, his eyes would light up.
• 10:55
  But you can do a lot with I would call them.
• 10:58
  You know how they have the donut holes at Dunking Donuts?
• 11:01
  Sylvia Lovely: yes.
• 11:02
  That was so
• 11:02
  Nancy May: I would call a fritter.
• 11:04
  A donut hole, A savory donut hole, wouldn't
• 11:07
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 11:08
  cause 'cause they're little,
• 11:09
  and that's the best kind of fritter.
• 11:11
  we serve cheese fritters at our restaurant and they're one of the most popular items,
• 11:14
  but they've been making them big lately.
• 11:16
  And I said, no.
• 11:17
  they're supposed to be tiny, tiny.
• 11:20
  And technically you wanna hear what technically they are.
• 11:22
  Any kind of meat, seafood.
• 11:24
  Even fruit or vegetables, that are fried up in a batter.
• 11:28
  And sometimes you like the batter as much as you like whatever's inside of them.
• 11:32
  You know what I'm talking about, when this was just really good batter
• 11:36
  and you just wanna eat the crumblies
• 11:37
  Nancy May: Now, do you use a, corn batter, like a, corn cake
• 11:41
  batter or white flour batter?
• 11:43
  Sylvia Lovely: no, a cornmeal bat.
• 11:44
  We're, We're, big on cornmeal out here in the, we're up here in the south.
• 11:48
  Up here in the
• 11:50
  Nancy May: Yeah, that's right.
• 11:50
  You were up there in the south from Florida.
• 11:52
  That's right.
• 11:52
  you're upper south.
• 11:54
  we're lower New York.
• 11:55
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah, so I thought that's kind of interesting
• 11:57
  'cause I never actually knew that fritters actually had a definition.
• 12:00
  then of course there's soup.
• 12:01
  What do you think?
• 12:02
  Nancy May: Soup.
• 12:02
  Well, when I had gone to college as girls thought that they were trying to
• 12:06
  kill us at school, because one of the first lunches that we had, and this
• 12:09
  was down south in Virginia, was corn fritters with bean and bacon soup, and.
• 12:14
  A side of bacon and we all looked at each other 'cause we're from up north
• 12:18
  thinking they're going to kill us.
• 12:20
  But those fritters were pretty good.
• 12:21
  I have to admit, a and bacon soup I can do without
• 12:25
  Sylvia Lovely: No.
• 12:25
  Nancy May: Mm
• 12:26
  Sylvia Lovely: Now.
• 12:27
  let me ask you a question, and it's not necessarily about leftovers.
• 12:30
  Can I ask you an off, off subject question?
• 12:32
  If I'm in Florida and I go into a breakfast
• 12:35
  place, can I get gravy and biscuits?
• 12:39
  Nancy May: that is a very good question because the answer is yes.
• 12:43
  In fact, this morning we went out to early breakfast 'cause we had to
• 12:47
  get some things done early and Bob ordered his breakfast with a biscuit
• 12:52
  and it automatically came with a side of gravy.
• 12:55
  And of course, I look at gravy.
• 12:57
  My idea in the north of gravy is brown stuff that you
• 13:00
  put on, right.
• 13:02
  Brown stuff.
• 13:03
  And the gravy down here is, white.
• 13:06
  And my sister had found out about gravy when she went to Oklahoma and put on
• 13:10
  a few pounds when I so her afterwards.
• 13:13
  all of a sudden she's got this, sorry Cindy if you're listening, but she's
• 13:16
  got this sort of Midwestern accent.
• 13:18
  Oh my God, they have the best food here.
• 13:21
  Now.
• 13:21
  This is a New Yorker.
• 13:22
  Uh.
• 13:23
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 13:24
  Nancy May: Then says they have biscuits and gravy, like, what's gravy?
• 13:28
  And I find out from my aunt and my uncle, who was from Oklahoma, said,
• 13:32
  it's bacon, grease and flour or sausage.
• 13:35
  And I'm like,
• 13:36
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 13:37
  Nancy May: again, trying to kill me.
• 13:39
  So yeah,
• 13:40
  Sylvia Lovely: gravy.
• 13:41
  There is
• 13:41
  nothing better than
• 13:42
  Nancy May: that.
• 13:43
  Yeah.
• 13:43
  That's not my thing.
