Food Stamp Challenge Day 28: Getting Down on Leftovers

One thing I’ll never understand is why some people don’t eat leftovers. We have a family friend who will not eat leftovers, period.  It could be steak and mashed potatoes from a restaurant meal, the remainder of a pot of great soup, whatever — he will not touch it, and it’s hard to watch someone pour good food down the drain because of some weird childhood holdover.

This weekend we’ve been getting down on a huge pot of Tunisian Couscous, a gorgeous vegetable stew with intriguing flavors that just keep getting better as it sits in the fridge.  We’ll very likely get two dinners and two lunches each out of this.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to just dump the whole thing out after the first sitting, but there are people who do it. Amazing.

Also leftover in the fridge is the last of the African Peanut Soup, which is going to be someone’s lunch today. There are cooked black beans to roll up in tortillas with cheese, cilantro and hot sauce, and a bunch of containers in the freezer – things we didn’t finish when we made them during the challenge month.

In fact, the whole month’s challenge turned out to be all about leftovers, and making plenty of things ahead. While that did take a little time, it wasn’t painfully time-consuming. We discovered you can get in some pretty good living while you’re waiting for the soup to simmer and some pretty great conversations while chopping sweet potatoes. Beats parking our butts in front of a stupid reality TV show any day.

It turns out we OVER-bought, incredibly, as we also have leftover bulk foods in the pantry (various beans, rice, couscous, walnuts, raisins out the wazoo…) and it doesn’t look like we’ll have to do much shopping for at least a week, maybe more.

Hm.

Category: Cooking, Food, Money Saving, Whole Foods Challenge