Leftovers


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Burns My Bacon: Leftover Pizza Storage

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I don’t keep this a secret: I live with my parents. We generally avoid ordering out as a family, because we are all very particular about our food and there is normally a gigantic fight over what to order. It takes at least an hour for us to decide on takeout (sometimes longer if it’s Chinese food).

When we order pizza, we order a ridiculous amount so that everyone is satisfied. Last week, we ordered three medium pizzas for three people (sausage, ham, mushroom). Although I can house pizza like nobody’s business, an entire pizza is a little much. It all ends up in the fridge.

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in Rants & Raves 10 comments
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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

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– Waste not, want not!  Britannia might not like a sub-par tomato, but Sam has a great solution for those unattractive end slices:

I know where I work, with the ends of the tomato we just chop/dice them and put them in a shallow container, and use them for omeletts that have tomato in it.

– Could it be that Annie Hall is the key to great movie kitchens?  Tia certainly thinks so:

Did you notice how many of those amazing movie kitchens star Diane Keaton? It just seemed odd.

– ML managed to implant the Filet-O-Fish song in all of our heads, but it was a Tyler that was the icing on the cake (Central Jersey REPRESENT!):

THIS guy…

(Photo: Jon Juan)

in Celebs / Veggie 0 comments
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Thanksgiving Extras: A Turkey Carcass Concoction

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Let’s forget for one moment that I’m British, and just pretend that I’m an experienced hand at all things American, including Thanksgiving. I’ve lived in DC for many years now and during that time I’ve cooked several Thanksgiving dinners, and have even been trusted with the turkey.

Most of my friends venture home for Thanksgiving so we always make a point of getting together and celebrating the holiday ahead of time. I find that this is a great way to experiment with new recipes without the added pressure and guilt if something should go wrong. This year I experimented with the turkey. I grilled it, or should I say roasted it on the grill. It was an opportunity to do something different and create the extra space in the oven for all the sides — a dinner for twenty-three people brings with it a lot of sides. I’m not going to tell y’all about my turkey or how to cook it, ES has done that already but what I am going to tell you is what you can do with the turkey once it’s been hacked apart.

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in Holiday / Recipe 6 comments
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Bachelorhood is the Mother of Invention

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Having been married for almost three years now, I forgot how much of a mess my cooking was when I was flying solo.

More than anything, it was a matter of laziness.  Laziness when it came to picking out and shopping for ingredients, and laziness when dinner time rolled around and I balked at the notion of busting my hump on a meal for one.  So there were plenty of simple pasta dishes and takeout, accompanied by by an occasional flash of inspiration that foreshadowed the foodie I would become once I was cooking for an audience.

One such bit of creativity was the  “Hot Dog Sandwich.”  Typically, I’d stop at the Wawa on the ride home from work, pick up an eight inch Italian roll and fill it with a couple of boiled hot dogs and the usual condiments.  If this doesn’t strike you as particularly creative, then you understand how dire the whole situation really was.

This all came back to me last month as Mrs. TVFF headed off for a press junket in New Orleans and I quickly regressed to my old self, relying on leftovers from earlier in the week and whatever mismatched ingredients happened to be sitting around the house.  Arriving home after work and not having a plan, I noticed a couple of hot dogs in the freezer — Trader Joe’s Uncured Hot Dogs…good stuff.  I quickly began scouring the kitchen for an appropriate delivery device.

As you can tell from the photo, the only available option was a couple  of orphaned hamburger buns.  Although aesthetics aren’t everything to me, I realized I needed to do something to overcome the problem posed by the round bun and the long sausage.  This is where a little flash of improvisation came in.

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in Sandwich 6 comments
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Maybe Sandra Lee Has a Point

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It was one of those weekends where I somehow managed to spend more money in two and a half days than I had all week. Sunday night must be a make-at-home meal.

Of course I refused to leave the apartment for additional ingredients so I performed a mental scan of the kitchen. Two things popped out: broccoli and cheddar cheese. I really didn’t feel like messing with a broccoli and cheese soup. Not that it’d be particularly hard, but I had a feeling I would be scouring the internet for recipes and then melding 20 different variations into one fat crock of soup that would take me two hours to make.

Instead, I decided to chop up a bunch of random vegetables, some summer veggies that were a day away from the trash and some winter veggies that could hold up in the fridge for another week. I’m not sure what defines a casserole.

Actually, can something be a casserole without the help of a Campbell’s soup product?

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in Cheese / Eggs / Recipe / Veggie 5 comments
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Switching Savory for Sweet

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It’s absolutely KILLING ME but I haven’t been to the White House farmers market yet. It’s only a few blocks from my office, but I’ve been out of town, then out at a conference and then this week I didn’t leave my desk until quarter after 6 and the market closes at seven. No Michelle Obama treats for me.

But I hid my disappoint and redirected my energy to the challenge at home. 80P had to leave for class by 7:30, meaning we had to start eating by 7 (or at least start taking pictures of what I made.) I got home 6:30. I literally had to make a 30 minute meal. This alone is comical.

My aunt bought me one of Rachel Ray’s 30 minute cookbooks, I think it was entertaining themed. The recipes easily took me triple the 30 minutes (probably because I refused to follow the instructions. Whatever).  But that was years ago. Could I actually whip something up, and not just breakfast burritos, in 30 minutes?

Okay, so I mentally scan my kitchen on the bus ride home. What’s going bad? What’s fresh? What can be made quickly. And then I remembered what I almost made for dinner the night before. But then the Phillies gladly interrupted my life and I had to find a bar to watch the Phils capture the division. Yes, ma’am, that’s a three-peat.

My focus was on the rosemary country white loaf. Very about-to-go bad. And dude, isn’t that scary: how can a sliced loaf bought in the store last 3 weeks but an unsliced loaf bought at the market last for days.

Anyway, I had to use that bread. And I didn’t just want to cube it for croutons. I thought about a dish incorporating eggs, of course. I noticed that stratas require hours of marinating.

What about french toast? Those slices only take minutes to absorb the egg and milk. But wait. There’s rosemary in that bread. Syrup won’t work with rosemary. Hmm…

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in Cheese / Eggs / Recipe / Veggie 3 comments
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