• 13:44
  Sylvia Lovely: it's just, well, I'm trying to stay away from it,
• 13:46
  but,
• 13:46
  I could just eat a. Huge gravy boat of that anyway.
• 13:51
  Uh, beef, hard to imagine.
• 13:53
  It's leftover, but it doesn't make good chili.
• 13:55
  I mean, you know, even chunks of beef like
• 13:57
  steak.
• 13:57
  Who would leave steak?
• 13:58
  Right?
• 13:59
  Nancy May: right here's, a brief suggestion for leftovers Shepherd's
• 14:02
  pie, So you've got, beef shank or whatever it is, and you grind
• 14:06
  it all up in small little pieces.
• 14:07
  So this is not beef as in hamburger beef.
• 14:09
  And then you add all your leftover vegetables, so you can add your
• 14:13
  black-eyed peas, your corn, your whatever else along with your beef.
• 14:17
  And there are those leftover mashed potatoes that you can put on top.
• 14:22
  voila, you have a shepherd's pie.
• 14:25
  Delicious.
• 14:26
  Sylvia Lovely: Hmm.
• 14:26
  Yeah, just lots of stuff.
• 14:27
  Right?
• 14:28
  Nancy May: and it's crusty, you know, you get the potato
• 14:30
  on top of it and it's nice and crusty on top
• 14:32
  Sylvia Lovely: like a chicken pot pie, huh?
• 14:33
  Nancy May: add a little paprika so it looks pretty
• 14:36
  and you're done.
• 14:37
  Sylvia Lovely: and they make them.
• 14:38
  Now in those minis, you could do that with your leftovers,
• 14:40
  Turkey pot pies and make tiny ones.
• 14:43
  It just tastes better.
• 14:44
  A small Coke tastes better than a big Coke.
• 14:46
  Nancy May: I guess so.
• 14:47
  Although a big glass of champagne always tastes better than a small
• 14:49
  glass of champagne.
• 14:50
  Sylvia Lovely: speaking of that, I can't imagine anybody has that
• 14:53
  leftover, but what do you do with it?
• 14:54
  Nancy May: Well, apparently you can make champagne vinegar with it.
• 14:58
  I never even thought about that.
• 14:59
  We'll have to get the recipe and put it in the show notes because I
• 15:02
  haven't quite figured that one out
• 15:03
  again, like you said, because who has leftover champagne?
• 15:07
  Sylvia Lovely: I know.
• 15:09
  The other night I was sleepy at dinner and I couldn't remember why and then I was
• 15:13
  like, oh, I was went to a women lawyer's luncheon today and they served champagne
• 15:17
  Nancy May: That'll do it.
• 15:18
  Champagne and
• 15:18
  Prosecco.
• 15:19
  Yep.
• 15:20
  Sylvia Lovely: it was very nice.
• 15:21
  It was very good.
• 15:21
  Nancy May: My mom discovered Prosecco when we were in Italy one year together and
• 15:25
  said, oh, I'll have Prosecco, Prosecco.
• 15:29
  Sylvia Lovely: Now, tell me about that because I don't typically do that.
• 15:31
  Is that that kind of bubbly champagne, right?
• 15:34
  Nancy May: Well, it's, sparkling wine is what I would call
• 15:36
  Prosecco is sparkling Italian wine.
• 15:38
  So
• 15:39
  Sylvia Lovely: but it's very good ' cause there's
• 15:40
  some,
• 15:41
  Nancy May: good.
• 15:41
  Versus champagne is supposed to be from France, so
• 15:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, you are so cool.
• 15:47
  You are too cool for school.
• 15:48
  I love
• 15:49
  that.
• 15:49
  Nancy May: yeah.
• 15:49
  I may be incorrect, but I would call Prosecco Italian champagne.
• 15:53
  And then, here's another leftover.
• 15:55
  This is something that Bob shared with me that his stepmother Barbara
• 16:00
  used to when they were kids, and they called it Moc Sukiyaki.
• 16:03
  Now, this was some leftover rice and anything that was in the refrigerator.
• 16:09
  With some chopped up lettuce, a little bit of egg, and some soy
• 16:12
  sauce, and a voila moc sukiyaki.
• 16:15
  And I said, was it good?
• 16:16
  He says, well, it didn't look so good, but it was delicious.
