Thanksgiving is just around the corner, close enough that I’m already thinking about the menu. My family generally has the ubiquitous turkey for dinner, albeit usually just a turkey breast along with ham and all the trimmings which vary slightly year by year.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

At the end of our feast, despite the fact that the menu seems to be shrinking each year, we end up like most Americans with leftovers. When our family gatherings were larger prior to the passing of grandparents, etc. leftovers would get farmed out, but these days we end up eating our holiday repast for days past the actual holiday.

To the best of my ability, the leftovers get turned into other clever meals or frozen but even so, there is always something to discard. My dad said his family always gave the scraps to the dogs and/or chickens. (I assume the chickens didn’t get any turkey though…) But in my household we had to find another solution.

So where do the Thanksgiving scraps go in my home? Most of them go in the freezer and the turkey carcass and ham bone get boiled down into stock, but what about the rest?

If I’ve planned things correctly, and it’s taken me years to get here, we won’t have anything to throw away. But anything that does need to be discarded goes in the compost bin.

Composting Leftovers

I live in the city so we subscribe to the municipal compost service which just happens to end until spring at the very end of November. This means that unusable scraps go in the compost bin. Unfortunately, this means that Christmas holiday scraps need to be dealt with in another manner.

I think the best way to resolve the issue of leftovers at Christmastime is to invite more people over. Better yet, I will hope someone invites me to dinner so they have to deal with the leftovers. Actually, this year, we are volunteering at our local food bank and yes, even they have leftovers.

I don’t live under a rock. I realize that this “problem” of what to do with leftovers is a luxury not everyone has. What a problem, eh? Too much to be thankful for.