Learning to Love Leftovers

I'm not sure when it happened--the shift in my appreciation of leftovers. As a child I wasn't very fond of them. As the food preparer in our house, where the fruits of my labor often get devoured in 6.3 minutes, I have made good friends with leftovers.

There are 3 main forms of leftovers at our house:

1. Exact same dish warmed over.
2. Same ingredients re-purposed--cook once, eat multiple times. For example, I might combine a little brown rice, sweet potatoes, and beans from previous meals into a pot and stuff quesadillas with the leftovers. Or I cook a whole chicken, we eat it freshly roasted, then in the form of chicken salad, then in the form of chicken soup, then in the form of chicken stock made from bones.
3. Fabulous freezer finds.

The third category has gotten to be a favorite for me. Going with the cook once, eat multiple times policy, I find that the winter months are full of soups, stews, and chili. These are great for several days, but more often than not, the quantity prepared outlasts the palates who eat them. So invariably containers end up in the freezer, not always as well marked as they should be.

I've heard of folks dumping all their leftovers into one container and pulling it out when it gets full for a hearty leftover meal. They say it's wonderful no matter what you put in it. I'm skeptical, so my leftovers get individual containers, but then get thrown into a single pot after thawing.

It sounds like the same result, I know, but there's one big difference between the two--I brown about 1/2 pound local breakfast sausage before adding my freezer finds. I figure if the combination of the freezer finds is not so great, at least it's got sausage in it. And pretty much, if it has sausage, especially this local stuff, I'll eat it.

So decide what your "sausage" is and add it to those treasures hiding in your freezer for a simple meal (or 3!). No better time than now to have one last "winter meal" and get ready for the bounty spring and summer will bring.