• 16:19
  So
• 16:19
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah, those are good tastes.
• 16:20
  Nancy May: soy, sauce and rice makes everything taste good.
• 16:22
  I guess
• 16:23
  Sylvia Lovely: I love soy sauce on just about anything you can, like,
• 16:26
  cover up an awful lot of things.
• 16:27
  Sounds
• 16:27
  a little bit like chop suey.
• 16:29
  Nancy May: right?
• 16:30
  Sylvia Lovely: I heard it described as awful.
• 16:32
  Nancy May: or the chunkin chop suey.
• 16:34
  My mom used to bring that out in the
• 16:36
  can like, ugh,
• 16:37
  awful.
• 16:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Awful is what it's made out of.
• 16:39
  That innards of animals.
• 16:41
  Nancy May: Yeah, well, we'll go there on another show, but you mentioned
• 16:44
  Turkey tini, so It's a Turkey slushie without the ice,
• 16:48
  Sylvia Lovely: you got some leftover cheese, leftover meat.
• 16:50
  Probably just have to get you some mushrooms.
• 16:52
  You probably got spaghettis somewhere in your kitchen.
• 16:55
  And cream sauce.
• 16:56
  People can do that, right?
• 16:57
  it's called a pasta kind of bake, and you can have pasta, brain fog.
• 17:01
  Nancy May: Add a little wine to it and voila.
• 17:03
  You're cooking like Julia, some butter and you're done.
• 17:07
  So when you have all these other leftovers and you're getting tired of the moc
• 17:10
  sukiyaki and the Chicken tetrazzini and everything else that goes in there,
• 17:14
  here's an idea that I recommend because.
• 17:17
  My mom did something like this, and then we've modified it, you know, those
• 17:21
  winter squashes, those little teeny tiny things, the green acorn squashes that
• 17:25
  have the orange spot on the side of them.
• 17:27
  Take one of those, cut them in half, hollow them out, and
• 17:30
  then you roast it in the oven.
• 17:32
  And then what you do is you stuff it when it's roasted, almost roasted
• 17:36
  to the end, and you stuff it with quinoa and all those vegetables.
• 17:39
  You saute them almost like you would a, fried rice type of thing.
• 17:42
  Stuff it in there.
• 17:43
  If you wanna add a little tangy flavor, you can add some chunks of, goat cheese
• 17:48
  and then you put it back in the oven.
• 17:50
  You stuff each side, you put 'em back in the oven and put
• 17:53
  a little breadcrumbs on top.
• 17:54
  With butter so they get
• 17:55
  Sylvia Lovely: Yummy.
• 17:56
  Nancy May: It is delicious.
• 17:57
  Uh, better than anything.
• 17:59
  And if you want it sweet, you can always put a little maple syrup on
• 18:01
  the top too, but I don't like it.
• 18:02
  I like the savory versus
• 18:03
  sweet.
• 18:04
  Sylvia Lovely: so
• 18:04
  like little tiny things.
• 18:05
  Again, I keep going back to tiny things.
• 18:07
  I
• 18:07
  Nancy May: Well, and they can be pretty big too, but now leftovers
• 18:10
  is actually a worldly thing,
• 18:12
  believe it or not.
• 18:13
  I haven't thought about leftovers as being worldly.
• 18:15
  Did you?
• 18:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, no, you gotta figure though.
• 18:18
  Everybody has leftovers and everybody's doing the same thing.
• 18:21
  We are.
• 18:22
  They're conflicted.
• 18:23
  They're just like us, but they kind of wanna do the right thing.
• 18:26
  And so because they don't want to diet, they're just gonna go ahead and
• 18:30
  do the wrong thing and eat everything that's there, and repurpose it.
• 18:33
  Why not?
• 18:34
  give yourself a little grace in January.
• 18:36
  Nancy May: I don't think there's anything wrong with leftovers, as long
• 18:38
  as it's not, moldy green and growing something else like a Petri dish.
• 18:41
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, what about Italy?
• 18:43
  You have Arancini Balls,
• 18:44
  Nancy May: yeah, Arancini Balls now, so that's kind of interesting.
• 18:47
  Leftover cheese from, the displays that you would have at Christmas
• 18:51
  time and then, something called.
