How to Turn Leftovers into Fancy New Year’s Meals 2026

Hey, Sylvia.

Happy New Year.

It's 2026.

Can you believe it?

No time has just gone by too fast.

Absolutely.

And speaking of time, I don't know about you, but I look in my

refrigerator and I immediately think, okay, that was Christmas.

That was the holidays.

I mean?

I don't want it to turn green, but what do I do with all the leftovers?

Oh my

I know, and you know, there's some really good stuff in there.

And then there's some stuff that's maybe not so usable, but if

you're like me and I'm a leftover queen, I don't like to waste food.

And you know, they say like 30 to 40% of leftover.

Christmas and New Year's stuff gets thrown out and I'll admit I do some of that.

'cause sometimes what I do, I don't know if you do it or not, I'll have

stuff left over from like Christmas and that's like seven or eight days later.

It's

probably not even good for you.

Right.

Of course.

When you said 30 to 40% of holiday food gets tossed, I'm

thinking No, not the fruitcake.

oh U

oh, oh, wait a second.

you think about dips and everything else like that.

Dips are one of my favorite leftovers.

There's something about.

Dip that I like a couple of days later, especially with carrots and

celery jokes, kind of makes me think that I'm starting the diet early

And my mom used to have this dip that she made with saucy.

SSUA dash SEE shrimp cocktail that used to come the little tiny juice

jars with the lids, and they had little teeny tiny shrimp in them, and

she would use that with cream cheese.

And God, I could just eat that and nothing else.

But a couple of days later it was even better.

So, yeah.

oh, I know.

And you know what?

Just uh, burst your bubble.

They're not lower in calories.

Oh, not because I'm using the carrots in the

Oh, yeah.

There you go.

I've done that too.

Or pair things up with Turkey.

or it's a day later, so therefore the calories must have

fallen out of the fridge somewhere.

Right?

But what do you do with leftover cranberry sauce?

I have no

idea what to do with

that.

oh, I got a great idea on that one.

cause there's a lot of combos now of like bacon and maple syrup and stuff, I mean,

it's really going on out there, right?

So when you're putting together that Turkey sandwich, which by the way is a US

kinda thing, people do Turkey sandwiches a lot and they have to dress 'em up, right?

So one of the ways, getting back to your point about, calories.

Well, Turkey has barely any calories, so you just put that big old Turkey

slice on the bread, and then you layer on some of that delicious dressing

Stuffing.

Stuffing.

Oh, we gotta get your oyster dressing.

Your oyster is

I know and you didn't, you failed me.

Okay.

So anyway, yeah, you got another chance, a 2026 chance, But, put a layer of dressing

and then try some cranberry sauce.

like a sweet and sour almost, and sauce is good, right?

Your Turkey and your cranberry sauce can make up for that

layer of stuffing that I love.

And then you have bread, of course.

So you have bread, bread, bread,

bread.

bread bread

that's kind of good, I like it.

speaking of trying to cut calories in the New Years, which

is, I think everybody's thinking, oh my god, bathing suit season.

Where's that bikini?

Ha I passed that years

ago, but

Uhhuh, Uhhuh.

even, still, so I think the leftovers, or I'm gonna guess

at the leftovers down south, are a little different than the ones

that I grew up with up north

because, north I'm thinking we still have the potatoes and everything else

like that, but spinach, like cream spinach y don't like cream spinach.

So I don't do that.

And I'm thinking of, creamed

onions.

The pearl onions.

we do that up north.

That's not a big thing or the candid yams.

Do you do candid yams?

absolutely.

It

would not be a table without that.

Oh yes, that is.

really good stuff.

Well, how about Black eyed peas?

You know, I didn't even know what a black IP was

till I met a Southerner up north.

Well then you've been having bad luck for no reason.

You should have had those.

And my mother-in-law, you couldn't get out of her house without

eating at least one black eyed pea.

Now you are gonna have 'em leftover.

'cause most people don't like them, so you gotta stuff them into something.

And how about soup?

