It’s a favorite topic of mine, and I could extol endlessly about the extended virtues, pleasures and delights surrounding food. However, once the fun part is over, all that remains are the remains that need to be dealt with accordingly.

Left-overs.

If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Bet the inside of our refrigerators look kind of the same- not as big as it looks on the outside, and varying slightly depending on the day and time- full of random stuff.

At any given point in time, inside my refrigerator there resides at least 5 left-overs. Currently, there is an 8 oz. can of crab meat left over from the pasta dish made on Father’s Day, lasagna, salad, jello with fruit, and a Tupperware container of the left-over fruit from the weekend’s berry medley. All of this is perfectly good food, that committed no crime. Instead of throwing it away, there are ways to make-over these remaining foods to feed another day, and in doing so save yourself precious resources:

Time: It’s easier to prepare already prepared food

Money: You spent money on this food, by the transitive property, if you throw it away, you’re throwing money away.

Resources: This food got into your kitchen somehow, don’t let the energy (and lives if its meat) that went into creating your food go to waste.

From the family-sized and family eaten lasagna, to those last berries, with a little ingenuity and the right mindset, your kitchen can become a fun food laboratory in which to experiment with all kinds of ingredients and mixtures.

My favorite left-over technique has proved to be somewhat infallible, as long as you’re not too picky about what the end-result that you’re about to put in your mouth looks like. (My family always makes fun of me, telling me that the bowl of hot, delicious goodness in front of me looks like vomit, dog-food, and a number of other non-appetizing look-alikes. But, whatever. It tastes good, fills me up, cuts down my waste, and maximizes the money I’ve spent. So basically, while I eat it, they can suck it.)

My personal 2 key ingredients to which I’ve become mildly dependent upon: eggs and canned soup!

When I get home from the gym, starving, sweaty and tired, I take out my little frying pan and cook up some scrambled eggs. Then, to be healthy (since I did just come from the gym) I throw in whatever vegetables I have on hand, and usually add in some cheese (which I can eat guilt-free, because, I just came from the gym. Such a handy, all-purpose excuse!) Around the time I put in the cheese, I also add the leftovers. This usually works wonders with Chinese food, meat dishes (just cut the chicken or steak into little bite-size pieces,) and pastas such as tortellini or ravioli. The sauce from the leftovers is usually enough to also flavor the eggs and veggies, but depending on what it is, I’ve also been known to add a big dollop of Ragu spaghetti sauce to the mess, and have played around with the mysterious spices living on my rack.

I don’t know that eggs + vegetables + [insert your leftover here] make for an intuitive combination, but it’s a very good, healthy, and satisfying option.

For the key ingredient #2: same egg principle applied to canned soup. I prefer lentil or minestrone, but really, it’s your preference and I’m pretty sure any variety of soup can be added to and improved upon. I just cook up my soup –again, I add whatever vegetables I have around- and then dump in the leftovers. This is great for pasta dishes, and as with any other food you would like to add, just make sure to cut your ingredients so that they are spoonable. This too is super quick, easy, and especially satisfying on cold winter nights.

Honestly, I have only ever once made something that came out disgusting, and it was while taking a big risk though. Having never before used Thai Black Bean Sauce, I added a ton of it to a can of Trader Joe’s lentil soup, broccoli, spinach, tortellini and smoked tuna. I don’t know if it was too much sauce, or just a bad combination, but I do know the end result was revolting. 99% of the time though, my biggest obstacle is that I make something I love that I will never be able to recreate again.

Eggs and soup are indeed my standard go-to mixers, but I’m open to thinking outside the carton and can. For instance, my plans for the current left-overs taking up precious fridge real-estate include cutting the vegetable lasagna up into litte bits, and then mixing with the crab meat. Once heated, I think the crab and cheese sauce will mix nicely, and taste good with the vegetables and pasta. The salad will make an easy side dish, and the berries, mixed with some vanilla yogurt and the jello, would make for a nice, light desert. Ta da! A three course meal made from start to finish in about 10 minutes.

Making the most of left-overs may very well be a new trend in the making. Cooking experts from Rachael Ray to the hopefuls on Top Chef have challenged themselves to come up with their own, decidedly more gourmet left-over reworkings, and this web-site, devoted to this very topic, is amazing: http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes

It has tons o’ recipes for left-overs, ways to purposely make left-overs (so that when you’re cooking you purposely make enough for multiple meals), and ways to use foods that would otherwise get thrown out, all organized by genre in a very user friendly setting. You can literally pick the food you’re trying to use up, and they’ll show you a variety of recipes that actually look good, to do this. Such a cool/good idea!

I definitely recommend trying to create some of your own left-over recipes, and would love the details about the bite of whatever you’re re-eating.