Luscious Leftovers

April 1st easily makes fools of gullible individuals like me.

I'm sure my gullibility has something to do with April 1st being so close to my birthday and the subsequent excitement I feel about celebrating my pending day!

Doesn't matter my age, I always feel like a kid again when my birthday roles around.

It's Friday this year, and I'm planning on having friends over to celebrate with an early dinner followed by flourless, orange and almond cake. I'll share the recipe this weekend.

Well, I've listed 6 to 7 meals with the ingredients from the March 19th shopping list and at this point, the only other meals I'd suggest from that list are meals made with leftovers.

One of my budget-conscious strategies is this: I always cook more than I'll need at any one meal so that I have leftovers for lunches and or simple dinners.

Jazzing up and eating leftovers is a great way to ensure that by the end of your week you've wasted nothing (hopefully) purchased during your previous trip to the grocery store.

Oftentimes, I add frozen veggies or any remaining fresh produce in my crisper to the leftover meal thereby creating an almost entirely new meal. This ensures that I'm using everything I previously purchased so that by the time I need to grocery shop again, I'm down to a bare fridge.

Above is a picture of leftover savory bread pudding from Friday's brunch. I'll eat that for lunch today, otherwise, I might heat it up this evening with some leftover okra and eggplant made yesterday.

I suggested two different meals with polenta this week, one savory and one semi-sweet. The one cup of polenta to 4 cups of water I proposed in both meal ideas makes quite a bit of cooked polenta, which means if you have leftover, whether savory or semi-sweet, you might like to slice it and smother it with Salsa from the last shopping list, and then top it with olives.

In the picture to the left, I've used whole okra (which I had in the freezer) as a side to the tomato-baked polenta.

I simply popped the frozen okra onto the baking pan with the sliced polenta, dotted it with unpeeled garlic cloves, drizzled the lot with olive oil, and then put it into a 350-degree oven for about 20 mins or so.

Baked unpeeled garlic cloves are delicious. Once cooked, the garlic slips easily out of its skin. Eat it whole just like that, or mash it up with some olive oil and use it as a dipping for bread, crackers or corn chips.

Good luck being innovative with your luscious leftovers!