Cooking with leftovers!

[Jana]

Hey! I thought it would be interesting to know, what you are doing with leftovers.
What we always dowith all sorts of old bread,like zwieback, baguette, toast, bread rolls and so on is sth called "poor knight"
All you need is 1 egg, 250 ml milk (that´s about 1 cup) and a teaspoon sugar or vanilla sugar plus butter or margarine for the pan.
Put the milk with the egg and the sugar in a soup bowl and put the bread in it. Soak bread in milk. Then give the bread in a buttered pan and let the bread bake until it is chrispy and light brown. Then turn it with a spatula until it has the same color. That´s it. It is really delicious and normally is served with apple sauce, sugar and cinnamon.

Some boiled potatoes and vegetables are left? You need about 3 potatoes for every person. Put them in a gratin dish wiith what else is left (ham, sliced tomato, paprika, even ppasta is possible..) and douse them with a mixture of cottage cheese, cream, small cubes of onion and some herbs. Bake it like this 30 minutes on 200°Celsius/ 400°F and last but not least cover it well with cheese and bake it 10 minutes more to melt the cheese..

some white rice is left? mix it with apple sauce and you got a nice and healthy dessert which is not too sweet!
You can also give the rice in a butered pan and dash it with scrumbled egg. You can also add some restsof cheese, ham or vegetables.

Same with pasta: if there is some pasta left (without sauce) you can heat it up in a saucepan and dash it with scrumbled egg. Its ready when the eggs have thickend and aren´t liquid anymore.
pasta - something different? Toast some breadcrumbs (another way to reuse old bread) in a buttered pan, add noodles. When everything is mixed up well, reduce the heat and add an egg. It´s finished as soon as the egg has thickened. Eat it hot with sugar, apple cause and/or cinnamon.

Another thing you can do with pasta from previous days is: boil them in half a liter (2 cups) milk for about 5 to 10 minutes. Take another cup of milk and mix it with a soup spoon of corn sarch and two spoons of sugar. Add vanilla flavor and stir it until there are no more lumps in it. Add the mixture to the pasta and let it boil once more. As soon as it thickens it´s ready to serve and you got wonderful milk-noodles with vanilla sauce :)

Hope you like sone of those recipes because some of them aren´t very common.

[razz]

I plan on leftovers for my meals making enough at one cooking to do several meals using leftover veggies or fresh from the fridge or freezer.

Rice for fried rice, stuffed peppers, sitr fries; macaroni for mac and cheese, tuna salad, beefaroni, and also with a tomato sauce; diced cooked potatoes are mashed, hashbrowns, fried with eggs and ham, thrown into veggie soup, veggie soup, cream soups or potato leek (one of our favourites).

Meats are cooked when they come into the house and divided up in 5 oz portions for the two of us whether ground, roasted, grilled or stewed.

Funny how we all cook differently though.

[Sparrow]

One thing we do is grill a bunch of marinated chicken breasts for dinner with starch and veggie sides. Then later in the week we will cut up some of the leftover chicken and use it in a stir fry. We will make yet another meal out of it by making chicken Alfredo - chopped chicken and steamed broccoli over fettuccine with Alfredo sauce.

[Jana]

sounds interesting!
But it´s sad that one can´t buy Alfredo here... never seen it in any supermarked here. I think in the US you have much more possibilities for cooking as there´s a greater variation of foods. Too many things can´t be bought here in Germany... too sad.

[sweetana3]

Jana, Alfredo sauce is just a heavy cream based white sauce with lots of parmesan cheese in it. Maybe some garlic or pasley depending on the recipe. It is not anything difficult to make. Google for many recipies.

[Tiam]

True enough, I don't buy alfredo sauce. I make it.

[Float On]

I think commercial jar alfredo sauce is way too heavy. I love making a light alfredo sauce, more lemon, less cheese.

I try really hard to cook so there aren't leftovers, usually the only left overs we may have are meat. Always easy to add to salad, tacos, or stirfry.

Jana, you made me hungry for french toast and I happen to have a loaf of french bread that needs to be used up tomorrow. We love having breakfast at dinner time. I've never served applesause with it but that sounds good. I have some great apples to make lumpy applesause with.

[Rosemary]

Too many things can´t be bought here in Germany... too sad.

No, actually --- it is much better. It makes the food better quality. I've been to Germany, and the food is excellent! So fresh and well-prepared. You don't have the numerous restaurants like we have in the U.S. that all serve the exact same bad food, which has been prepared in bulk by some food service company and delivered frozen to those restaurants. Yuck. Anything that can't be made from scratch, shouldn't be purchased either!

As for leftovers, a few things we do -
roast chicken --> tacos, chicken sandwiches, stir-fry
vegetables --> use on salads or in fried rice (always heavy on the veggies, light on rice in our house)
rice --> fried rice, rice pudding
random tomato-based things can go into chili
cooked dried beans --> on top of salads, turn into "baked" beans with a quick sauce, mash and add to recipes to thicken

[Jana]

Yeah, German food is quite good in its quality, but that´s about to change. I know thet in the USA by now it is u´quite normal to buy GM food in every supermarket but here, it´s not declared wether the ingredients of products are genetically modified or not. Animals are kept the same ways: factory farming and so on, and even if you buy high-quality meat from the butcher, you don´t know what the cows have been eating. GM-soybeans? Maybe, maybe not. That´s like the big secret of our century. Don´t tell anyone what´s going on here. In the end a small price is still the most important thing about products. That´s really sad. So in fact, I think german food is probably not as artificial as the American one bay be, but most thing´s don´t have such a high quality as one may suggest.

Oh, we also do rice pudding, but we always prepare it fresh with special rice, because one can easily keep it in the fridge vor about half a week - and i´ve NEVER been able to resist homemade rice pudding with real vanilla for more than one day :D Normal rice will just be warmed up the next day and we eat it with tomato sauce/ketchup or with meat + sauce.