Okay, soup's a good

place.

Or later on I talk a little bit and we talk about, Turkey Tetrazzini.

Hmm.

Okay.

Cream sauce, a few Black eyed peas stowed away in there.

See, imagine what your life will be like when you start eating a black eyed pea

I've, I've, gotta become a southerner.

I say gator girl down south.

Or collard greens.

That's another thing I'd never heard of eating those up

north,

Those are so good.

But

you have to cook them in bacon grease, right?

Absolutely.

Bacon is a big deal.

Okay.

You gotta eat your bacon.

and pork is a good luck food for the first of the year,

as I understand, because pigs root going forward where chickens and

Turkey is probably not good luck because they scratch backwards.

So that's a little bit of the good luck foods.

It may be a health food, but eating too many slices of honey

baked ham is probably not good for you.

It's the kind of ham you can just like strip off a piece and just walk through

the house like you would a brownie and just nibble on honey baked ham.

I mean it's just so good.

It's like candy or mac and cheese, all those.

Things.

but you know what you eventually do, and that's why we call this segment

kind of conflictedness, because you wanna be a good person and eat up

what's in that refrigerator, right?

that's what we owe to the world.

You know, those turkeys died for us, those ham bones, all of that stuff.

So eventually the war is going on inside of you, the conflictedness, and then

finally it's like, well, I owe this to the world to go ahead and eat these leftovers

And you owe it to the Turkey and you owe it to the pig,

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

you just gotta do it but it doesn't hurt to be a little creative, right?

Where you kind of disguise stuff.

and we wanna start the year off on the positive note, because all

that we've spent and everybody's spent over Christmas and the Hanukkah and

the Jewish holidays, it gets expensive.

Whether it's a party that you're throwing or doing for somebody else or bringing

the family, it's time to sort of tighten our belts and more ways than one and

be, fiscally responsible in the fridge or socially responsible in the fridge.

you can wait till February to get on the bike.

the bandwagon.

Okay.

Give me a day or so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You gotta give yourself some grace.

I'm into that philosophy, Give yourself a

do it.

Self-help.

What about a contest though?

I'm in for it.

Let's go.

All right.

So you either say at the end, we'll each name a combo.

Okay.

Weird food.

Okay.

Eat it or toss it.

so what's your food?

Tell me a weird one.

Well, , I think people eat pizza in between everything,

so you get tired of the turkeys.

It's You gotta have a takeout pizza.

'cause who wants to cook?

We're tired of cooking.

Do you, first of all, is there leftover pizza?

I think there is.

But do you eat it or do you toss it?

I love leftover pizza.

I had a friend who used to put mayonnaise on cold pizza.

Like, ugh, yuck.

I can eat pizza any time of the day.

I mean, I love cold pizza for breakfast and it makes other people around me gag.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I was trying to figure out what you would

do if you had mashed potatoes.

So you get, eat it, you get a score.

so, you know, I was trying to think, oh man, I've got mashed potatoes, I've

got collared greens, and I've got, Other kind of greenish stuff like green

beans and Now you said up in the north you never had that collared greens

are so good though in bacon grease.

I mean, they're so good.

Bacon.

Anything is good.

So go for it.

Okay, So here's what I think you would do.

I think you take your collared greens, you take all your green stuff

like green beans and whatever else somebody demanded that you have peas.

anything you have and you mix it all together into a brothy soup.

Okay?

Here's the broth

are you using one of those, sticks that blend it,

Yeah, and then here's what you do.

you put it all together in that broth where you put the Turkey body,

Like in a

crock pot.

That's what my son does, and it makes this delicious broth.

So you mix all of that together, all your greens and your black-eyed peas

that are left over in the south.

just, work with me here and on the side to accompany that.

You don't have bread like you might typically do.

You have.

Your mashed potatoes, they're buttering, they're wonderful, but

you don't wanna just warm them up.

You put in an egg and some cornmeal and you fry the patties.

