Skip to main content

Last night's leftover lunch ideas!

After Christmas, I had a number of left over bits and bobs that I turned into dips and muffins to use up when I couldn't convince the family to have another plate of leftovers for breakfast, lunch
and dinner. I sort of opened the flood gates for ideas of what you can do with leftovers to make a new meal - that doesn't look like you are trying to get the family to eat leftovers.. again.

Here's some of my idea's...



Mixed Dip Lunch!
Lots and lots of small amounts of things can be turned into dips and eaten with toasted mountain bread slices. Cheap, quick and easy - and everyone seems to like it.

In this picture there is an olive tapnade made by putting olives from various jars into a blender with some nuts and whizzing up until they are smoothish.

A feta dip made in the blender, again with feta, fresh or roasted garlic and a splash of milk to make it creamy.

And a beetroot dip made with leftover veges from last nights roast mixed up with a bit yogurt (or sour cream) mashed up with a few Moroccan spices such as cumin, coriander and paprika.

Since I did this to use up our Christmas leftovers, it has become a bit of a regular Sunday afternoon ritual to whizz up some leftover bits and bobs and turn them into a dip for a snack (or lunch if there is enough) along with cracker biscuits, corn chips, fresh bread or toasted burrito/wrap/mountain bread cut into slices or triangles and popped into an oven for a few minutes to toast up. Yummmm!

Another and tasty way of using up leftovers is to make muffins. And the answer to "can you make carrot corn and mashed potato muffins?" is, Yes! I have a basic muffin recipe that I use and then add a cup of flavourings to it and adjust the liquid component to get it to the right consistency for cooking.

Basic muffin recipe:

2 cups of plain flour
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 cup of sugar (yes, even in savoury muffins)

Sift into a bowl and add approx 1 cup of your leftovers. ( or dried/fresh fruit, cheese and grated zucchini, cooked pumpkin and feta, tomato and ham - you get the idea!)
Then add
1 egg
1/3 cup of oil

and up to 1 cup of milk to get a very thick, just combined batter - not a runny one, it should be lumpy and divide mixture into muffin tins. I often pop a  small bit of cheese on the top just cause its yum! Cook for about 20 mins or until risen and golden on the top. Leave in muffin tins for 5 minutes to cool and shrink before taking them out. Cut in half and top with butter or maybe sour cream and enjoy!

Fritters ae another great thing to do with leftover! Same sort of idea as above - just add your diced up leftovers to the batter mixture - cook and enjoy! Its a great way of making those leftovers extend to the whole family and really good for kids lunches. I sometimes make these fitters with a packet of 2 minute noodles (cooked ones) in them as well to give an interesting texture to them - but I never use that flavor sachet (what is in those tiny silver packets anyway!?)

You could also do a bit of a bubble and squeak thing and then roll it up in a pancake. Fry up the diced up leftovers and then roll into a pancake, maybe sprinkle a bit of cheese on the top and grill too if you are in the mood, and Voila! Lunch!

And the one I have just made for the first time was the Impossible Pie! My neighbour makes them all the time when I pop over for lunch - both sweet and savoury ones, but for some reason I thought they were too much trouble even though they tasted so good. I had a day off work yesterday and so I decided that I would give it a go. I had some leftover pork from dinner the night before along with mashed potato, orangy carrots and a couple of beans. It was easy and even though I thought I had made enough for the Husband to take some to work the next day - the whole lot was eaten! Give it a go - its was really good and really easy. I'm not sure anyone realised that it was the same meal as the night before in a different configuration!

Impossible Pie Recipe;

Mix 1 1/3 cups of flour into a bowl with 1 1/2 cups of milk. Bat in 3 eggs 2 table spoons of melted butter and a cup of grated cheese. This is your basic batter - although there are many variations on this on the net. Find one that suits your cooking style. Grease the pie dish with butter and then pour in the batter. Sprinkle your leftover meat and veges (yes, including mashed potato) into the batter and maybe top with a bit more grated cheese and/or breadcrumbs,again,depending on preference. Cook in an oven until golden and set at about 230 degrees.

I don't understand the process behind this pie but it does form a type of crust and you can cut it just like a pie or quiche! Its kinda funky and a great way to make those leftovers extend to the whole family to finish them up!

If you have any other great idea's for using up left overs - let me know - I'm keen to get the most out of each meal and stop throwing perfectly good food to the chooks - or into the compost if its been in the fridge for too long. Although, I don't think the chickens are!

Score card:
Green-ness: 5/5 for not wasting food!
Frugal-ness: 5/5 for getting one meal to extend and morph into another at no cost!
Time cost: As long as the meal would normally take - no extra time required!
Skill level: I reckon you could teach the kids to start making weekend lunches this way!
Fun-ness: Great fun to put another meal on the table and not have those leftovers lurking guiltily in the back of the fridge for weeks on end!

Comments

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Popular posts from this blog

What to do when your cat attacks a bird... and doesn't kill it.

We have an eight year old cat who we got as a stray about six years ago. The vet reckoned she was about two when we got her and we did all the right things and got her spayed and vaccinated and all that stuff. She loves people and no matter where you are in the house or garden, she will not be far away. She really good with kids and will put up with the squishiest cuddles and a far bit of toddler tail fascination before bolting out the door to escape. She is well fed (despite the look she is giving me and the empty bowl below...) but not fat - but still the  urge to hunt and subsequently kill still seems to be quite strong. Last weekend, she pounced out of nowhere on a rainbow lorrikeet - thankfully my husband and a band of teenage boys were also there and managed to grab the bird before the cat had done more than pounce. Now we have a slightly mangled still alive but obviously unwell bird on our hands - what do you do? Here's what we did... We found a box - popped an old

Easy to make fabric covers for milk crates!

Like most households, milk crates appear in and about our house as they are the right size to sit on, strong enough to stand on and the right shape to store things in. They are usually free or picked up for a dollar or two at garage sales or at dump/tip shops. They come in red and blue in our area (depending on weather they are originally from Paul's or Dairy Farmers!) and that simply doesn't go with my outdoor decor - neither does the plastic look but that's another issue. Something had to be done. I decided to cover them with material that fitted in with the rest of our current outdoor setting - A quick look on the Internet for inspiration and confidence and... The finished product being modelled by the cat! Here's what I did... I started with the standard Brissy Blue and Red Milk Crates... Then I bought a sheet and a couple of pillow cases from the local Footprints Op Shop This is less a pattern and more a method to follow - Cut the sheet i

Killing cockroaches with boric acid v borax!

We live in Queensland. We have cockroaches. Lots of cockroaches! Why the NSW rugby team is called the Cockroaches is a mystery to me - surely ours are not only bigger but more plentiful??? At any rate, I don't like living with them (and I'm quite sure they  are not so fond of me at the moment!!) and I have been going through the usual gauntlet of sprays, solutions and bombs to get rid of them... But I'm not so keen on the chemical aspect of all this spraying and bombing. I hate the smell and can almost feel disease and cancer growing in me every time I spray. I'm OK with the resident cockies getting a lungful of chemicals and then keeling over but I feel its impolite (and probably illegal) if my guests and family members do the same thing!!! We went through a faze of killing them by hand (and flyswatter and rolled up newspaper and underfoot) but its hard and frustrating work and it probably was only culling the dumb and slow ones - leaving the smart fast ones to bre