I love to eat, therefore I have to love to cook since I can't afford to eat out every meal. Even cooking at home can become expensive. One day I realised that the dishes I was cooking from scratch were, originally, designed as an efficient use of leftovers. Every cuisine has numerous dishes that can use leftover meat and vegetables from an earlier dish. Everything from lasagna to stir fry can easily and tastily use ingredients from previous dinners leftovers sitting in the fridge. The easiest, but by no means least, of these dishes is the stir fry. When I made stir fry before, I would spend hours choosing, chopping and cooking veggies and meats for this dish. While it is unrealistic to think that a stir fry will appear with out some new/fresh ingredients, the majority need not be. For the protein anything from leftover fried chicken, grilled fish or even hamburger can be used for it with excellent results. Why cook fresh meat when last nights roast chicken can be thrown in at the last minute instead of being thrown out after it is "past its prime". As for the vegetables, anything from thawed frozen peas to last nights veggie works great. I have experimented with this dish and leftovers without any truly notable flops. That being said, I haven't yet tried corned beef stir fry but I reserve judgement until I do:). The most important thing for this leftover dish (or any for that matter) is in the seasonings. A couple of different sauces (oyster, fish, soy or chili) will lend the authenticity that your protein and vegetables may not.
I was tired of waisting so many leftovers simply because: I didn't have enough for an entire meal, we didn't want to eat the same thing twice or just because they were forgotten. I have had some of my most successful meals by making my leftovers "happy". I am not talking about the ubiquitous casserole, but of dishes we know and love and make. If you think about the food your family loves, I bet you will see that many are created out of the frugality of our ancestors. The more I thought about the more recipes I found. This is one of many postings I will devote to this, in case, you can't think of what dishes you love lend themselves to the idea of "happy leftovers".
Happy Creating!
