The tyranny of leftovers

Annoying leftover pickled sausage

Tired of turkey? Sick of stuffing? I’m writing this on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and, if you’re still struggling with leftovers, I hereby give you permission to a/pick the remaining meat off the carcass and freeze in a zip-loc bag; b/make a stock with said carcass; c/throw everything else in the trash. (I love stuffing and have frozen it in years past, but it does not reanimate very well.)

Now for the hard part. If your refrigerator is like mine, it’s full of esoteric condiments and ingredients purchased for a specific use that will sit there hogging shelf space until we deal with them. Today is the day we will end the tyranny of leftovers. Your choices:

*Eat them. That’s what I did with the aji panca sauce I purchased for anticuchos, Peruvian grilled beef hearts. I am sure there’s some other application for this mild chili paste, but I don’t know what it is. For now I just made another recipe of the same stuff.
*Consolidate them. If you’re like me, you have several partly filled jars of sliced pepper rings you use on sandwiches. Put them together in one jar and pour off excess juice. There: you’ve just created a new condiment.
*Conceal them in other dishes. I am sick of the pickled sausage I picked up at Oscar’s Smokehouse for my kid, who showed no interest in it. That quart Mason jar is taking up major real estate on the refrigerator shelf. So I will take the last few sausages, chop them fine, and mix into burgers or meat loaf.
*Throw them in the garbage. After the virtuous steps above, you should feel fine if you simply discard items which are too unappealing to eat. As a bonus, some of them will probably be spoiled anyway.

See all that shelf space you’ve just liberated? Let’s go shopping and buy more stuff!