Another Use-it-up Dish: Strata

The word strata means layers, usually referring to rock or soil layers. But it's also one of my favorite childhood dishes. Strata makes a warming supper dish or brunch entree. I make this so often that I forgot to mention it in last week's post on use-it-up cooking. But I made it again last week, twice in fact.

Early in the week I had leftover crusts from our tea sandwiches. So, Monday night I made a cheese, roast beef (from the roast beef and horseradish sandwiches), rye bread, beet greens, milk, and egg strata. It was delicious.

During the week, I was busy and didn't get to doing a big baking of bread, and we'd riun out of both potatoes and brown rice. For a couple of dinners I baked scratch drop biscuits to go with the entrees. The first batch were plain biscuits, which I served with gingered pear butter to go with our meal. I wanted to vary the next batch, so I made these more savory, adding onion powder, chopped green onions, shredded cheese, and bacon fat to the dough. Very tasty. But by the weekend I had a couple of each type remaining and knew I needed to use them soon.

So on Saturday we used the leftover biscuits in another strata. We also had some turkey bacon and leftover orange and green bells peppers to add to this strata. I coached my daughter through the process of making this one. She added a teaspoon of onion powder and some salt and black pepper to the egg and milk batter. While strata can be made in layers, I slice or cube the bread just as I would for bread pudding. I toss the dry with the wet ingredients together and dump into a buttered baking dish. I bake at 350 degrees F for about 40-45 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean. The baking time is dependent on the amount of milk added to the batter.

This was our supper on Saturday. My daughter made the strata for us, steamed some spinach, and sliced some strawberries. As we were washing up the dishes later, she commented that this was one of the easier dinners she'd made for us. Not only did this second strata use up stale biscuits, but it also used some long-in-the-tooth turkey bacon and the last remnants of two colorful bell peppers.

Leftover cooked meat, roasted or steamed vegetables, and some stale bread find a second life in strata. Yet, the cooked casserole looks as if it was all by design.

As a variation, I also make savory rice pudding (baked risotto), using leftover cooked rice, any cooked meat and/or veggies, grated cheese, all in a seasoned milk and egg batter, then baked as I would for a dessert baked rice pudding.

Do you make strata? What other ways do you use up stale bread products or crusts removed from sandwiches?

What's been your most successful use-it-up meal?

You know how the fridge begins to look as your approach grocery shopping day? There are bits of this, bits of that, but not one single thing that jumps out at you from which to make a meal. For me, the day before grocery shopping I often have just a little of several types of fresh produce and a bunch of tiny containers of leftovers.

I've been doing our grocery shopping on Fridays or Saturdays this past year. I skipped a regular grocery shopping last weekend, as I was buying foods for our tea on Sunday. So, it'e essentially been two weeks since I did a real grocery shopping trip. When I opened the produce drawer in the fridge this morning I saw 2 carrots, a bunch of celery tops with leaves, 4 aging mushrooms, half an onion, and lots of garlic. I also had Brussel sprout greens from the garden I could use and small amounts of several types of frozen vegetables.

With the above, I decided to make a stir fry. I suppose I could have made a soup or a casserole. But stir fry sounded good to me today.

it doesn't look like anything special, but it was tasty

I think it was a good call because my family all said it was delicious, which is funny because all I did was combine the fresh veggies with ground beef, a cup of frozen peas, some powdered ginger, soy sauce, and a pinch of sugar. I tasted it at the end of cooking and thought it tasted good, so I didn't change anything. Perhaps the cool spring weather gave us all terrific appetites tonight, or perhaps it really did taste great. Anyway, I'd say this stir fry is one of my recent successes in use-it-up cooking.

So what has been one of your more successful meals using the odds and ends the day before you do your grocery shopping? Do you have a go-to type of meal that you like to make for those days?

I'll be doing the week's grocery shopping in the morning. I like the challenge of making do. But I can say with certainty that we'll enjoy having all of our favorites once again.