Random Mon May 26 2008

A Leftover Question

On a flight back from Phoenix, Arizona, I was thumbing through Southwest Airline's in-flight magazine when I came across an article about a goddess of leftovers. According to the author of the article (who seems to harbor a copious amount of reverence toward the said goddess), Peggy Grote is a culinary magician who can turn out fabulous, guests-proof dinners from the content of a sadly-stocked-and-heavily-ransacked refrigerator. As a chronic sufferer of leftovertitis, I read the article with interest. Peggy did sound quite ingenious around leftovers, breading leftover risotto and deep-frying it to make risotto "cake," stuffing dates with cream cheese and jalapeños to accommodate sudden guests.

But as I read on the article, as the author spelled out a few of Peggy's dinner parties consisting mostly of things left over from a few days ago, I started to wonder. See, this is my problem: when I try to revive leftovers by creating something new with them, I quite often end up with more leftovers than I had started out with. If I add curry roux to a leftover stew to make Japanese-style curry, I would notice that there aren't enough beef and carrots left in the stew to make a meal, so I'd add them. Now the curry looks short on potatoes, so I cut up a few and add them. By the time the curry is ready, I might very well have the night's dinner AND a few lunches worth of leftovers--even though I probably started out with a little short of a meal. I just wanted to change the flavor of whatever I had left from the previous night, but now I have an even larger leftover.

The article is interesting and full of leftover tips (like keeping a jar of dried prunes soaked in port in the fridge, which can be used as anything from ice cream topping to a sauce on pork chops), but it doesn't address this peculiar problem. So, I'm just wondering--does anyone suffer from this--the problem of never-ending, ever-growing leftover?

- Yu Kizawa