Leftovers. I have always eaten them. I don't mind them at all. I even like them. But my husband wasn't a fan. He would eat certain things leftover, but the selection was limited.
But then I learned a trick.
The trick to serving leftovers is to turn them into something completely different.
Take dinner last night for instance. Last night I made two small pork roasts. We had one of the roasts for dinner last night with Crash Potatoes and tossed salad and I set aside the other roast for tonight's dinner. (I don't always use the leftovers the very next night. Sometimes I skip a night to really shake things up! ;)
I had a package of Dutch Crunch rolls that I needed to use up, half a round of mozzarella and a jar of roasted red peppers from Trader Joe's. Sounded like a recipe I'd seen earlier that day. Pork sandwiches it is!
I toasted the rolls with butter and garlic powder (we won't talk about forgetting one of the rolls in the toaster oven and almost setting the garage on fire. True story. And no, really, I don't want to talk about it.) and then spread a small amount of mayo on each half of the roll. I sliced up the pork roast into thin slices, piled it on the rolls and topped them with a slab of mozzarella and sliced red peppers and put them under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese was nice and melted.
Served with a side of
There are several things I love about meals like this. First of all I love that it prevents waste. I can't tell you how many leftovers I have thrown away over the years. Such a waste!
I also love that you can cook once and eat twice. Sure, assembling tonight's dinner took some effort, but for the most part, dinner was a cinch because all of the cooking had been done the night before.
And maybe the thing I love most about these types of meals is that they force me to be creative with our menus. Originally, my creativity with our meals came out of necessity when our grocery budget was cut drastically. I still wanted to feed my family good, healthy, tasty food even though I didn't have a lot of money to buy expensive ingredients. So it forced me to be creative...to create meals from what was available and on sale.
Cooking this way saves us money, saves me time, cuts down on waste and exposes us to ingredients I might not otherwise have tried.
4 comments:
sounds like a perfect plan and meal to me! i'm with you - cook once, eat twice...nothing better. i've committed to a "pantry challenge" over at good cheap eats blog. so far, we've managed to eliminate a lot from the freezer and pantry; you know the half bags/boxes, the food you had good intentions of using yet it has been in the freezer for several months. Yep, we're eliminating. have had to pick up bread, milk, eggs, fruit, veggies and cheese but only $65 worth since dec. 29; well below my usual shopping. i think we'll be able to do one more week on next to nothing. can't wait to start fresh!
I just got the book An Everlasting Meal from the library - I have yet to start it but I think it is based a lot on this concept. My kids and husband would love these two meals - I need a "do better" plan for the nights I work.
I have to trick my husband into eating leftovers sometimes. He just didn't grow up eating them like I did.
So very true... your recipe sounds delicious. I usually do the same than you, I don´t mind to eat leftovers, but I don´t like to eat the same meal twice...
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