Old to New

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One of my favorite magazines is "Real Simple"... it has tons of tips on organizing, decluttering, cooking, etc., etc.  Love it!  One of my favorite features in that magazine is their "New Uses for Old Things" column.  My home/kitchen has been going through a bit of that lately... especially in the post-Thanksgiving days of leftovers, leftovers and more leftovers.

How many uses *are* there for uneaten sweet potatoes?  Well, apparently quite a few!  I was the only one who ate any of these tasty tubers at Thanksgiving, so we have quite a few zip lock bags in the freezer awaiting consumption.  Since no one's going to eat them 'straight' I've been 'hiding' them in other edibles. So far I've made muffins, pancakes and waffles with the leftover sweet potatoes.  I plan to make spaghetti sauce next, and then maybe sloppy joe filling.  I also found a grilled cheese sandwich recipe which uses sweet potatoes.  It looks very creative and I'm guessing no one will notice.

We have lots of stuffing left over as well.  I don't know what's wrong with me that I can never make a small batch of stuffing.  There is part of me that loves stuffing and is always worried that there won't be enough.  However, year after year, there is always enough.  "Enough" is an understatement... there is always an *abundance*!  This year has been no exception.  We have been eating stuffing for days and there are still 4 bags in my freezer.  Unless Kevin wants to just eat the stuffing plain, I may have to find a new use for that, too.  I saw a recipe for stuffing meatloaf which sounds interesting and tasty.  I may give it a try.

Our most interesting leftover at the moment, however, is pizza.  No, we did *not* have pizza on Thanksgiving (never!!)  However, we did have pizza on the night after Thanksgiving.  It was Friday, after all, and my weekly clock says we must have pizza.  As we were ordering, however, I specifically asked Kevin to order only one pizza since I knew we would not dip into a second pizza given we had been doing nothing but eating for 2-3 days straight and we weren't all that hungry.  However, when the pizza guy showed up at our door, he had a 2nd free pizza for us... 'just because'.  Apparently we're their best customer.  So Friday left us with 9 leftover pieces of pizza to consume.  But that's not all... Sunday we had a group of 14 over to the house... Canadians... in need of serious Western comfort food.  So we had pizza again.  The problem that time was that three of the hungry Canucks didn't come.  So Sunday night left us with 16 leftover pieces of pizza.  Good grief.  Good thing I love pizza!

Now our family game is to see how long we can go without actually cooking fresh food.  Mornings we're having the sweet potato muffins or pancakes... lunches are some combination of microwaved leftovers... either from Thanksgiving or South Asian food left from last week... and dinner?  Yes, you guessed it.  Pizza.  Pizza. and more Pizza.  I believe it will be at least 6 dinners in a row that we'll have pizza... including the 'fresh' pizza we'll order on Friday night.  (Yes, that's right I AM crazy... we WILL get pizza on Friday night 'cause it's Friday!  My whole life is thrown off kilter if we don't have pizza on Friday.... )

So there you go... our life is one of leftovers at the moment.  But leftovers are good.  And leftovers come with good memories from a time when that food was served for the first time.  And as long as we're eating together joyfully as a family, I don't really care what we're eating. 

God bless us every one.

~lk

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