Pounds of turkey are certain to pile up after your Thanksgiving Day feast, right along with the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and oodles of veggies.

But instead of rehashing the big dinner again on Friday night, turn those leftovers into some delicious new meals.

"The second day (after the holiday) is not a sandwich; I’m going to go in a completely opposite direction," said Tim Roberts, chef and owner of Two Dog Cafe in Gainesville. "Most people don’t want turkey and stuffing again the second day. I’ll take turkey and put it in a quesadilla. Do a turkey quesadilla and there is a quick, easy (meal) right there.

"A little cheese, a little salsa on top, either baked in an oven or fried in a pan ... if you have some avocado floating around you have a California quesadilla."

The California quesadilla is a large step away from a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but Rudolph’s chef Michael Hunt takes a more traditional route.

"Turkey pot pie is wonderful, just like chicken (pot pie)," Hunt said. "Something a little bit lighter after eating so heavy on the holidays is to shred the turkey and make a turkey salad, and if you use fresh cranberries you can use your cranberry sauce and incorporate that sauce into a vinaigrette and use it as a salad dressing."

Hunt added that you can bake or deep fry the leftover stuffing until it is crispy and use it for croutons.

"I would personally deep fry it and toss it in a little Parmesan and salt and pepper and put it on the salad," he said.

Roberts said you also could use the leftover stuffing as a base of a soup.

"If you happen to have a little cranberry left over, a little bit of stuffing, some canned chicken stock and you have a cranberry and whatever your stuffing is soup," he said.

A cook’s trick for years has been to add stuffing to gravy to thicken the topping, but it is also a great additive to soups, according to Hunt.

"You can take your bones left over from the turkey and make yourself a stock from those bones," Hunt said. "To that stock you can add the dressing to it — you don’t want a really thick consistency but it will help thicken it up ... You can add some carrots or sweet potatoes, those kind of things to it."

With leftover vegetables there are myriad casseroles, salads or potato pancakes that could be whipped up.

"Shepherd’s Pie could be something (to make), and instead of using beef you could use the turkey," said Marc Suennemann, executive chef at Chateau Elan in Braselton. "You have all the meat and vegetables together and put the mashed potatoes on top and bake it off in the oven."

Suennemann also suggested his favorite after-Thanksgiving leftover meal: A hot turkey and stuffing sandwich.

"If you have leftover stuffing you can cut that down and sear it off in a sautee pan so it is nice and hot, and then you have a hot turkey sandwich with the stuffing," he said.

A nice side dish to accompany the hot turkey sandwich could be a mashed potato cake or fried sweet potato chips.

"You can crack a couple eggs into them (mashed potatoes), add a little bit of flour and then you have a potato cake," Roberts said. "Or you could take leftover mashed potatoes and put them in a soup, add some chicken stock or a vegetable broth and a little mashed potato and get it to the consistency that it will thicken and there you are.

"Actually, baked sweet potatoes on the second day make fried potatoes. Cut them into rounds or cubes and saute in a pan with a little salt and butter and boom — there you are with a great fried potato."

Roberts added that Thanksgiving leftovers should keep in the refrigerator for a "four- or five-day period, but most people are pretty much tired of everything after about two days."