• 18:54
  Sylvia Lovely: what are you talking about still on there?
• 18:55
  Arancini Balls
• 18:56
  Nancy May: Yeah.
• 18:56
  Arancini Balls.
• 18:57
  So it's just,
• 18:58
  your leftover cheeses, you could do just about anything with that.
• 19:00
  Right?
• 19:01
  Sylvia Lovely: there's rice in them, and you mix all that together and you coat
• 19:04
  the outside a little bit like a fritter.
• 19:06
  we serve those at the restaurant Arancini Balls.
• 19:09
  Nancy May: So you're serving leftovers at the restaurant.
• 19:12
  Sylvia Lovely: actually that's true.
• 19:14
  Well, you don't serve leftovers.
• 19:15
  What you do is because of food costs.
• 19:17
  I mean, they're very expensive.
• 19:19
  if people didn't eat all the, beef that you ordered or something, then you make
• 19:23
  soups out of it and stuff like that.
• 19:25
  So it's good food.
• 19:25
  It's not old food but it's using, it's being stewardship.
• 19:29
  It's good.
• 19:29
  stewardship of the ingredients.
• 19:32
  Yeah.
• 19:32
  Nancy May: Stewardship of the animal and the produce.
• 19:34
  So that is good.
• 19:35
  And then you have, Robollita I think that's how it's pronounced.
• 19:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, it looks beautiful.
• 19:40
  I wish we had a picture of it.
• 19:41
  It's reboiled pasta.
• 19:43
  It looks like rings of pasta.
• 19:45
  It's from reheating the previous day.
• 19:48
  minestrone soup?
• 19:49
  I didn't know those two things were separate.
• 19:51
  I thought minestrone soup, but are they separate?
• 19:53
  Is there something called minestrone that's not soup?
• 19:56
  Do you know that?
• 19:56
  Nancy May: know.
• 19:57
  I never heard of it.
• 19:58
  I thought It was Minestrone
• 19:59
  Yeah.
• 19:59
  Sylvia Lovely: And stale bread, a lot of stale bread in these
• 20:03
  of repurposing cannellini beans or whatever beans you have.
• 20:07
  'cause you might have black eyed pea again.
• 20:09
  They keep bubbling up.
• 20:10
  and then you put 'em all together and it's got tomato sauce and
• 20:14
  Reba Lita, I don't, it may be the
• 20:16
  Nancy May: Well, it means we
• 20:17
  Sylvia Lovely: n
• 20:17
  Nancy May: Italian, which is kind of
• 20:18
  interesting.
• 20:19
  So you're taking all this stuff and you're basically
• 20:21
  creating a
• 20:22
  potluck soup
• 20:23
  Italian style.
• 20:25
  Sylvia Lovely: with stale bread.
• 20:25
  So, yeah.
• 20:26
  Keep that one in mind folks.
• 20:27
  Nancy May: You know, I'd never heard a
• 20:28
  put about putting stale bread into tomato soup, but apparently
• 20:31
  that's used a lot in tomato
• 20:33
  soup as a thickener.
• 20:34
  Sylvia Lovely: And a lot of, deconstructed kinds of
• 20:37
  Nancy May: Mm-hmm.
• 20:38
  Sylvia Lovely: lasagna can be deconstructed and eaten in a different
• 20:41
  way, that just makes it more appealing
• 20:43
  Nancy May: There are lots of ways we can do, we should do a show in lasagna
• 20:46
  because there's a lot you can do with what traditional Italian lasagna
• 20:49
  could be, but the great Brits or the the great Brits, the Great Britain,
• 20:54
  we'll just call them the great Brits.
• 20:55
  Have something that they refer to as Bubble and Squeak, and
• 20:59
  this one just makes me laugh.
• 21:01
  Just the name alone, I can, I can think of like a, we have a puppy,
• 21:05
  so we think of squeaky dog toys and
• 21:07
  a few other things.
• 21:08
  but Bubble and Squeak is typically served on Boxing Day, which is December
• 21:13
  26th, but I think New Year's day or the day after New Year's applies too,
• 21:16
  because it's basically leftovers.
• 21:18
  The fried, leftover mashed potatoes cooked with vegetables
• 21:22
  and mushy, I think mushy cabbage, like stringy cabbage leftover.
