Learning to Love Leftovers
5 recipes that provide fantastic leftovers, a "cook once, eat twice" cookbook & winter tea inspiration
Hi!
January is a long month, isn’t it? I keep looking at the calendar thinking it must be over but, nope! We’ve still got a week to go.
January has felt extremely busy, due to a mix of both fun & mundane activities. The unceasing demands of raising kids, working and running a household are no joke! Even when everything is going well and no one is sick or struggling, it’s hard to keep up.
Earlier this week, the entire handle on our refrigerator door broke off. It’s a small thing, but also something that needs to be taken care of. 1 That’s what January has been, a series of “one more things” that need to be taken care of, creating a list that I don’t think we’ll ever reach the end of.
What has helped ease the workload this month is relying more on leftovers for dinner. The “cook once, eat twice” strategy of meal planning is a good one if you can learn to love leftovers. Instead of planning to cook 5 meals Monday-Friday, I plan to cook 3 and then eat leftovers twice during the week.
Meals like a big pot of soup or chili, or a roasted chicken work great for this. This week, I’m making Instant Pot pork shoulder, which provides two meals that can be completely different (tacos one night, pork sandwiches with coleslaw the next).
Looking for more tasty leftovers? These four recipes all taste great the next day.
Dinner Last Week
I’m always curious about what other families are eating. Aren’t you? Here’s what my crew ate last week.
Monday: The girls and I drove back from Arizona and got home in the early evening. Sorin made a vegetable stew and bought a rotisserie chicken for dinner. It was so nice coming home to dinner and a glass of wine!
Tuesday: I used leftover rotisserie chicken to make chicken and black bean quesadillas. Sorin and Ophelia prefer tacos, so they used small corn tortillas and added shredded cabbage and avocado.
Wednesday: I put the rotisserie chicken to good use for a third day by making chicken broth in the Instant Pot. I cover the chicken carcass with 6-8 cups water, plus 2 carrots, 1 onion and a few stalks of celery. Cook for 60 minutes, natural release.
When the broth was done I whisked in a tablespoon or so of Better Than Bouillon Roasted Chicken Base to add more flavor. Then I made matzo balls from Streit’s matzo ball mix and simmered the matzo balls for 20 minutes to make matzo ball soup. We’ve been having rainy weather, so matzo ball soup was perfect.
Thursday: I tested a recipe for baked coconut rice with miso chicken and it turned out pretty well. I’m hoping to share this recipe with paid subscribers next month when it’s perfected.
Friday: Another day of recipe testing, this time it was lemony white beans and leeks (paid subscribers will receive the recipe next week). I served the beans with toasted bread and roasted salmon.
Cookbooks
Cassie Joy Garcia has built her food career around the “cook once, eat twice” philosophy of meal planning. She has two cookbooks that lay out in-depth plans for turning one recipe into two separate meals.
If you like having a plan for the week and a detailed recipe to follow, I think you’ll find her cookbook Cook Once Dinner Fix helpful. There are lots of convenient family dinner recipes to choose from.
That’s it for this week, I’ve got to run out the door and pick up kids from school. Hope everyone is hanging in there and keeping cozy. Even in LA it’s been cold enough that the kids have had to wear pants to school, which they loudly protest and view as a huge burden. Sigh.
Every so often during the chilly days of winter I try to become a tea drinker. So far it hasn’t caught on, but this year I have a cute new electric kettle that’s making it really easy to brew a cup. For inspiration I’ve been following Meagan Francis’ newsletter The Tea’s Made, you might enjoy it too!
xo
Jenny
In-between the time I wrote this newsletter and sent it out, my dear husband ordered a new refrigerator handle. It probably would’ve taken me at least another week to get around to it, so three cheers for Sorin!