I’m a master of the sneak. I like to make sneaky menus that incorporate a little bit of last week’s menu. What’s on the table this week?
Baking with leftovers. I baked a banana bread with all of the little bits of flour left in containers in my cupboard. I also put in a few halves of bananas, since my daughter only eats half of one at a time. Since she likes chocolate chip banana bread, I put crumbled up some chocolate cookies that we got for Christmas and placed them into the dough.Bread pudding is another good way to disguise leftovers as breakfast or dessert. Bread crumbs or cracker breading for meat is yet another.
Sauce with leftovers. Tonight I’m using the spaghetti sauce that I made last summer. It was made out of all of the almost-ready-to-go-rotten tomatoes that I got from our farm share. Instead of throwing up my hands and wondering what to do with all of those tomatoes, I put them into a sauce. Now I have lovely sauce for the winter time.
Dessert with leftovers. When I canned fruit this summer, some of the fruit didn’t quite seal. I got annoyed with it, so I pureed it into pear sauce. Last Christmas, some of my fudge didn’t set, so I saved it. Tonight we’re having pear sauce with caramel topping, cleverly disguised leftovers from the freezer.
Smoothies are the ultimate way to disguise bit of vegetables and fruits that are still good but are not pretty. If you have one sad-looking banana left, plus a few bits of other fruit, they might make a sorry-looking breakfast, but they make a fantastic smoothie. Smoothies are also the perfect way to get rid of extra bits of “milk” in the bottom of containers: almond milk, soy milk, cow’s milk can all be blended into the smoothie.
Are you a sneaky cook too? What methods do you use to hide leftovers in meals?