It's been a while since the last time I posted, sooo... well... yeah... For someone with not a lot to do I just have been busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy putting my two cents worth all over the interwebs.
But that's not why I'm here.
Nope.
I'm here because of something disturbing I've been reading about for the last few years. Something so unholy and earth-shattering in a bad way that, well, I just have to vent.
So here it goes...
Why do people hate Leftovers?
Seriously. There's a lot of hate over leftovers. And a real hatred for people who cook for more than one day's worth of food at a time. And eat leftovers for lunch at work instead of going out and blowing $5-20 for lunch?
Same with just fixing dinners. You can buy a meal kit for two, three, or four. For one friggin meal. What's up with that.
Let's see... (gets up, groans, waddles over to the 2nd refrigerator/freezer)
2nd Fridge/Freeze, Beans? Yes. When the Family Beans moved to the apartment from the house, we left the 24cuft fridge/freeze at the house. Old, kind of worn, and wouldn't fit. So we went with what the apartment came with. A 16cuft. Hey, cut down on stuff, smaller life, try, yada yada... And I tried. Tried through July 4th and barely managed, no room for drinks and food or food or drinks and faced with the prospect of the upcoming holiday season (this was 2017, by the way) I just freaked and bought a 16cuft. Which now sits where normal people (hey, I'm not normal, neither is Mrs. Andrew...) put a kitchen nook table chair thingy.
By the way, 1st fridge holds to be cooked stuff, butter, open milk jug, cheese, veggies, pickles, eggs while 1st freeze holds chicken breasts (10oz and 5oz) and hot dogs, packs of ground beef (8 oz or 4 oz) and stuff like that.
2nd Fridge is for sodas (neither of us drink alcohol, so diet sodas it is) and extra milk and extra orange juice and extra stuff and big items to be cooked that are thawed or thawing (currently housing 2 7.5lb turkey breasts and egg nog and 3 gallons of milk and sodas and my fish-fry oil.
2nd Freezer, on the other hand... That's me leftovers storage container.
(Ominous sound as door opens) And we have... 2 nights worth of Killer Lasagna. 1 night's worth of chicken enchiladas (thaw, heat, add side order of rice and sour cream...) 5 packets of chopped up turkey breasts leftover from Thanksgiving and the spare turkey breast, all chopped up into bits and parceled out into 2.5 cup packets. For to which to make turkey pot pie with. A brick of last year's boiled down turkey juice (take all the turkey carcasses, put in really big stock pot, boil the living heck out of it all, scoop out all the chunks, save the meat, discard the non-edible stuff, boil down remaining liquid into a thick sludge, cool, skim off the turkey schmaltz (fat) and then let the de-schmaltzed sludge gel and package) for which to make turkey pot pies with. And 3 new carcasses to boil down once the two from New Years are picked apart and do the whole rendering thingy all over again.
Last year's ham bone that I really need to saw into chunks for to use in making pots of beans. This year's ham bone to do the same. Need to make space for the bags of chunked up leftover ham for to use in making beans and other things (like grits with ham, yum (sound of Mrs. Andrew gagging at the thought of grits)(what does she know, she used to eat Cream of Wheat and she still eats rice with butter and sugar, blech.)
Sorry, no pulled-pork from the Anniversary dinner left over. May have to make some more.
So, well, we love leftovers. Even when we make something like (Our Version of) fried rice, we make enough leftovers for lunch the next day.
Thanksgiving? We ate Thanksgiving meal - turkey, candied yams, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce for 6 days before the dressing and yams ran out.
Christmas? We ate ham, candied yams, dirty rice and cranberry sauce until, well New Year's Eve, whereupon the yams ran out and there's some dirty rice left over for my lunches and the ham goes into small bits to make stuff with...
New Year's? We'll eat New Year's meal - turkey, candied yams, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce for 5-6 days before the dressing and yams run out.
Yum.
And even non-holiday meals are ripe for tasty leftovers.
Enchiladas. Make 16, bake in a pan with lots of cheese, eat 4 for first night fresh, refrig and eat another 4 the next day and freeze the remaining 8 into two packs of 4.
The aforementioned Killer Lasagna? (which is just a regular recipe with lots of extra cheese and meat and sauce and cheese and cheese. Did I mention cheese?) A pan of my lasagna makes for 6 night's worth. Have it the first night fresh, then manga another few nights off of it and portion out and freeze the remaining.