Oh, that's kind of interesting

and you have that soup, and you don't even taste the

colored greens or the black-eyed pea.

It's all part of that brothy soup.

what do you think?

well, this sounds very interesting because that mashed

potatoes with the, you said cornmeal

I put in cornmeal.

Don't even follow a recipe.

Just put in an egg, stir it up, that's the binder.

and then, you have a little bit of corn meal.

I guess some people might use flour, but I like cornmeal 'cause it gives it that

kind of crunchy taste and it is delicious.

So we had the episode, a couple weeks back on blended families

with Magdalena Dy berg, she was talking about latkes, which are potato pancakes.

This is kind of a southern version of a potato pancake, I would say.

Yeah.

There's versions of that everywhere they have the big Swedish.

Influence in Duluth in Northern Minnesota.

And they were having a Christmas festival and Ross was telling me about

buying, I what is their version of that?

It's a potato cake,

Well, Locks are also for the Jewish holidays, basically taking home fries.

Or hash browns like taking hash browns and.

So you eat it or

well, you know, I, probably would eat the potato, but

the other doesn't sound so good to me.

So I think you got a

50 50 there.

nah.

Do you have one more?

I guess the only one I can come up with is that

soup is just such a life saver

' Nancy May: Oh, I would agree.

cause you can put so much stuff in it.

And it makes me think of Kentucky Bergue where the old saying is if there's a snake

on the branch of the tree and you got the pot of Bergue, that's steaming away.

If the snake falls in, so be it.

So don't try this at home.

I like the name Bergue because it sounds very Oh-la

la versus just Turkey soup.

So I

would say that's an eat it.

Oh, really?

Yay.

o of course.

With a popover on the side,

There you go.

and you know, desserts are another thing.

Like you get a, piece of cheesecake, somebody will send like two or

three different kinds of pies home and stuff, and those go quickly.

have pie for breakfast.

oh, me too.

and quiche.

You can do a lot with quiche.

you can put any kind of meat in a quiche like, it calls for bacon,

but I put ham in it sometimes,

You can put those collards in there.

and

quiche is really good.

Cold,

It is.

how weird we are.

Well, let's take a quick break because we've got some other ideas for

leftovers because let's say, gotta do a little looking back to move forward.

Stay tuned.

We'll be right back.

Sylvia, we're back with some ideas for leftovers and we did the

contest thing.

They,

eat it or toss it,

And I believe I won.

Yeah.

Well I think you did too.

You didn't gimme the chance, yeah, let's talk about some other interesting things.

So a thing of the south, but I think this is also of the north too, are fritters.

My dad used to love fritters.

Anytime he heard about fritters, his eyes would light up.

But you can do a lot with I would call them.

You know how they have the donut holes at Dunking Donuts?

yes.

That was so

I would call a fritter.

A donut hole, A savory donut hole, wouldn't

Yeah.

cause 'cause they're little,

and that's the best kind of fritter.

we serve cheese fritters at our restaurant and they're one of the most popular items,

but they've been making them big lately.

And I said, no.

they're supposed to be tiny, tiny.

And technically you wanna hear what technically they are.

Any kind of meat, seafood.

Even fruit or vegetables, that are fried up in a batter.

And sometimes you like the batter as much as you like whatever's inside of them.

You know what I'm talking about, when this was just really good batter

and you just wanna eat the crumblies

Now, do you use a, corn batter, like a, corn cake

batter or white flour batter?

no, a cornmeal bat.

We're, We're, big on cornmeal out here in the, we're up here in the south.

Up here in the

Yeah, that's right.

You were up there in the south from Florida.

That's right.

you're upper south.

we're lower New York.

yeah, so I thought that's kind of interesting

'cause I never actually knew that fritters actually had a definition.

then of course there's soup.

What do you think?

Soup.

Well, when I had gone to college as girls thought that they were trying to

kill us at school, because one of the first lunches that we had, and this

was down south in Virginia, was corn fritters with bean and bacon soup, and.

A side of bacon and we all looked at each other 'cause we're from up north

thinking they're going to kill us.

