The “in between” holiday cooking: What do you make from Thanksgiving to Christmas?

What are your at menus at home like from Thanksgiving to Christmas outside of holiday baking? Do you try to keep meals lighter? Are you going to holiday parties and have a bare fridge? Is there really no change until it gets closer to the actual holiday? Our schedules are kind of guiding some newer things happening in the kitchen.

Since we will on the go so much over the next week, and I hate food waste we are using up what’s already in our fridge. I dumped a bunch of leftovers and heated them up together in a bowl. I think it turned out like a make shift version of Shepard’s pie. The bottom of the bowl has some beef broth topped with roast beef, peas, and Creamy Parmesan Polenta. It was warm and yummy comfort type food.

 

Since garlic is so good for you and it’s cold and flu season, I’ve  made garlic butter a few times by wrapping entire heads of garlic in foil and putting them in the oven at 350 for about 25 minutes. Then I smash out the gooey, roasted garlic with the back of spoon and mix with butter and chives and/or parsley. We’ve used it in place of butter in certain recipes for extra flavor and added it to bread to make garlic bread. The third picture below is the garlic bread servers with some easy Buffalo Meatballs.

 

 

Our herbs JUST NOW stopped growing! I set them on a baking stone and put in the oven at 185 with the door slightly open to dry out what were not going to use up while it was fresh. We used some and the rest we sent to school for teacher’s gifts.

 

My husband is still trying to keep it healthy. Which is good because on this day in particular I went to lunch with a co-worker and had a chicken fried steak lunch with 4 sides of carbs! It was cold. I was tired. I needed a food hug . . .

Lastly, and I don’t have a picture of it unfortunately, I’ve been making bone broth. I know you’ll be shocked to know that we have been sick a lot off and on, and bone broth is supposed to be excellent for immunity. I saved the turkey bones from Thanksgiving and we’ve had a roast chicken since then too I’ve used.

I put the bones in the largest pot we have. I have read true bone broth is pretty much bones only, but I throw in garlic, onions, celery, carrots, and salt and pepper. I fill the pot with water and bring to a boil. Then I reduce the heat and simmer for several hours, the longer the better. After the broth cools I use it to make soup out of. It takes a long time, but it’s not very labor intensive. After Thanksgiving I made turkey noodle soup, and that was a great way to use up a lot of leftovers.

So that’s what’s been going on in our kitchen since Thanksgiving. What’s been going on in yours?