• 21:26
  bland, leftover, leftover cabbage is kind of blah, formed into patty
• 21:30
  cakes or patties or cakes, not patty cakes, and then fried, and they
• 21:34
  make a bubble and squeaky noise, hence the name Bubble and Squeak.
• 21:39
  I love the name.
• 21:40
  I would make it just because of the name alone.
• 21:43
  And then you serve it with Sunday roast or other leftovers.
• 21:46
  And of course you can serve it with, Yorkshire Pudding, I'm thinking right
• 21:51
  now, or a popover, because I guess you can add some extra gravy to it too.
• 21:55
  Yorkshire pudding is typically served with gravy, not southern gravy, but
• 21:59
  round gravy.
• 22:00
  Yeah.
• 22:00
  Sylvia Lovely: Interesting.
• 22:01
  Almonds or anything.
• 22:03
  'cause you probably have those too.
• 22:05
  I mean, we've got a house full of stuff, right?
• 22:07
  So there's Indonesia and probably other cultures as well.
• 22:10
  interesting cl pancakes made with leftover rice pudding.
• 22:15
  Nancy May: not a fan of rice pudding, so that's kind of interesting.
• 22:17
  Yeah,
• 22:18
  I'm not sure I would eat that.
• 22:19
  The French, French toast.
• 22:21
  My mom used to make the best French toast when we were kids, cold winter mornings.
• 22:25
  I remember French toast also referred to in France as pan
• 22:29
  perdu (lost bread) stale bread.
• 22:31
  So it's thick, not the sandwich peppered farm kind of bread,
• 22:34
  although she made it with that, but it had to be a thicker bread.
• 22:37
  And then you make this, Sort of like a custard kind of mixture with eggs.
• 22:41
  So there's cream, there's milk, there's eggs.
• 22:43
  You add a little sugar, you can even add a little warm maple syrup
• 22:47
  to it to give a little sweetness.
• 22:49
  And then you soak your bread in that and you fry it up in a pan.
• 22:54
  add some powdered sugar if you want, but we always put butter and I put butter
• 22:57
  and jelly and maple syrup on it and
• 23:00
  delish, oh boy, does that bring me back home to being a kid.
• 23:07
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 23:08
  yeah.
• 23:08
  And remembering what mom,
• 23:10
  mom taught you and she learned it from somewhere and she
• 23:14
  learned it from somewhere and
• 23:15
  sometimes he learns it from somewhere
• 23:17
  Nancy May: And I have not made french toast
• 23:19
  as an adult.
• 23:21
  I have to try that
• 23:22
  Now that I'm into making sourdough.
• 23:24
  have to make sure it doesn't go stale, so well, maybe I should let it go
• 23:26
  stale so we can make some french toast.
• 23:32
  So starting New Year's off with a little looking backwards versus
• 23:37
  looking forwards with a delicious leftovers in 2025 is a good idea
• 23:42
  because we can make 2026 taste bitter.
• 23:45
  What do you think Sylvia?
• 23:50
  Sylvia Lovely: I a great idea and, um, I hope people us their ideas on
• 23:54
  leftovers because, you know, it's endless what you can do, and fuse
• 23:59
  Nancy May: interesting thing is I don't think I've ever
• 24:01
  seen a
• 24:02
  Sylvia Lovely: doing that, I said.
• 24:02
  Nancy May: leftovers.
• 24:03
  Maybe we'll have to look into something like That
• 24:10
  Sylvia Lovely: would very, I've thought that many of them and
• 24:13
  I p people's stuff together
• 24:15
  and Ah Test Kitchen
• 24:18
  Nancy May: Right test kitchens of family tree food and stories.
• 24:21
  If you've got a recipe or an idea, a concoction, a mixture, whatever it is,
• 24:25
  you just slam together in a bowl and eat.
• 24:27
  Maybe that's the best way to describe it as a leftover.
• 24:30
  Share your stories with us.
• 24:32
  Go to podcast out Family tree food stories.
• 24:34
  You can send us a note there or find us on Facebook.
• 24:37
  again, it's family tree, food and stories.
• 24:39
  On Facebook.
• 24:40
  We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.
• 24:42
  And don't forget, every meal has a story and every story has a
• 24:45
  feast, even if it is leftovers.
• 24:47
  Bye-bye.