Same with roast. I mean, why do a roast for 2 people for one night? Come on, you're already wasting all that 'lectricity or gas or dried cow patties or whatever you're using for fuel (yes, I have cooked meals over dried cow pats. Who hasn't?) So for two people I start out with 5-6lbs of meat, a big bottle of wine, about 2 pounds of carrots, another 2 lbs of spuds and eat it first night fresh, eat another 2-3 nights reheated and the rest gets chopped up and turned into vegetable soup (big frozen bag of mixed veggies, and several cans of petit diced tomatoes) and eat that fresh for one night with cornbread (save the leftover cornbread for cornbread and milk for breakfast (it's a southern thing) and the rest frozen) and then eat soup and fresh cornbread for 3-5 nights and freeze the rest of the soup.
Beans? Start out with 2-1 ratio pinto and white beans, soak, cook with hambone and extra leftover ham mini cubes. Eat fresh with cornbread and eat for days until it's time to turn the leftovers into chili with beans (you can add extra beans from a can, but starting it with the leftover beans and bean liquids works...)
Eat chili with cornbread until you're tired of it, freeze most of the remaining chili into individual night's servings and have chili-dogs with the rest.
Turkey pot-pies? I make 4 mini-pot pies using one chunk of turkey, a chunk of frozen turkey juice, more mixed veggies (the secret is to cook the mixed veggies beforehand in the microwave (say it with a French accent...) for 15 minutes before hand so the green beans are cooked through, and make fresh pie dough and make 4 mini pies and you have one night of turkey pot-pie and stick the other two in the refridge and cook them the next day.
Even our fried rice is leftover based, kinda. Start out with fresh veggies, and 1/2 makes one night's worth of FR, then a couple days later make some more FR with the remaining 1/2 veggies.
LEFTOVERS!
And people throw them out, or don't even cook and throw out their take-out leftovers. What... savages.
Did you think this was going to be a political post? Sorry, it isn't.
Except that leftovers are a great way to save time while reloading, or slitting throats.. I mean, who has the time to do a big dinner when you're out tarring and feathering...
Preach it!
ReplyDeleteWhen you are young, single, and on a limited budget, getting leftovers are a blessing from God.
And, as you documented so well, leftovers can be recombined into all sorts of tasty dishes if you get tired of the original.
Frank
It's actually one of the documented reasons for big holiday meals. Is the leftovers available in a non-refrigerated world. Roast and serve the first day, everything else goes into a soup or stew pot.
DeleteJust with the advent of refrigeration and home-freezing, leftovers have become much more accessible for longer periods of time.
I mentioned I live in an apartment complex. I see lots of young people getting takeout or delivery all the time. And hear them bitching about not having any money. I've actually asked them why they don't cook more, and the look they give me is one of a vampire looking at a blessed cross during bright daylight.
Yet the bags of trash they throw away are full of meal trays and beer bottles/booze empties. Geee.... wonder why they're always complaining about being broke. I mean, a 50lb bag of rice from Sams is $19.00, and you can get chicken breasts for $1.98 a pound...
Leftovers are The Best!! Meatloaf sandwiches! Second day of spaghetti sauce and meatballs! Turkey and stuffing! Second day of any soup, if there is one! Many foods are better the second day, except kale, which isn't even good on the first day!
ReplyDeleteirontomflint
You can have leftovers of... spagetti and meatballs? (Looks down at me own corpulent belly... Maybe I'll try that for the new year...)
DeleteMeatloaf sandwiches, with mustard and lettuce. I'll eat them for breakfast and lunch, either fried or just plain cold.
Hmmmm... now I've got a hankering for some sliced tongue sandwiches, except that tongue is more expensive than sirloin...
I live on leftovers. Mine mostly but if I go out for dinner the doggy bag will contain mine and those that don't want theirs. If I come to your home and you offer a plate to take home, yep. I remember my fathers tin pail lunch bucket that he loaded with anything from the fridge, mashed potatoes, peas, corn a couple chicken kegs with a handful of baked bread. All in one tin. Watching him glop the stuff in his pail made me feel ill. Not today. Unlike dad i can reheat in a microwave. I have this to say about that, second day spaghetti on butter bread sandwich. Mom always said finish that, there are starving children in Africa.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best things about going out to a steak joint used to be leftover steak for steak sandwiches the next day. Then I finally learned to make my own steaks properly. So now, when I can afford it, I can have all the steak I want. Sigh. Kinda takes the fun out of it.
DeleteBut yeah, I've eaten cold spaghetti sandwiches before. Tasty. As to starving kids in Africa, they can have all the stuffed eggplant and organ meat they want, and green peppers...
My parents, and grandparents, lived when starving people would beg for food. They called it the Great Depression, which turned out to be the big opportunity to chisel away at the Bill of Rights. They didn't waste food, and their reason was survival. My mother might only have a sandwich for lunch that was tomatoes, or cucumbers, between two slices of bread, but she had a lunch, when many of her friends went hungry.
ReplyDeleteWe ate leftovers, and learned how to use every bit of food. It's a skill, and necessary.
