Thanksgiving is a week past, and many of us are still ingesting Thanksgiving leftovers. That's all right; a good turkey sandwich on rye or whole wheat with mayo (I prefer Japanese mayo, but every cat has its own rat) is great, and cold ham makes a pretty decent snack. A roast pork has a million delicious uses. The Old Man used to buy a big pork roast every year at Thanksgiving; some folks may not know that you can buy the same cut of pork as you find in ham only uncured, and my Old Man used to like to stump the kid behind the counter at the butcher's shop in Decorah by asking for "green ham," as an uncured pork roast was known back in the day.
Some leftover uses, though, are a bit different.
Anyone who has raised a family knows that little kids can come up with some... interesting combinations. When our younger kids were little, I was in the early years of my career in medical manufacturing. My daughters insisted on packing Daddy's lunches, and they produced some unusual combinations; one day it might be ham and Swiss on rye, the next peanut butter, mustard, and green beans on pumpernickel. These masterpieces became the subject of much humor among my co-workers, and I started calling them "Schrödinger's sandwiches," as one never knew what was inside until you opened them up and looked.
Not that my friends and I were any better when we were young. Even into our teens and beyond, on hunting, camping, and fishing trips some odd things ended up in the stewpot. On one memorable occasion, my friend Jon and I killed a 'possum with a stick and strung it up over the fire to cook. It was, shall we say, unimpressive; greasy, and tough. We found out later that the preferred method of preparing 'possums was to capture them and feed them on clean food and water for a week before cooking, to get their normal diet of carrion and other unmentionables out of their system.
Around the holidays, the issue with leftovers made things even more unpredictable. One Christmas when my parents came out to spend the holiday with us, we had a pronghorn antelope tenderloin and a roast Canada goose for Christmas dinner; the dinner was great, but we had a good five pounds of leftovers. That led to a series of soups and stews, all of which were delicious, and some more Schrödinger's sandwiches, which were, shall we say, different.
T'was always thus, with leftovers.
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Young married couples, as my wife and I were back in those days, make the most of every calorie. I hunted a lot, and we ate a lot of venison. For the first few years of our marriage, my wife worked in an agricultural research laboratory, and on occasion, the control (untreated, untouched) animals from the lab were butchered and distributed to the staff, leading to some free and tasty bonuses.
On the holidays this practice was ramped up. A big elk roast for New Year's Day; elk sandwiches for lunch the next day, elk stew a few days after that, elk tacos or burritos the next week. One way or another, every bit got eaten.
Then my wife started the practice of combining any kind of leftover meat - venison, grouse, chicken, pork, antelope, whatever, with some spices, some chopped veggies, putting the whole thing in a pie crust and baking it.
Our kids christened them "Mom's Watchagot Pies," as when she was looking in the fridge for ingredients, she was fond of musing, "OK, watcha got?" The preparation was simple; make a pie crust, chop up the meat in fine cubes, place it in the pie crust, add a can of cream of onion or cream of mushroom soup, some peas, chopped carrots, and onions, and cover with more crust. Cook until the crust is golden brown.
It's surprising how good leftovers can be.
Brace yourselves. The Christmas season is now upon us, and there will be more family get-togethers, more holiday dinners, and more leftovers. To deal with those, you could do a lot worse than to find some pie crust and make up a few Whatchagot pies. It's a tradition in our family and one we'd be delighted to share.
