Working the leftovers transformation challenge. Stale bread became croutons. Green tomatoes ripened in a paper bag. As usual, tastier than it is pretty.

Billy’s been on jury duty this week. The first day, I packed him a lunch of leftovers as usual. Yeah. Not a great idea. At work he’s got access to plates, utensils, and a microwave, etc. Oh–and a place to sit and eat. Not so much at the court house. So that first day he had to buy lunch at the food court in the mall. Cheap, it turns out, and filling, but not healthy. He reports that he spent $5 on a heaping saucy plate of something vaguely Asian. The next day he spent $6 for a heaping plate of same (or similar, I guess. I don’t know what the extra buck went for). On the third day, we remembered our humble friend the sandwich, and he went out and bought some meaty stuff and some cheesy stuff and now lunches are back in budget compliance for the duration of the trial.

Besides the two days it took us to figure out the jury duty lunch thing, this week was uneventful, budget-wise. I made some good first steps toward the leftover re-imagining goal. We did, indeed, use leftover beans and rice as burritos for dinner one night. And I made croutons out of some about-to-go-stale bread and then tossed them with oil and vinegar and chunks of tomato from a few of the garden tomatoes that are ripening VERY nicely in paper bags in the sun porch. And then last night I took leftover pasta (elbows, the kid’s current preferred shape), a bag of mixed soup-friendly beans that had been collecting dust in the cupboard, a can of pureed tomato, and the usual soup suspects (onion, garlic, carrots, celery, water), and waved my hands around and turned it into a rather nice minestrone. The celery and carrots were also leftovers of sorts, hanging around from that dinner party last weekend. All I had to buy to make the soup was the pureed tomatoes ($2.99) and a couple onions ($1.21). We had a delicious dinner, and used up a bunch of pasta that would have been tossed most likely or eaten when we didn’t really want it, and a bag of mixed beans that I’d been neglecting because I’m not in the habit of using them. (I’m kind of in a lentil, mung bean, adzuki bean, black bean rut. There are many more beans out there, and I should branch out.)

Anyway…using the leftovers in a different way than how they were first served made for much less drudgery. Leftovers shouldn’t have to be a chore, yeah? I’m thinking the key to leftovers (to be used that same week, rather than making a huge batch of something to freeze and eat again later) with vegetarian food is to plan based on beans and grains. Vegetables are, of course, much better fresh so I try to only harvest and cook as much as we’re going to eat at that meal and maybe for lunch the next day.

Oh yeah…the budget. Here’s the breakdown:

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Tags: croutons, jury duty, leftovers, minestrone, tomatoes