How much food in pounds are you going to toss over the Thanksgiving weekend?

The bird carcass, and the carrot and celery ends and the one onion I stuff inside the bird’s cavity.

Literally everything else will be eaten, with the possible exception of the last serving of yams, which somehow no one ever wants to take.

That totally isn’t happening at my house. I am a college student, I’m hanging on to every last morsel of food until it has been rightfully consumed. I’m even stealing the turkey carcasses from my family to make stock for some future soup!

Little to none. We are very careful not to be wasteful, you put it on your plate, you eat it, so don’t be greedy.

I have this thing where I can’t waste food. If someone messes up my order, so be it; I’ll try something new. My whole family is pretty good at not wasting, too.
But I don’t want to know how much food others will waste. Hopefully this will be a time for people to realize that they should be thankful for the food they have available to them and not take it for granted.

@Seek_Kolinahr: Freeze the carcass for turkey soup later. There are always some scraps of meat left on it and a T or two of white vinegar in the water will leach the calcium from bones. When we made a turkey (no more) we traditionally made soup for the third day…with the extra vegetable ends, gravy traces, smidgeons of stuffing, even a spoonful or two of cranberry sauce. We saved the drumsticks and thigh bones for the soup if we remembered.

I’m hoping my host takes pity on me and gifts me with leftovers to take home. If so, I will consume them all.

We have very little waste in our house. I take all the food and make freezer meals for the future, and I make soup stock from the bones. I doubt it will be more than one or two pounds of actual trash.

I can’t afford to throw food away.

To second what @gailcalled said, any meat carcasses go in the freezer for soup – so good, I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this. Just save the bones until you’ve managed to accumulate enough sad vegetables to throw in the pot with them.

^^ Add some freshly made barley.

We’re going out to dinner, for the first time ever on a Thanksgiving holiday. So none.

When we have dinner at our house, we’re very good about having all of the tupperware ready to receive the leftovers that can be frozen. And we pretty much eat everything else, except for the turkey carcass, but maybe next time I’ll save it for soup (not mine, but someone’s).

The potato peelings and apple peelings and cores go into the yard waste container or over the back fence.

Pretty much everything else gets eaten, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, turkey, rolls, cranberry sauce, apple sauce and pie.

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Do you mean toss out (waste), toss down (eat), or toss up (vomit)?

@kritiper I have to admit I had exactly the same thoughts?

I love having Thanksgiving meals at our house so we can have the leftovers. It usually feeds us for the next three days. Nothing is wasted.

I already cooked a turkey and I threw out a lot of it. The turkey we got was too big for us and we had no room to store leftovers. Next year I’ll get a smaller turkey.

My father used to take home all the turkey leftovers when he was alive. This year was the first year without him.

None. ... Okay maybe some of the 5 cup salad one of the attendees likes to make – but nobody eats. But everything else will be eaten, taken home or frozen.
Leftovers will go home with guests and some will go in my freezer. The carcass with some meat on the bone will go outside so the fox family in the neighborhood can have a nice dinner too.

I’m sittin here daydreaming about the leftover pumpkin pie I’m going to have for breakfast Friday morning. It will be topped with a healthy dollop of my husband’s homemade cranberry sauce.

I’m hoping to wolf down about 3 pounds of food.

@jonsblond I’ve never known anyone to make their own cranberry sauce. That sounds delightful!

It’s so good @glacial. He simmers the cranberries in little orange juice, sugar and cinnamon, then he blends it so it isn’t chunky. I think he also adds a clove when the berries are simmering. Is it Thursday yet?

Counting the guests, I would say around 30 pounds of food would be tossed over the weekend.

@flip86 So sorry to hear about the loss of your Dad. I hope you can enjoy Thanksgiving in his honor.

@glacial Homemade cranberry sauce is one of the most wonderful things in the world and it’s very easy to make. My Mom also puts orange juice in hers. Here’s a standard Recipe. My Mom always buys extra bags of fresh cranberries during the holiday season, and freezes them, so that we can have fresh cranberry sauce throughout the year.