This Thanksgiving we did things a little differently. Although, from our little Play Gourmet’s point-of-view, this would now be considered normal I suppose. We took advantage of living deep in the heart of Texas.

This might offend some Thanksgiving purests, but instead of making our own turkey, we had one of our new friends, Tinney Barbecue, smoke a bird for us.

We were given a tour of the truck, and the smoker our bird would call home for 8-12 hours.

The finished product.

The big challenge of a whole turkey, is not over cooking the breast. These pictures don’t show off the white meat, but trust me that this turkey was this tender throughout.

Although the smoked turkey is enough material to talk plenty about, I am going to fast forward to what we did with the left overs.

This year, we ventured up to Buffalo, NY to spend time with family.

In doing so, we learned through Uncle Mark and Aunt Sasha about an experience they had at a local bookstore cafe.

Two years ago, Mark was having lunch at the Dog Ears Bookstore in South Buffalo, when he saw on the chalkboard in the cafe a seasonal special, the Thanksgiving Wrap. The ingredients were listed below: wheat wrap with turkey, goat cheese, butternut squash, bacon, dried cranberries, chopped walnuts, mixed greens, and a little honey-dijon mustard.

Since this was a special, that meant the only way to have it again was to make it. Which they have done several times, and both he and Sasha agree that it is difficult to determine which ingredient is the most important. Each ingredient stands out, yet works in perfect concert.

Now, time for the construction:

First we cut up some butternut squash and fry up some bacon.

Then chop up the left over turkey. In this case we used our smoked turkey from Tinney.

We apply the goat cheese, mashed butternut squash, dried cranberries, honey-dijon mustard, and chopped walnuts.

Finally, for the turkey, bacon, and mixed greens.

Next we press.

Then we enjoy!

They are even good on the go!