Parents were both Depression Babies. And after they got money they were, and mom still is, tight with a dollar. So, well, learn to cook well and cheap meats taste better than other people's expensive foods.
DeleteI grew up only having dessert on special days. And so we ate lots of really good food. Bread was always available to make sandwiches after school.
Learning to eat what you can and use every bit of food is very much a survival skill. I keep hearing about people who throw away 1/4 or more of the food they buy. I only throw away spoiled food. Anything that has food value gets used up, or frozen for future use.
Like... Onions. Two people, not a lot of onion usage. So I buy the largest onion I can find, mince the whole thing, use what I need right away and the rest gets frozen, already cut. Since I use onions usually after being sauteed in butter, frozen works fine. Same with celery. A head of celery will last me a year. Green/Red peppers? Same. Yet I know people who will use a 1/3rd of an onion and throw away the rest.
Crazy.
only thow out if it has spoiled... mind the expiry date... basic housekeeping lessons every mom and dad should pass to kids...
ReplyDeletebut the most horrible leftover stereotype is not culinary at all , despite name
Christmas cake, aka single lady who turned 25 and suddenly no one is interested in her.
(Christmas cake is sooo cool on 24th but on 25th no one is interested, now you know where the name showed up)
It depends on the Christmas Cake. One year my dad and mom were out of state and I got to tell my grandmother the news that nobody except the local pothead would eat her Christmas cake. Sad times.
DeleteNow... A good Yule Kage or a Collins Street Bakery Fruitcake? I'll eat those all year long. Especially the bourbon-soaked Collins Street Bakery one...
Quality of the Christmas Cake matters.
Assumption Abby fruitcake. Made by the Trappist Monks. There be rum in there! Kinda pricey, but I've never found better!
DeleteAround here, cheesecake and poppy cake are staples...
DeleteAnd now I'm really hungry!
ReplyDelete"While visions of leftovers danced through their heads."
Good advice from all.
I actually do dream about what to do with leftovers.
DeleteThen again, I have a seal's body. Not a Navy SEAL. Nope, more like one of those harbor seal, where the body just keeps getting wider until the midsection, then shrinks down again. At least I still have a neck...
Visited the grandparents, came home with leftovers. Parents cooked and there were ALWAYS leftovers, looked forward to 'em and loved 'em. It was a rare meal that I made/make that didn't result in leftovers, if I'm going to heat up the stove/oven why not make more than one meal? As for me when I'm out skulking about energy bars are good to go. Carry the wrappers so as to not leave evidenc....er.... garbage behind and nitrile gloves also de rigueur, in winter they're under wool gloves. Excellent post and a good change of pace Beans, kinda like like facing a knuckle baller after facing heat tossers.........
ReplyDeleteWell, I mean, I actually have heard people say they hate Christmas dinner because of the leftovers. What? I look at them like they have three heads or something. Leftovers are where it's at. Unless you're primitive camping in the summer...
DeleteBut, yeah. Heat stove/oven once, use microwave for 4-5 days more. Talk about energy efficient!
Ok, so who else wants to go to Bean's house for yummy good food??!!
ReplyDeleteBesides, with leftovers, not only do you have good, easy-peasy meals to come home to after a busy day out tarring and feathering, it also helps to save BIG bucks so you can buy more tar, feathers, or powder, lead, and stuff to be able to do your reloading with!
Personally, I just don't understand folks who don't like left-overs...when I was doing the cooking, it was called planned-overs, cause that's what I was doing...planning for the next few meals. I love 'em!!!
Planned-overs. Good phrase, I'll steal that thankyouverymuch. Yes. Each big meal has plans for parcelling out for following lunches and dinners.
DeleteAs to showing up at Casa de Beaner, let me just get my shotgun nice and warmed up... :)
I do a major shopping twice a month, with most of the proteins bought during one trip. Some minor shoppings between, once or twice a week, maybe. The people who shop daily on the way home from work? Crazy (and I used to be one of those. Still kicking myself for wasting all that money...)
Hey Beans;
ReplyDeleteI love left overs, since I am the one usually cooking, I know that it is healthy and not full of crap that the restaurants use. I take the leftovers to work and I am not spending a bunch of money buying lunch at the work cafeteria or worse heading off site (and losing my parking spot, which is a premium) to buy lunch from some vendor. I remember my mom stretching leftovers because when I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money so we "Made do". I still do that today and we live more comfortably but I hate wasting money because the money that is wasted takes money away from necessities like ammo or vehicle mods....you had a good post there, LOL
When I worked at the local anti-drug unit, the cops would come in, have roll-call, go to lunch, come back and bitch all the time about how they didn't have any money. Buying lunch daily is for suckers and rich people.
