Thursday, January 22, 2009

Fun with Leftovers

We had out-of-town company over the long weekend, so I had been cooking up a storm. Afterwards, I discovered my refrigerator filled with little containers of leftovers from the meals we enjoyed. There wasn’t enough of anything to “heat and eat,” but enough to provide lots of starting points to create several new meals. Here are some examples:

I had just enough leftover dressing and other ingredients to recreate Sunday night’s Caesar salad (the sprinkles are dulse flakes):


The vegetables from a leftover Roasted Vegetable Tower (see March 31, 2008 post) were transformed into roasted vegetable fajitas:


A few cups of leftover rotini were tossed with what was left of a vegetable tian and topped with panko crumbs for a yummy casserole:


Here’s a rice pilaf made with cremini mushrooms and fresh thyme:


I combined leftover cooked rice noodles that didn’t make it into a soup with some stray veggies for this noodle stir-fry:



Did you notice that there were no leftover desserts?
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6 comments:

  1. veggievixenJanuary 22, 2009 at 11:15 PM

    mmm...yummy & creative! i love using leftovers.

    i would eat all the dessert too :)

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  2. AnonymousJanuary 23, 2009 at 11:03 AM

    GREAT leftover ideas! :)

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 23, 2009 at 2:37 PM

    Forget the main dishes- let's have leftovers!

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  4. MelissaJanuary 23, 2009 at 6:42 PM

    Everything looks delicious!! I wish I had that much luck turning leftovers into something so yummy. Robin, I have a question not related to this post (sorry). I have a few of your cookbooks, which I love!!! I made one of your cheesecakes for the first time. It calls for 16 oz. of firm silken tofu. I used regular silken tofu (Nasoya) thinking that was right since it came in a 16 oz. package. While it tastes good, I kept questioning if I should have used the aseptic packaged firm silken tofu that comes in a 12 oz. box, using a 1/4 of a second box to get to the 16 oz. for the cheesecake. Which kind do you normally use? Thanks for any help you can give me. :)

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  5. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2009 at 9:43 AM

    Nice to see there are other fans of leftovers out there. (I ofen like the leftover creations better than the original dishes!)

    Missy: Regarding the amount of silken tofu in a vegan cheesecake: you actually have a little wiggle room in that regard. My current favorite ratio is two parts tofu cream cheese to one part (or a little more) silken tofu, so 16 ounces of tofu cream cheese blended with the 12-ounce package of silk tofu would work out fine. You can use a little more or less tofu without significantly affecting the end result. Just be sure to taste your batter for sweetness since you may need to add a bit more sugar if using more tofu, and if you’re making a cheesecake that contains extra liquid, such as lemon juice, (as opposed to one made with denser ingredients such as chocolate or peanut butter), you can add a tablespoon of cornstarch to help it firm up. Hope this helps. If you have more questions, feel free to send me an e-mail.

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  6. JennJanuary 24, 2009 at 9:51 AM

    Great leftover ideas! I've been using leftover chili on everything.

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