But those fritters were pretty good.

I have to admit, a and bacon soup I can do without

No.

Mm

Now.

let me ask you a question, and it's not necessarily about leftovers.

Can I ask you an off, off subject question?

If I'm in Florida and I go into a breakfast

place, can I get gravy and biscuits?

that is a very good question because the answer is yes.

In fact, this morning we went out to early breakfast 'cause we had to

get some things done early and Bob ordered his breakfast with a biscuit

and it automatically came with a side of gravy.

And of course, I look at gravy.

My idea in the north of gravy is brown stuff that you

put on, right.

Brown stuff.

And the gravy down here is, white.

And my sister had found out about gravy when she went to Oklahoma and put on

a few pounds when I so her afterwards.

all of a sudden she's got this, sorry Cindy if you're listening, but she's

got this sort of Midwestern accent.

Oh my God, they have the best food here.

Now.

This is a New Yorker.

Uh.

Mm-hmm.

Then says they have biscuits and gravy, like, what's gravy?

And I find out from my aunt and my uncle, who was from Oklahoma, said,

it's bacon, grease and flour or sausage.

And I'm like,

Yeah.

again, trying to kill me.

So yeah,

gravy.

There is

nothing better than

that.

Yeah.

That's not my thing.

it's just, well, I'm trying to stay away from it,

but,

I could just eat a. Huge gravy boat of that anyway.

Uh, beef, hard to imagine.

It's leftover, but it doesn't make good chili.

I mean, you know, even chunks of beef like

steak.

Who would leave steak?

Right?

right here's, a brief suggestion for leftovers Shepherd's

pie, So you've got, beef shank or whatever it is, and you grind

it all up in small little pieces.

So this is not beef as in hamburger beef.

And then you add all your leftover vegetables, so you can add your

black-eyed peas, your corn, your whatever else along with your beef.

And there are those leftover mashed potatoes that you can put on top.

voila, you have a shepherd's pie.

Delicious.

Hmm.

Yeah, just lots of stuff.

Right?

and it's crusty, you know, you get the potato

on top of it and it's nice and crusty on top

like a chicken pot pie, huh?

add a little paprika so it looks pretty

and you're done.

and they make them.

Now in those minis, you could do that with your leftovers,

Turkey pot pies and make tiny ones.

It just tastes better.

A small Coke tastes better than a big Coke.

I guess so.

Although a big glass of champagne always tastes better than a small

glass of champagne.

speaking of that, I can't imagine anybody has that

leftover, but what do you do with it?

Well, apparently you can make champagne vinegar with it.

I never even thought about that.

We'll have to get the recipe and put it in the show notes because I

haven't quite figured that one out

again, like you said, because who has leftover champagne?

I know.

The other night I was sleepy at dinner and I couldn't remember why and then I was

like, oh, I was went to a women lawyer's luncheon today and they served champagne

That'll do it.

Champagne and

Prosecco.

Yep.

it was very nice.

It was very good.

My mom discovered Prosecco when we were in Italy one year together and

said, oh, I'll have Prosecco, Prosecco.

Now, tell me about that because I don't typically do that.

Is that that kind of bubbly champagne, right?

Well, it's, sparkling wine is what I would call

Prosecco is sparkling Italian wine.

So

but it's very good ' cause there's

some,

good.

Versus champagne is supposed to be from France, so

Oh, you are so cool.

You are too cool for school.

I love

that.

yeah.

I may be incorrect, but I would call Prosecco Italian champagne.

And then, here's another leftover.

This is something that Bob shared with me that his stepmother Barbara

used to when they were kids, and they called it Moc Sukiyaki.

Now, this was some leftover rice and anything that was in the refrigerator.

With some chopped up lettuce, a little bit of egg, and some soy

sauce, and a voila moc sukiyaki.

And I said, was it good?

He says, well, it didn't look so good, but it was delicious.

So

yeah, those are good tastes.

soy, sauce and rice makes everything taste good.