DeleteAnd, yeah, stretching leftovers. It's something I've done, something my wife's done, something my parents did.
Then there's commercially available food. Too much salt and other stuff. There's a great Cuban joint in town, but it takes my body a week to process all the salt. Need to just learn to make more of my own.
I love leftovers. Turkey with all the trimmings, ham, lasagna, spaghetti (oh Lord, second-day spaghetti, proof that God loves us). So many delicious varieties and combinations. People hate leftovers? I'd argue that they're not really people, space aliens in disguise or something, leftovers, love 'em.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, great post Beans.
Totally love leftovers. Back when we used to do the Thanksgiving and Christmas pilgrimages to the respective families, we'd still plan on cooking OUR dinner the day after we got back. Because, well, leftovers.
DeleteThanks.
Leftovers? Let me AT 'em! nom, nom, nom.. :) Of course my Creole farmgirl wife being a scratch cook of note, between me & our grown son when he's around they're rarely are any. :) And AMEN to the space aliens bit!
DeleteBeans, I admit you fooled me with the intro!
ReplyDeleteWe make use of all the leftovers here. I think the one thing that we are working on is sizing appropriately as the children leave. If not, you run the risk of at least a week of an "okay" recipe.
Well, I'm glad my intro got someone. I worked a whole 4 minutes to make it intriguing...
DeleteThe key to sizing is to stop fixing 'okay' recipes and just cook great ones. Life is too short to cook or eat 'okay' food. Here in Beansland, my wife and I have striven to make every meal pert near exceptional, to the point that oftentimes it's a struggle to figure out which one to fix because the valid options are all too darned tasty. Meh meals are to be saved when she's sick and I just need to stoke the fires. Which means usually grits and ham, or tuna sandwiches, or ham and swiss sandwiches or something..
A prudent process Beans. We keep experimenting to see what is "great".
DeleteWe did leftover tacos de carne asada for breakfast. Had too many last night, so no sound sleep even I started trying at around nine-thirty or so. Slow day today. Come to think about it, maybe Mister Bacardi is talking to me this AM.
ReplyDeleteGood post. Expresses just right my sentiments. Mixing leftover stuff to create new stuff is always a good option, no matter what some say. Why do they need to use the word "leftover" in the new name?
I have maintained for years that the only truly good leftovers is turkey stuffing.
ReplyDeleteI could eat that stuff almost every day
Up until the start of this holiday season, Mrs J and I had fine tuned our meals to "The Meal" and one round of leftovers. With all the wonderful folks visiting over the various holidays, (and I do mean wonderful, I mean someone different to talk to? Love Mrs J dearly but when we can finish each other's sentences it's nice to hear a different voice once in a while), the ramping back up of the meal size planning algorithm has taken some extra effort. We've ranged from "eating it all" to "way too many leftovers" and hit most of the points in between. But, unfortunately, the good times must end and we'll be back to just us two. Wonder how long the sizing algorithm will take to reset.
ReplyDeleteGood Post, and Happy New Years to all. I called the New Years at 2400 Reykjavik standard time and went to bed. 'Tis what it 'tis.
I eat leftovers nearly every day for lunch. I don't mind it at all and it definitely saves money. Wife and daughter? Not so much, but they're usually not going out and spending $10-$20 fortunately. I did grow really tired of turkey after Thanksgiving though. By Tuesday I gave up. Our too large bird pushed my limit. The Christmas ham only lasted another day.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you guys cook the way my Sweet Little Wife cooks. When she makes lasagna, we wind up with enough frozen for at least three more meals. Same with spaghetti sauce, beef stew, and my soups and chili. When I bake bread I do a two-loaf recipe, and it lasts us two weeks; one goes on the table, the other gets wrapped and frozen for a week.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally going to try cinnamon rolls on Saturday, but I've never had to worry about cinnamon rolls going stale!
This topic hits very close to home. Having lived through the rationing and Victory Gardening era (1941-46) with an Irish grandmother who taught us it was bad luck to eat the potato peels because they were for the hens and the pig I still live by the axiom "Eat it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!". Vegetable scraps unfit for soup go into the compost bin, bones get boiled down for stock, we even bring our own takeout containers for the leftovers when we eat out. Old Guns.
ReplyDeleteWe had guests over for dinner one night.
ReplyDeleteMy wife was asked how she prepared such a wonderful meal.
She then listed the leftovers that were combined to make the meal.
We love leftovers. Always have. You can't just nuke 'em though, you have to break out the skillet or turn the oven back on for the proper reheat of things like lasagna. Learning how to reheat left over pizza is well worth the trouble. Still working out the method for reheating some kinds of potatoes although au gratin and scalloped are dead easy. Tater tots are another story. Crispy leftovers....gooood for the soul.
ReplyDelete