My husband says I am a magician with leftovers.

Three years ago, when I was writing my first blog foodiesarefun.com, I never imagined I would be saying those words today…”my husband says”. But then again I was living alone in the woods of Pennsylvania in a 2000 sq ft log cabin. As a single person (for some of those 6 years) I cooked for myself and leftovers were eaten the next day.

Paul on our Wedding Day just before dinner at Restaurant Marc Forgione.

Now, cooking for the two of us often leaves me with leftovers that just sit in the fridge till they gather the fortitude to walk themselves to the trash. As I put any one of them in one of the possibly 4000 mismatched Tupperwares or Chinese to-go containers rolling out of the cupboard, I often think “when the hell are we going to pull this out again?”

The thought recently crossed my mind again as I froze an Italian gazpacho (made from extra homemade bruschetta topping).

I looked at it and was actually excited to eat it in the future..and that got me thinking.

When I re-purposed the excess bruschetta topping into a soup, I essentially made two meals out of it on top of the meal it was originally intended for (an appetizer for a friend’s dinner party.) I had the soup I put in the freezer for later, the soup we ate that night, and the original bruschetta topping made for the party.

As the freezer door swung back to hit me in the shoulder I thought back to what my husband had said earlier…about being so good with leftovers. Since we started living together, I have found myself re-purposing food much more often. It keeps my kitchen low on food that is either thrown out or poured down the drain.

Case in point: use olive juice in homemade (or add to store-bought) blue cheese dressing. It thins it out if needed and adds tons of texture and flavor. You can also add it to your margarita to transform it into a “dirty margarita”. 

As I stood in the open freezer draft, I listed in my head all the food in my fridge or pantry that I generally re-purpose…wine, pickle juice, bacon fat, cheese rinds, steak trimmings (perfect for jerky), vegetable scraps, cured meat ends, old tortilla chips…and got to thinking…I can use more and save money if I just thought about it.

So here I find myself cooking it forward…sharing my exploits in food frugality with you. This blog will focus on the re-purposing of food in all stages of preparedness and the tools, techniques and screw-ups that lead to their, shall we say, second lives. If you have any comments, ideas or critiques please send them to me at heidi@theleftoverlove.com. I read all comments and will reply in due time.

As for the Italian gazpacho. That I’m expecting to love when I pull it out again in the future. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

And this time I’ll remember what it is…because I labeled it.