I guess

I love soy sauce on just about anything you can, like,

cover up an awful lot of things.

Sounds

a little bit like chop suey.

right?

I heard it described as awful.

or the chunkin chop suey.

My mom used to bring that out in the

can like, ugh,

awful.

Awful is what it's made out of.

That innards of animals.

Yeah, well, we'll go there on another show, but you mentioned

Turkey tini, so It's a Turkey slushie without the ice,

you got some leftover cheese, leftover meat.

Probably just have to get you some mushrooms.

You probably got spaghettis somewhere in your kitchen.

And cream sauce.

People can do that, right?

it's called a pasta kind of bake, and you can have pasta, brain fog.

Add a little wine to it and voila.

You're cooking like Julia, some butter and you're done.

So when you have all these other leftovers and you're getting tired of the moc

sukiyaki and the Chicken tetrazzini and everything else that goes in there,

here's an idea that I recommend because.

My mom did something like this, and then we've modified it, you know, those

winter squashes, those little teeny tiny things, the green acorn squashes that

have the orange spot on the side of them.

Take one of those, cut them in half, hollow them out, and

then you roast it in the oven.

And then what you do is you stuff it when it's roasted, almost roasted

to the end, and you stuff it with quinoa and all those vegetables.

You saute them almost like you would a, fried rice type of thing.

Stuff it in there.

If you wanna add a little tangy flavor, you can add some chunks of, goat cheese

and then you put it back in the oven.

You stuff each side, you put 'em back in the oven and put

a little breadcrumbs on top.

With butter so they get

Yummy.

It is delicious.

Uh, better than anything.

And if you want it sweet, you can always put a little maple syrup on

the top too, but I don't like it.

I like the savory versus

sweet.

so

like little tiny things.

Again, I keep going back to tiny things.

I

Well, and they can be pretty big too, but now leftovers

is actually a worldly thing,

believe it or not.

I haven't thought about leftovers as being worldly.

Did you?

Yeah, no, you gotta figure though.

Everybody has leftovers and everybody's doing the same thing.

We are.

They're conflicted.

They're just like us, but they kind of wanna do the right thing.

And so because they don't want to diet, they're just gonna go ahead and

do the wrong thing and eat everything that's there, and repurpose it.

Why not?

give yourself a little grace in January.

I don't think there's anything wrong with leftovers, as long

as it's not, moldy green and growing something else like a Petri dish.

Well, what about Italy?

You have Arancini Balls,

yeah, Arancini Balls now, so that's kind of interesting.

Leftover cheese from, the displays that you would have at Christmas

time and then, something called.

what are you talking about still on there?

Arancini Balls

Yeah.

Arancini Balls.

So it's just,

your leftover cheeses, you could do just about anything with that.

Right?

there's rice in them, and you mix all that together and you coat

the outside a little bit like a fritter.

we serve those at the restaurant Arancini Balls.

So you're serving leftovers at the restaurant.

actually that's true.

Well, you don't serve leftovers.

What you do is because of food costs.

I mean, they're very expensive.

if people didn't eat all the, beef that you ordered or something, then you make

soups out of it and stuff like that.

So it's good food.

It's not old food but it's using, it's being stewardship.

It's good.

stewardship of the ingredients.

Yeah.

Stewardship of the animal and the produce.

So that is good.

And then you have, Robollita I think that's how it's pronounced.

Yeah, it looks beautiful.

I wish we had a picture of it.

It's reboiled pasta.

It looks like rings of pasta.

It's from reheating the previous day.

minestrone soup?

I didn't know those two things were separate.

I thought minestrone soup, but are they separate?

Is there something called minestrone that's not soup?

Do you know that?

know.

I never heard of it.

I thought It was Minestrone

Yeah.

And stale bread, a lot of stale bread in these

of repurposing cannellini beans or whatever beans you have.

'cause you might have black eyed pea again.

They keep bubbling up.

and then you put 'em all together and it's got tomato sauce and

Reba Lita, I don't, it may be the

Well, it means we

n

Italian, which is kind of

interesting.

