DEAR DAME EVELYN , I am sorry to be banal, but what am I going to do with my Thanksgiving leftovers? They are everywhere! I gave away as much as I could, loaded departing guests up with bulging care packages, et cetera, but the refrigerator is still stuffed. I hate to chuck it all in the compost bin, but I'm afraid I'll panic and do just that. If you have any suggestions, I would be thrilled to hear them.

A stuffed turkey

Glorious bird, I suspect you speak for many, by which I mean too many with too much. We should all be grateful for compost bins as a last resort. Dame Evelyn has also from time to time given away tinfoil trays of Thanksgiving leftovers to the luckless and the destitute, but those were spontaneous, catch-as-catch-can street moments. Really, the question is one of repackaging: how to take large quantities of fairly dreary food, disguise its origins, and come up with something appetizing. (I discount here the usual alternatives of turkey soup, turkey sandwiches, turkey fajitas, and so forth; these are already familiar to most people and, sadly, are of no use with the ancillary starches Thanksgiving produces in such huge amounts.) Here is what Dame Evelyn, burdened with several trays of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and wild rice, did. She diced the turkey, sautéed it with chopped onion and garlic into a kind of hash, and moistened it with leftover gravy. Meanwhile, she beat an egg, mixed it willy-nilly with the starches, pressed the result into a nonstick pan, and heated gently until a frittata-like disk formed. On top of said disk went the turkey-gravy hash. She covered the pan until the dish was heated through, cut into pieces with a plastic spatula, then slid from pan to plates like slices of pie. Diners' verdict: pretty good. Leftovers: gone. That's as close to no muss, no fuss as it ever gets in the kitchen.

Recyclingly, E. G.-S.