My Dad was a child of the Depression. As such, nothing went to waste in our house, especially food and especially at Thanksgiving. My earliest memories of Thanksgiving at our modest two-bedroom home in Beckley, West Virginia were of a huge roasted turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy (Daddy made amazing gravy), succotash, collards, cranberry sauce, home made yeast rolls and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. That was back when I could eat any and everything and not gain weight, so I piled my plate high and went back for seconds. We had Thanksgiving dinner as the mid-day meal, and then we had turkey leftovers for supper, basically a repeat of the main course, and this time I did not go back for seconds.
The next day we had turkey sandwiches and I ate two. Yumm! I loved turkey sandwiches on a couple slices of fresh Sunbeam bread. Can you remember how good fresh bread used to taste? I can.
For dinner the second night, we had leftover turkey with whatever vegetables and sides were remaining. The next day I had one turkey sandwich for lunch and wished for peanut butter and jelly. That night, you guessed it – more turkey leftovers. But praise be! You could now actually begin to see the bones on the turkey carcass so the end was mercifully in sight. But what I saw as bones, Daddy saw as the makings of turkey hash. He put the turkey remains – bones, necks, giblets and all – in a big pot and cooked it till it was, well, hash. And we ate that for two more nights.
By this time, I didn’t want to even walk past the refrigerator for fear that a turkey carcass would leap out and attack me. I dreamt of hot dogs or maybe even cereal for dinner. When it looked like the turkey hash was finally gone, Daddy strained the hash part out, added water and rice and we ate turkey soup for two more days.
When my family comes home this Thanksgiving, we’ll have a big turkey – a 20-pounder with all the trimmings – and we may have a few turkey sandwiches the next day. But I promise one thing, unless we’re starving, we’ll never have turkey hash on the fifth day after Thanksgiving. Sometimes you can really have too much of a good thing.