What's leftover?

I never throw away perfectly good food that was not consumed by those at my table - or any table I'm sitting at for that matter. I always think of the foods left over from a meal as prompts for something new. In fact, I often prepare a meal with twice or three times the ingredients, intending to use the leftovers for meals during the next few days. If I suspect leftovers won’t be used within a week, I freeze them. Nowadays, I carefully label the items I freeze, usually using recycled containers. In the past, I wasn’t so careful, so my freezer was full of unlabeled containers from butter-blend or sour cream tubs, drink bottles, mayonnaise jars, and the like. While I almost always remembered what was in each receptacle, it drove my family crazy -- especially my husband.

Last evening, when the predictable “What are you thinking of for dinner?” was voiced, I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t hungry, having eaten a late lunch. A minute or so later came a slightly frantic “I know, you’re not hungry…” I could imagine his unspoken peanut butter…no lunchmeat in the drawer…maybe I could make an omelet... Knowing that six slices of zucchini - left behind by the spiralizer - were the only leftovers in the refrigerator, I finally got up to look in the freezer. Oh, yum! Right away I saw a plastic container labeled “lamb with mushroom gravy." A tiny plastic container with an orange lid also caught my eye: “mushroom and garlic sauce.”

I set my husband to cutting up salad makings. I started some rice, cut the lamb chop and zucchini into small pieces, and put the gravy and sauce into a sauté pan, rinsing the containers into the pan with a bit of hot water to make sure every drop was recovered. I added the cooked rice, stirred, and covered the pan while I assembled the salad of red leaf lettuce, mini brown-and-red tomatoes, yellow bell peppers, Peruvian cucumbers, and blueberries. In less than 20 minutes from the time I said “Oh, yum!” we sat down to a delicious sauté, accompanied by a tasty fresh salad topped with chunky blue cheese dressing.

Unfortunately, the food was nearly gone before I remembered to take a photo. My husband kept saying how good it was. I mentioned, as I often do, how glad I was to have kept even a tiny bit of sauce. He said, "You really need to explain why you do this!" My oldest son coined the phrase Mundane to Insane and regularly encourages me to create a cookbook. He, his younger brother, and their wives are great leftover and freezer meal proponents, which helps to provide yummy, nutritious meals for their busy families. Their sister, on the other hand, tends to discard most leftovers and prefers fresh foods to “fresh frozen” foods. To each his/her own!