Thanksgiving may be over, but whether or not you have leftovers in the fridge there are more holiday feasts coming --- Panamanian Mothers' Day, Christmas, New Year's and so on. Consider, then, the options.
(You know, of course, that the local tradition for New Year's Day is sancocho and tamales? Well, if you didn't now you do. I won't get into how you deal with those. I'm thinking about some of the things typically left over from a gringo-style turkey dinner. After all, now that so many non-gringos celebrate "Día de Dar Gracias" here, you can say that the Panagringo custom of turkey with the fixings is now implanted into Panamanian culture --- whether or not it would be proper to call it "comida típica" just yet, after only 150 years of the American cultural presence on the isthmus.)
That turkey thigh
There's something left of the dark meat? Then you may want to remove the skin and bones and cut it into two-inch-long strips in preparation for stir frying.
(Hmmmmm --- as "típica" as "comida china." And aren't hippies supposed to be vegetarians?)
Yeah, yeah. As we grow old and buzzardly we all make our compromises.
So also by way of food preparation, peel a chunk of ginger root and cut it into matchstick-sized strips. Then get a big onion, peel it and dice it into rather large pieces --- cut it in half horizontally, then take each half cut it twice vertically and twice horizontally (looking down on your cutting board at it, that is). Heat up your wok or iron skillet and when it's good and hot oil it with vegetable oil (or if you can find it down here, try peanut oil) and spread the lubricant around the cooking surface. Then toss in your onions and ginger and stir fry until the onions are getting translucent, at which time you throw in the turkey. Stir fry it on high until the stuff starts to get brown, then turn off the heat, stir in Chinese mushroom soy sauce and hot Chinese red pepper and garlic sauce to taste, and there you have it: spicy stir-fried leftover dark turkey meat.
The cranberry sauce
So, being something of a purist, you eschewed the canned stuff, went to Riba Smith and got actual cranberries, and followed the recipe on the package except for substituting turbinado sugar for the white stuff, replacing one-quarter of the water with lemon juice (more pectin, which makes it jell better, and besides that, adds a bit to the tang) and adding tiny pinches of ground cloves and ground allspice, coming up with ye olde whole berry cranberry sauce, of which some is now left over in the fridge.
So now you want to get some yogurt, and nuts or granola.
(OK, granola is the stereotypically hippie thing to do. A little bag of salted peanuts will be the easiest of these crunchy things to find at the mini-super. But if you're going to be a Panagringo hippie you'll want the local stuff --- roasted but unsalted cashew nuts. If you are reading The Panama News, it will be presumed that your brain has not been so heavily fried that you have lost all sense of personal caution, so you ought to be aware that sometimes the cashews you get alongside the road have not been roasted enough, which makes them dangerous because some of the toxic oils have not been neutralized. How can you tell? Well, after eating them you break out in terrible hives that show a symmetrical pattern on your body, and maybe you even go into shock and have to be hospitalized. If the things don't look thoroughly roasted, you may want to brown them some more in your oven when you get home, just to be safe. Or else, having left your youthful recklessness behind long ago, you might do the boring conventional thing and get your cashews from a jar or can in standard supermarket. Which is what you will probably have to do this time of the year anyway, seeing as cashew season was months ago.)
Mmmmmmmm --- yogurt with cranberry sauce and cashews (or whatever). Just put it all in a bowl, stir it together and breakfast is served.
It's the sort of genuine hippie-type fare that could attract the attention of the DEA, or maybe even the Brain Police. (Who are the Brain Police? I think they're part of the Homeland Security Department now.)
