The Leftover Guzzlers

our tossed garden salad composed of the bits and leftovers that might have been overlooked

There are some food categories that lend themselves to using leftovers and odds and ends, those last little bits that no one wants to finish off.

I was thinking about this as I was mixing batter for muffins Tuesday morning. I had about 1/2 cup of leftover rhubarb sauce that was getting a little long in the tooth. I couldn't get anyone to finish this. It wasn't that it was bad. It's just that there were more interesting foods to eat. Anyway, I also had about 1 cup of souring milk that I had frozen specifically for baking and had thawed Sunday morning for pancakes. I'd only used about half of that container of soured milk in the pancakes, leaving me with another cup to use as soon as I could. Both of those items would need to be used in some sort of concoction or face the garbage disposal by week's end. You know me, I certainly didn't want to waste them. Doctoring them up into something "new" was my only path. A lot of my homemade muffins are like this. I find a remnant from a previous meal in the fridge, and a plan for a batch of muffins is hatched.

Later in the day, while I was gathering garden ingredients for a tossed salad to go with dinner, I thought about how salads are great vehicles for using up those odds and ends that no one thinks to eat. I plucked the small leaves off of the beets, turnips, and Swiss chard that were setting seeds and tossed those into my harvest bucket. I also picked not only nasturtium blossoms for our salad, but also the leaves and pea-sized green seeds. I grabbed the last big leaves from the only Romaine lettuce plant that survived in my garden this year, some smaller leaves of lettuce from the hanging baskets, and a handful of small Tuscan kale leaves. Heading back into the kitchen, I opened the fridge door and found about 1 cup of leftover lentil sprout slaw salad from lunch. Put all together and tossed with a dressing, these odds and ends made a pretty good salad for our family. Other leftover foods also make good salad ingredients, like cooked pasta, cooked meat, or cooked vegetables. Perhaps no one is particularly interested in eating these small remnants. I've mentioned that I make stuffed grape leaves often. There are always one or two that don't get eaten that first night and sit in the fridge for a couple of days. Last week, I discovered these are delicious cold, sliced into 3/4-inch pieces for topping a salad. Leftover stale bread that no one will touch? One word -- croutons. On baking day, everyone wants to move on to the fresh loaves and will bypass whatever is left from the old loaf. I usually have to do something with the last stale slices of that loaf, either a bread pudding, French toast, or during summer -- a batch of croutons to top our salads.

Smoothies. So much past-its-prime stuff can go into a smoothie. Bananas too brown? No problem. Slice them up and freeze. Berries that are going soft? Again, just freeze them loose on a tray then bag up, and you have the beginnings of a smoothie for a later day. Homemade jam fail? In addition to topping pancakes, runny jam is also a great sweetener for fruit smoothies. I also save and freeze syrup drained from canned fruit and the liquid drained from thawing frozen blueberries for muffins. Future smoothies will thank the present me that saved all of those scraps.

Over the weekend I was thinking about making lunch for the family and was having a hard time coming up with an entree. I peered into the fridge and found a bunch of odds and ends, including some cooked beans, cooked rice, and about 4 different containers of leftover cooked vegetables, about 2 tablespoons in each container. At that point I realized I had the makings of a casserole for our weekend lunch. I went with a Mexi-theme and did a rice and bean bake with salsa and the leftover vegetables. If I had had some cheese, this would have been tasty topped with cheese before baking. As it was, it was really pretty good and managed to use up a bunch of lingering leftovers.

Perhaps my most commonly used vehicle for leftovers are soups and stews. Just about any sort of leftover or odd bit can make a happy home in the soup pot.

Old-time gardeners had a way to use and preserve those end of season, odd last bits -- the one lone pepper, the large handful of green beans, the small green tomatoes. These odd bits would not be enough for a family meal, nor enough for a full recipe of single ingredient pickles or preserves. However, there is a type of preserve that brings all of the bits together into one glorious, last of the garden relish. In one of my older community cookbooks (cookbooks that incorporate cherished or favorite recipes from individuals as opposed to test kitchen recipes), there actually is a recipe titled Last of the Garden Relish. All of the odd bits are chopped and cooked in a sweet and spicy brine until soft and then home-canned. What would not be enough on its own is ample when combined with other small bits. 

Some meal categories just seem like the perfect place for using up leftovers or odd bits from the garden. The interesting thing is you don't often find recipes for using leftovers in traditional cookbooks. It can't be that cookbook writers think there will never be leftovers. Judging from how much food waste is reported in the media, there are a lot of leftovers, and much of this food goes into landfills. Perhaps with the current rising food prices, many households will find themselves motivated to reimagined those lingering leftovers into yummy new concoctions. 

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have favorite ways to use leftovers, past-their-prime foods, or small tidbits?

Wartime Cooking: Using Carrots to Save on Sugar

One of the tips I came across many times in a variety of different films about foods available during World War 2 was the suggestion to use the natural sweetness in carrots as a replacement for sugar. 

Sugar was one of the first foods to be rationed strictly during the war. Stretching a small amount of sugar for an entire week must have been a challenge, Carrots, however, could be grown practically for free in one's backyard garden, yielding a plentiful supply of this slightly sweet vegetable for most households. Recipes that offset some of the called-for sugar with fresh carrot proliferated during the war. Lacking a good-sized vegetable garden, the British government fixed the price of fresh carrots to ensure citizens could easily afford this vegetable as a regular part of their daily diet.

In the film Mrs. T. and Her Cabbage Patch (mentioned last week highlighting growing cress on the windowsill), the narrator mentioned that bowls of carrots (I believe grated fresh) were placed on the lunch table in school lunchrooms for the kids to help themselves. According to the narrator, the children liked the sweet taste of the carrots, as a substitution for the sweets they might have become accustomed to before the war.

In another series, Wartime Kitchen and Garden, carrots are again called for in a couple of dishes. In episode 3, the cook follows a recipe for a chocolate pudding (steamed cake, not milk-based dessert) and uses 2 tea cups of grated carrots (beginning at the 6 min 40 second mark). The cake recipe reduces the sugar called for to 1 oz as a result of the carrots, along with what looks like 2 tablespoons of golden syrup (treacle).

Not interested in steaming a pudding? How about a dose of grated carrot to sweeten your morning breakfast. In Wartime Kitchen and Garden, this time episode 7, the cook uses grated fresh carrots to sweeten a dish of muesli (beginning at the 2 minute 34 second mark). The oats have been soaked in water overnight, then the next morning freshly grated carrot, chopped apple, and dried fruit (raisins) are stirred in. Although the cookbook (briefly shown with the recipe for the Swiss Breakfast Dish) calls for 2 tablespoons of sugar, the cook in the film omits the sugar and favors the natural sweetening of the carrot, apple and raisins.

There seems to have been no lack of carrot recipes for sweets and desserts. From carrot cookies, to carrot fudge, and carrot flan, adding a little sweetness to the life was made possible even when the sugar jar was running low. Check out the recipes at the bottom of this page from the World Carrot Museum.

I've wondered how I would adapt to some of these food restrictions. Would I find it to be a challenge that part of me enjoyed? Or would I be annoyed that I had to make so many changes to my cooking routines? I suppose I would have my moments at both extremes.