Yesterday's Lunch: Letting Nothing Go to Waste

Since I don't plan to spend as much as usual on groceries for this month, I am making use of every leftover that is possible. For breakfast yesterday, I had the leftover serving of potato casserole that one daughter didn't finish. Usually, I won't eat someone else's leftovers. You know, germs and all of that. But hey, we are family, she did grow inside of me long ago. So, to get over the hurdle of "germs," I changed the casserole serving into a fried potato dish. Quite good. Lunch, though, is really where I excelled at using the leftovers.

This is what I used from our assortment of leftovers for my lunch yesterday. On New Year's day we had a ham dinner with asparagus (and that potato casserole). When I prepare asparagus, I break the bottom of the stems off at the tender point. This is the portion that many people discard. At almost $3 per pound, I was not about to throw these pieces away. So I saved the tough ends of the stems in a plastic container in the fridge.

Yesterday, I peeled the tough ends and was able to salvage all but the bottom half to one-inch of each stem after peeling. That bottom bit was still too tough to cut through easily, so those bits went into the compost, figuring their stringiness would be unappetizing.

Still, I had a nice pile of asparagus ends to steam and accompany my lunch. Going back further on the calendar, Christmas Day dinner was homemade pizza. I had mixed up a pizza sauce for the occasion, using herbs, seasonings, and tomato paste. There was a small container of this leftover sauce lingering in the fridge. Pushing the limits with how long to keep something, I wanted to use this up right away.

I took 3 whole English muffins from the freezer and made 6 mini pizzas for my week's lunches. I also used more of the wrinkly green pepper plus sliced olives that were lingering in the fridge to top the pizzas. There was also a bit of soft tofu leftover from our tofu and chocolate pie dessert on New Year's day. The tofu was bought on markdown and was past its expiration date, so I knew it was use it or lose it time. I melted a small amount of chocolate chips in the microwave and pureed the tofu with the chocolate, adding in some honey and vanilla extract for a creamy chocolate dessert.

My lunch made use of several of the lingering foods in our fridge, and it was very delicious, to boot!

Roasted Red Peppers for Half Price

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was asking if we could buy roasted red peppers. I checked our local Fred Meyer and they wanted $4.69 for a 16 oz. jar (about 29 cents per ounce), while Walmart wanted $2.29 for a 10 oz jar (about 23 cents per ounce). I told my daughter that we'd make roasted red peppers when we find a good deal on the peppers in the produce section. Then, last week, I found a $1 bag of 2 green peppers and 1 red pepper on the markdown rack at FM. We used the green peppers on homemade pizza and in burritos. As promised to my daughter, I saved the red pepper for roasting. The pepper was getting a little wrinkly, but it was still okay for roasting.

I used my oven for the roasting, baking at 400 F degrees for 20 minutes, turning, then baking another 20 minutes. (Fortunately, I had other items in the oven baking along with the pepper.)

Immediately after removing the baking sheet from the oven I put a glass bowl over the pepper to steam it for 15 minutes.

When done with the steaming, the pepper's skin slipped off easily.

I sliced the skinned pepper into strips, put in a canning jar, and covered with a 50/50 blend of olive oil and vegetable oil. The jar of roasted red peppers will keep for 5 days or so in the fridge.

As a bag of peppers was $1 on markdown, the red pepper cost 34 cents. I used about 1/3 of a cup of oil to cover the peppers, for a cost of about 50 cents. I would estimate the my half-pint jar was about 5/6 full or about 6  3/4 ounces. My cost per ounce, then, is about 12 cents, about 1/2 price from the jarred red peppers. If I had wanted to use the peppers immediately, then I would not have needed the oil to cover, and my cost per ounce would have been around 5 or 6 cents. By the way, the oil will not be wasted but will be used in salad dressings and to saute meat and vegetables.