It’s tradition in many houses to make turkey soup from the leftover Thanksgiving bird carcass and remains. Nothing really new under the sun there. But I will be honest with you. I hate having all those leftovers around. I mean, they just never really get eaten and I detest nothing more than throwing away food. So this year I decided to use up ALL of the leftovers – not just the remaining pieces of turkey and the bones. It was so satisfying to see most everything go into the pot, and the result was not only delicious, it was different than my usual (somewhat boring) turkey soup.

I started stock immediately after Thanksgiving dinner. Rather than wrap up that mess of turkey carcass, I just took it off the platter and tossed it in a big stock pot with some celery, onions, carrots, black peppercorns,and bay leaves, and covered with water. Nothing fancy or revolutionary there. Just bring it to a boil and then simmer for a LONG TIME. I think I left that pot on the stove over low heat for a good 8 hours. Then I just strained it through a wire mesh strainer, tossed the cooked veggies and bones, and stored the beautiful stock for use later

The next day I retrieved my stock from the fridge and set to use up my leftovers.

For the soup:

1 1/2 cup diced carrot
1 cup chopped celery
1 yellow onion, diced
2 cups leftover green beans (if there’s bacon in them, that’s a bonus!)
1 cup corn (if it’s creamy corn, no matter – it will still be fine in there)
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp sage
1 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 cups diced turkey

Toss everything into the stock to simmer for about an hour. Meanwhile, start your dumplings. These, my friends, are not your everyday egg-and-flour dumplings. Nope, these dumplings are made from your leftover stuffing. I told you I used up ALL my leftovers (except the cranberry relish).

For the dumplings:

3 cups leftover stuffing
2 eggs
4 cups flour (plus more as needed)

Give your stuffing a quick toss in the food processor if it is rustic and has hunks of bread like mine does. Then transfer it to a bowl and add the other ingredients. With wet hands, form it into tablespoon-sized balls. Mine made about 25 dumplings. If it’s too wet to form into balls, keep adding flour until you get the right consistency.

Bring your soup to a low boil, and drop your dumplings in. After 3 or 4 minutes they should float, which means it’s time to eat. It looks awesome in a soup bowl with those large, fat dumplings just hanging out. And the inside of your refrigerator will look awesome too, since you just dumped a whole Thanksgiving dinner’s worth of leftovers into a soup pot.

I invited a couple of friends to come over and help us polish off this “day after” soup, and I made grilled cheeses to go alongside, just because it sounded good to me. Thanksgiving, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, is very short on cheese.