So you're taking all this stuff and you're basically

creating a

potluck soup

Italian style.

with stale bread.

So, yeah.

Keep that one in mind folks.

You know, I'd never heard a

put about putting stale bread into tomato soup, but apparently

that's used a lot in tomato

soup as a thickener.

And a lot of, deconstructed kinds of

Mm-hmm.

lasagna can be deconstructed and eaten in a different

way, that just makes it more appealing

There are lots of ways we can do, we should do a show in lasagna

because there's a lot you can do with what traditional Italian lasagna

could be, but the great Brits or the the great Brits, the Great Britain,

we'll just call them the great Brits.

Have something that they refer to as Bubble and Squeak, and

this one just makes me laugh.

Just the name alone, I can, I can think of like a, we have a puppy,

so we think of squeaky dog toys and

a few other things.

but Bubble and Squeak is typically served on Boxing Day, which is December

26th, but I think New Year's day or the day after New Year's applies too,

because it's basically leftovers.

The fried, leftover mashed potatoes cooked with vegetables

and mushy, I think mushy cabbage, like stringy cabbage leftover.

bland, leftover, leftover cabbage is kind of blah, formed into patty

cakes or patties or cakes, not patty cakes, and then fried, and they

make a bubble and squeaky noise, hence the name Bubble and Squeak.

I love the name.

I would make it just because of the name alone.

And then you serve it with Sunday roast or other leftovers.

And of course you can serve it with, Yorkshire Pudding, I'm thinking right

now, or a popover, because I guess you can add some extra gravy to it too.

Yorkshire pudding is typically served with gravy, not southern gravy, but

round gravy.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Almonds or anything.

'cause you probably have those too.

I mean, we've got a house full of stuff, right?

So there's Indonesia and probably other cultures as well.

interesting cl pancakes made with leftover rice pudding.

not a fan of rice pudding, so that's kind of interesting.

Yeah,

I'm not sure I would eat that.

The French, French toast.

My mom used to make the best French toast when we were kids, cold winter mornings.

I remember French toast also referred to in France as pan

perdu (lost bread) stale bread.

So it's thick, not the sandwich peppered farm kind of bread,

although she made it with that, but it had to be a thicker bread.

And then you make this, Sort of like a custard kind of mixture with eggs.

So there's cream, there's milk, there's eggs.

You add a little sugar, you can even add a little warm maple syrup

to it to give a little sweetness.

And then you soak your bread in that and you fry it up in a pan.

add some powdered sugar if you want, but we always put butter and I put butter

and jelly and maple syrup on it and

delish, oh boy, does that bring me back home to being a kid.

Yeah.

yeah.

And remembering what mom,

mom taught you and she learned it from somewhere and she

learned it from somewhere and

sometimes he learns it from somewhere

And I have not made french toast

as an adult.

I have to try that

Now that I'm into making sourdough.

have to make sure it doesn't go stale, so well, maybe I should let it go

stale so we can make some french toast.

So starting New Year's off with a little looking backwards versus

looking forwards with a delicious leftovers in 2025 is a good idea

because we can make 2026 taste bitter.

What do you think Sylvia?

I a great idea and, um, I hope people us their ideas on

leftovers because, you know, it's endless what you can do, and fuse

interesting thing is I don't think I've ever

seen a

doing that, I said.

leftovers.

Maybe we'll have to look into something like That

would very, I've thought that many of them and

I p people's stuff together

and Ah Test Kitchen

Right test kitchens of family tree food and stories.

If you've got a recipe or an idea, a concoction, a mixture, whatever it is,

you just slam together in a bowl and eat.

Maybe that's the best way to describe it as a leftover.

Share your stories with us.

Go to podcast out Family tree food stories.

You can send us a note there or find us on Facebook.

again, it's family tree, food and stories.

On Facebook.

We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.

And don't forget, every meal has a story and every story has a

feast, even if it is leftovers.

Bye-bye.