If you can handle leftovers.

When you are ready to clean out your refrigerator, about every other week in my family, and you have bites of this and that you saved because they were too good to throw out, you are ready to make one heck of a frittata with all the stuff.

The secret to making this concoction is not what you have, because here anything goes, but how you combine it all.  If you don't have eggs and cheese, this won't work as well. I had leftover green beans, roasted onions, potatoes, carrots and artichokes.


Anything goes frittata

Ingredients
Vegetables, and starches you have in the fridge.
6 eggs
Grated cheeses/any type. I used Munster and mozzarella
3/4 C milk or cream
Salt and pepper
A pinch of dried or slivered fresh herbs
1 T olive oil
2 T butter

Turn your oven to 350F.

Cut up all your vegetables. If you have potatoes and pasta, be sure you cut these as small as your veggies.  In a medium bowl, break your eggs, mix your grated cheeses, add milk and begin pouring your cut up veggies until the mixture is thick but still runny.  If you still have more veggies, add more eggs and milk. Add salt, pepper and herbs and mix.

Heat up a medium-oven proof pan on the stove. Add your oil and butter and swirl it around until all sides are coated. Take a tablespoon of your mix and drop on the hot pan as you would a pancake. Turn it over and finish cooking.  This is your test spoonful. Go ahead and eat it up. At this point, go back to the original mix and adjust the ingredients. Your palate will tell you if you need more salt, more herbs, more cheese, etc...After that, pour the rest of the mixture in the hot pan and place the pan in the oven for 25'.  When almost set, turn the broiler on for a few minutes, until the top is poufed and golden.

Serve hot or cold, as breakfast, or lunch, with a fruit salad and toast points.

Clean the refrigerator.

If you want the Christmas tree to last, you need to water it daily, and add aspirins to the water.
If you want your cooked food to last, you need to consume within three days, or freeze it until you remember you put there in the first place.

Happy post-holidays, everyone.
Today, I'm emptying the refrigerator. I'm putting it on a diet of leftovers, make-overs and unusual snacks.

Start with the sweets:

1. Cut your pie in pieces no bigger than two bites and freeze. One day, when you have company, pull out all these pieces and serve with ice cream.

2. Meats: slice or dice, and freeze. You'll pull these out for sandwiches on a cold night when neither of you wants to cook. Or, pull those dices and toss with some cumin for tacos. Better yet, make a thick vegetable stew, add your meat, and serve it as a pot pie.

3. Veggies. You can freeze most of these too, separately. I tend to recycle them immediately as a  Minestrone  with few additions.


Minestrone Recipe:

Saute a diced onion, with diced bacon bits and a tablespoon of olive oil. When translucent, add a can of stewed tomatoes, a cup or two of vegetable stock, some of your favorite fresh herbs all pulverized in the food processors, a can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed, and  all the other left-over vegetables you can't seem to part with.
Simmer over low heat until you are hungry.

Serve with plenty of left-over rolls and bread you diced and tossed in hot oil and garlic slices.

Enjoy!

Had enough turkey?

Yes, our turkeys do roam freely around here.
Some of us hunt them and cook them.
I like mine ready to go from a supermarket, with its own gravy pouch stuck inside the cavity.
But, today, I want to talk about some other food. The after Thanksgiving diet promises that come to us in the middle of the night when our full stomachs rebel and send us to the medicine cabinet for Alka Seltzer!

On the menu: Hot salads!
Take a variety of vegetables, trim them and cut them into bite size pieces and toss them with olive oil and freshly minced herbs. Sprinkle some salt and pepper, and roast in a hot oven, 400F, for ten to twenty minutes, turning them a couple of times. I like delicata squash, zucchini, carrots, rutabaga, kohlrabi, fennel bulbs.
As the vegetables are roasting, prepare the dressing:

1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar
1teaspon of dijon mustard
1t. honey
1/2 Cup of olive oil
1 T chopped red onions

Put everything in a screw top jar and shake. Pour on the hot vegetables and serve.
For protein, that sliced cold turkey or cold ham would go nicely here.

If there are any leftovers, they are great the next day cold, or reheated.

The days of wine and roses.

Some days are this full, every corner blooming, scents and color enticing bees and birds. We think of youth as the blooming season of our lives, when we are at our most beautiful, our most enticing, our most productive.

So, what are our senior years but the harvests of our lives, sated with pleasures and tastes, sheltered from doubt and the winds of passion that might catapult our efforts.

We come to the kitchen at different times for different reasons. Sometimes we want to recollect and re-create those days of wine and roses. We want to serve a heady meal, with specific wines, with enticing aftertastes.
 Other times, we want to make simple things to nourish the child in us, the- stay- in- bed- it's-too-dangerous to go outdoors.

Yesterday, my heart said make a memorable meal, a heady celebration. My stomach said, finish the leftovers and clean the refrigerator before you head on south to California for the rest of the month.

So, here are the meals that I served:

Breakfast: Pancakes made with whipped cream and Bisquick
                orange slices, sausage.

Lunch: Panzanella salad with old cubed bread, vinagrette, tomatoes, arugula and cubed cheese and cold cuts.

Dinner: Leftover chichen and rice resurrected in fried rice, with additions of mushrooms, onions, ginger slices, garlic, egg, soy sauce, garlic hot sauce, and strips of that leftover chicken.

We're gone for a couple of weeks, sunning and visiting our boys in L.A.  We'll revisit our old haunts, places we loved during our days of wine and roses.  See you when I return.

Saving Tips

A few post-Thanksgiving hints to deal with life after the eating frenzy. Here they are:

1. Add dried herbs to your salt shaker.  (You'll use less salt!)

2. Take a long walk for every piece of pie you eat.

3. Vegetables leftovers?  Add salad dressing, shake, and keep in refrigerator to eat at leisure.

4. Eat nothing but vegetables and legumes for  the rest of the week.

5. Cut up, and freeze your leftover turkey the way you intend to use it: cubes for soups and casseroles, slices for sandwiches. Put the rest, bones and tidbits in a pot with lots of water, lots of root vegetables and let it simmer until it is soup. Discard the bones, eat the veggies and freeze  the stock in small batches to use on those days when adding turkey stock will liven up your meals.

Happy Leftovers!