Cooking with a left over recipe in mind.

[pinto]

Live alone and love to cook. Yet realized I was throwing a whole heck of a lot of stuff out in the garbage every week. Leftovers just too much to eat again and again, leftovers gone boring and leftovers gone plain bad.

So I've been working on it. Looking at a meal with one left over dish if I don't finish the meal. And no more.

Did that today with this one - http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1157&pid=13951 - there's a mashed potato patty left over to brown with eggs for breakfast.

A nice visual marker - my trash is down to one bag a week, not three or four.

[yellerpup]

1. Potato patties enriched with cheese and brocolli!

What a treat that will be in the morning!

[Warpy]

2. My next 5 year supply of trash bags from Costco

will be half the size of the ones I use now. I really don't throw much of anything away these days beyond clumped kitty litter and wilted lettuce leaves. Recycling here made a big difference.

But yes, I always cook with leftovers in mind. Leftovers gone bored are frozen for much later use. Very little gets lost in the fridge except those silly condiments I bought for one recipe and didn't like much. It's almost time to clean those out and I'll do it when the temperature goes below the 90s.

If the mashed taters are plain, consider mixing them with some scallion or chive. You might have a new breakfast favorite.

ETA: my favorite for cheese and veg potatoes was making them into cheese and potato blintzes.

[NJCher]

3. I know what you mean

Because my husband travels AND he only will have fresh food. He cooks up a storm and then goes on a business trip, leaving me with lots of food.

So you must check out this cookbook by the famous editor Judith Jones:

Cooking for One

snip

From the legendary editor of some of the world’s greatest cooks—including Julia Child and James Beard—a passionate and practical book about the joys of cooking for one.

Here, in convincing fashion, Judith Jones demonstrates that cooking for yourself presents unparalleled possibilities for both pleasure and experimentation: you can utilize whatever ingredients appeal, using farmers’ markets and specialty shops to enrich your palate and improve your health; you can feel free to fail, since a meal for one doesn’t have to be perfect; and you can use leftovers to innovate—in the course of a week, the remains of beef bourguignon might be reimagined as a ragù, pork tenderloin may become a stir-fry, a cup or two of wild rice produces both a refreshing pilaf and a rich pancake, and red snapper can be reinvented as a summery salad. It’s a fulfilling and immensely economical process, one perfectly suited for our times—although, as Jones points out, cooking for one also means we can occasionally indulge ourselves in a favorite treat.

snip


Cher