Happy end of the beginning of the holidays, readers! The extended family has gone home, all your cleverest strategic hiding spots for bottles of booze around the house have been depleted, and you’ve got a refrigerator full of enough food to feed four more families. Here are some fun and clever ideas on how to use up all those Thanksgiving leftovers before they mold, mutate, multiply, evolve, and weeks later your body is found mostly decomposed in your own house, the toxicology report coming back with the results “death by unused leftovers.”

1. Feed four more families. Seriously, just go give all that food to some needy people. This is America; you can’t swing a dead turkey without hitting someone who hasn’t eaten today because they paid their heating bill instead. Don’t even read anymore of this article. You know it’s a bunch of snarky bullshit that I made up to sound clever and the internet sure as fuck doesn’t need anymore of my mouthy privileged asshattery. You made too much Thanksgiving food because you could make too much Thanksgiving food. So good for you.

2. Nevermind, just throw it out a fucking window. Who even cares? Honestly, the geopolitical landscape in this country – hell, on this planet – is so fucked up beyond repair that what’s a bit of half-assed goodwill really going to do? 23% of American still don’t believe global warming is real. 73% of us actually believe in Jesus’s virgin birth. Donald Trump is leading the Republican polls. Luke Bryan is, you just discovered while watching grown men beat their heads against each other whilst vying for control of a GODDAMN BALL is a REAL PERSON doing ACTUAL THINGS in this world and NOBODY HAS STOPPED HIM YET. We as a nation have crossed the Rubicon. We have hit the event horizon and now the massive inescapable pit of despair inside all our hearts is tearing us apart atom by atom. Everything is terrible and nothing matters and this turkey probably lived a horrifying, painful life in a tiny cage only to be slaughtered and served up to a room full of humans who don’t even know his name was Frank. Or Reggie. Or whatever Turkeys call themselves. How will Frank’s turkey children pay for college now? Will they even want to go to college? Will Tiffany, Frank’s young turkey daughter, turn tricks for seeds on the street? Stare out the window at the dead trees in your yard for 45 minutes.

3. Cry into the leftovers. Seems like the most natural course of action. It’s the obvious next step after the momentum of holiday ennui draws you inexorably toward an outburst of cathartic sorrow so intense that all you can do is fling yourself face-first into the gravy boat with a level of histrionics heretofore unseen since Antigone herself, rendering it 50% gravy, 50% your tears. Text your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend at 11 pm while your disgusting body is gurgling on the couch like an over-inflated Oompa Loompa. Just say something like “Hey” or “*waves*,” that shouldn’t be weird or super conspicuous. Did you check for the bottle of vodka you used to keep stored in the bread box in the pantry? It might still be there.

4. Paint a still life of it, for posterity. Maybe, generations from now, some smartass teenager will buy your oil painting of Thanksgiving leftovers at a second hand shop, paint a dinosaur into the background, and hang it on their apartment wall to show all their friends how quirky and unique they are. Teenagers suck, 20 and 30 somethings suck. Old people and babies and dumb little fetuses with their dumb little opinions suck. Every generation ever since the dawn of sarcasm has been an intolerable bunch of fuckwads according to the generation ahead of it, squandering the life given to them by their ancestors like a bunch of ungrateful bastards. And so it shall be until your painting is swallowed up by the sun when it goes Red Giant in a few million years, its cosmic remains scattered across the solar system by a planetary nebula more righteous and beautiful than anything your stupid mind ever could have imagined.

5. Fun Holiday Leftover Rolls! Tuck little spoonfuls turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy into some pre-packaged crescent rolls, roll them into a ball, and place them in a muffin tin! Cook at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Don’t forget to grease the pan!

–Katie Sisneros