Friday, August 29, 2014

Friday Food - The Leftover Version

I don't really know how it happened, but within the past 6 days, Christopher and I have amassed a fridgeful of leftovers. Make that a fridge and freezer full of leftovers. Usually, at most, we have a couple of pieces of pizza. Or maybe some Orange Chicken and rice. But nothing like this.

Okay. I'll admit that part of it was planned. Last Sunday (yes, on the hottest day we've had in ages), Christopher made a huge batch of his amazing red sauce. You see, we had decided to make lasagna for dinner for some friends (and their kids) and figured that it was a good excuse. We also were playing the odds, because each of the days prior to that when 90 was predicted the weather had topped out in about the 70s. Of course, last Sunday it actually hit 90 outside. It also hit 80-something in the kitchen, but that's a different matter.

But, either way, we ended up with about 8 quart bags of red sauce in the freezer, as well as 3 quart bags of lasagna (basically single-serving size - the bags aren't actually full). In the fridge, we had a large container of lasagna (about 5 servings), as well as about a quart of sauce. And about half a loaf of garlic bread.

Monday night, a friend of ours came over for dinner and we ordered in Indian food from Gandhi Mahal. Incredible meal (as usual), with one container of rice and about 1/3 of a container of my meal and 1/3 of a container of Christopher's meal leftover. No, we can't combine them due to the differences in heat levels (Christopher gets his hot, I get mine medium). So that was 3 more containers in the fridge.

Tuesday night, we made some pasta (frozen tortellini), and used a bunch of the red sauce. But the package of pasta made about 4 servings (the package said 6), so the rest - you guessed it - went into the fridge.

Wednesday night, we had some friends over and cooked an odd combo meal of softshell tacos and Tater Tot Hot Dish. (I made the hot dish because I knew at least one other person would eat it with me. Christopher made the tacos because he knew that he and one other person would eat them.) And one of the people who came brought dessert. We did pretty well and sent a lot of the dessert and hot dish away with people at the end of the night, but we still ended up with a container of hot dish and part of a pint of ice cream leftover.

Yesterday afternoon, I went out to lunch with a co-worker and was only able to eat about half of my salad, so the rest came home with me. Last night, Christopher and I went out to dinner at Pittsburgh Blue and we came home with half of my entree, half of a massive plate of hash browns, and 3/4 of a round of bread. All into the fridge.

So... As we contemplate the over-abundance that we are fortunate enough to have and do a quick inventory of the food in the fridge (not including the freezer), as of last night, we had:
 - 1 container of lasagna (missing a large piece that I took for lunch on Monday)
 - 1 (getting smaller) container of red sauce
 - 1 container of tortellini in sauce
 - 3 assorted containers of Indian food
 - 1 small container of taco meat
 - 1 container of Tater Tot hot dish
 - 1 container of leftover hot dish meat which I'm going to use for sandwiches
 - 1/2 loaf of garlic bread
 - 1/2 of a Buffalo chicken salad
 - 1 chunk of steak
 - 1 large mound of hash browns

Honestly, when you open the fridge, it looks like a game of Tetris is going on. Especially when you realize that we have all of our "regular" stuff in there, like 2 gallons of milk, a bunch of cans of soda, yogurt, lunch food, all that kind of thing. Like I said, it's definitely an embarrassment of riches.

I told Christopher, yesterday, that for the next few days all I'm cooking for dinners is leftovers. And tonight I followed through with that. He had tortellini and a little bit of garlic bread. I had Chicken Tikka Masala and rice with a side of some Buffalo chicken salad.

Overall, we cleared 3 containers out of the fridge in that one meal. I'm oddly proud of that. Of course, I'm also hoping that we're back to "normal" before we realize we've forgotten something in there for too long, which makes for some very solid incentive...

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