URGH I didn’t really feel like writing a novel today (again). So we’re going with Leftovers for Lunch. While we do cook at home fairly often, we still hit the restaurants sometimes for meals throughout the week. I know that J food isn’t the cheapest type around - but what are you gonna do. Yes, I know I could drive 10 minutes to my mom’s house and ask her to cook Japanese food, but sometimes you don’t want to do that. =)

Anyhow, we find that even with a more expensive restaurant, taking home the leftovers can cut a chunk off of the higher price. Or, at least it’ll make you feel like you saved a little extra. It helps that we’re not the biggest eaters on the planet, so we usually do have leftovers. The trick is to “doctor up” the leftovers at home. I’m not talking about making it look pretty, although that’s another good way to make cheap food taste better. I mean just add stuff to it.

One of our favorites to fix up is soup or stew. To this leftover Sukiyaki I added a pack of enoki mushrooms, some chicken stock to thin it out (often necessary when you’ve got leftover soup) and a small pack of cooked udon. It made a pretty good lunch. One trick for couples who get tired of eating the same leftovers from last night - switch and eat your partners leftover meal. Works pretty well - except when the leftover meal is so good you don’t WANT to switch, hehe.

I’ve been on a bit of a pizza kick lately. That’s homemade pizza, including the crust. Up until now, I’ve had a difficult time with making the pizza crust taste somewhat decent. But last week, I received a pizza stone as a gift. Cheap Eaters should note that you can probably go the Alton Brown way and buy safe ceramic tile as a pizza stone stand-in for much cheaper. I just never got around to it.

Anyhow, the difference in the crust is pretty striking. Here’s a slice of leftover BBQ chicken pizza, with ingredients in the style of California Pizza Kitchen. This homemade pizza thing is still new to me, so I’m experimenting with the toppings and such. On this one, it’s grilled chicken with BBQ sauce, red onion and cilantro. I omit almost all the cheese except a sprinkling of parm. Also, I found that it tastes better to me if the onions are pre-cooked. I also found out not to put the cilantro on until the pizza comes out - it’s pretty darn hard to sprinkle stuff into a hot oven, haha.

This one turned out pretty well, and I’ll probably make it again. I’m going to be keeping a blob of homemade bread dough in the fridge at all times so we can make a quick pizza when needed.

I realize I’ve sort of been ignoring Leftover for Lunch here on Cheap Eats. I used to post them up at least once a week since I do eat a lot of leftovers. I’ll try to get that back into the posting schedule. It also saves me a lot of time because I don’t have to write a fricken novel (or love letter) for these type of posts.

Eating leftovers is one of the keys for people looking to save money on food in these tough times, especially for those single professionals who do cook on occasion. You don’t have to cook every day, though you could. But when you do, try and make extra of whatever meal it is and then pack it up for lunch the next day.

The incremental time, effort and cost of making a little extra is nearly negligible - unless you’re making lobster, steak and other fancypants meals. I know it ain’t glamorous and your co-workers may make fun of you. Listen: who cares what they think?

This is a photo from a few months ago of a half roast chicken, roast potatoes, carrots and broccoli. It’s not pretty, the chicken isn’t perfect, but it sure gets the job done for a quick lunch.

All righty folks. It’s just about that time when I’m starting to wind down the post-Thanksgiving Festivus 2008 over here at Cheap Eats. Thanksgiving is a very important time of the year for us. It is a time for massive food banditry - the squirreling away of turkey carcasses, carts of mashed potatoe [sic] and slices of pumpkinus pieus while relatives loaf around watching American dorkball. Sorry, I mean football.

You need to start your food sneakage early, preferably right after dinner and before the dessert is served. You snooze, you lose. But just remember the Turkey Bill of Rights - he/she who baked it gets to take it. I mean the bird bones. For that reason alone, I don’t mind trying to cook the turkey usually. It allows us to bag all the bones if we’d like to. Another way to snag extra morsels of turkey is to offer to carve the bird. This method only works if your family doesn’t carve at the table. In the kitchen, you simply sneak pieces as you cut them into a ziploc bag at your waist. Try and distract any would be turkey spies by doing a little dance. Preferably with a song composed specially for it.

Warning: don’t try and hide the ziploc bag in your pockets. No one gains THAT much weight from eating just one dinner. Also, guys, do not put turkey drumsticks down your pants. It is not recommended since the sudden bulge is too big to explain to people. If you must, wear an extra long sleeved pea-coat and hold a drumstick in each hand. But this only works if you aren’t going to shake hands with the inlaws. Also, be careful not to knock over Grandma’s ming vase.

For mashed potatoes, I recommend wearing a fedora. When no one is looking, quickly doff the hat and scoop mashed potatoes into it, replacing it on your head. You can also buffer some stuffing first before you slather the potatoes in. The potatoes will adhere to the inside of the hat, keeping the stuffing from falling out.

Gravy and cranberry sauce are thorny issue since they need to be stored separately. Here is a nice trick. Bring a small kids shovel. Before the party begins, excuse yourself to the restroom. Open up the back of the toilet and place two ziploc bag inside the water well. Dude, it’s not dirty, that’s clean water. If you must, double bag the two ziploc bags. Then, every so often during dinner, get up to go the bathroom and pass through the kitchen scooping gravy and cranberry while jogging to the bathroom. If you meet anyone, just say, “Little Jimmy had an oopsie accident,” and point at the shovel. They’ll steer clear, trust me. Open the toilet and dump (hehe, dump) the cranberry and gravy into each bag. At the end of the party, excuse yourself to the bathroom again and retrieve your contraband. This works VERY well if, like many in my family, you have a genetically small bladder that makes you pee frequently. So they won’t even be suspicious.

Pumpkin Pie presents a real problem. I haven’t yet figured this one out, but I had one idea which I might try next year. Bring a ferret (or kiwibird, or iguana) to the party in a shoebox. What you want to do is build a pie-shaped compartment on the side of the box. If anyone asks why there is a pie shaped compartment attached to a ferret box, just say your ferret has a taste for cheese so you keep a wedge of gouda in there all the time. And then, let the pie, I mean the ferret out to “play”. Your host will be so happy about this that they won’t notice you sneaking a wedge into the compartment. Catch the ferret and say “Bad boy, bad…” and put him back in the box. Look chagrined and offer to do the dishes.

Haha, damn that’s entertainment.

OK, back to the real turkey wrapup. We make a number of things with the leftovers. The main one is a turkey stock, as shown in the picture way at the top. You can actually skip making a stock and just make a soup - my mom used to do this all the time. I just like making the stock first since you can use it later in different ways than just soup. I usually make it the day after Thanksgiving. It’s just turkey bones and scraps, water, round onion, celery, carrots, bay leaf, garlic and maybe a few herbs if you have it left over from making a dish that year. Don’t let that guy boil, you just want it to simmer for several hours. Salt to taste. Later, if you want to make soup, strain out all the stuff and restart the broth adding onions, celery, carrots, potatoes and noodles.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving leftover creations is the open faced turkey sandwich. The first time I had this was at a restaurant in the 80s. My first thought was, “Dang that’s good.” My second thought was, “Why are we not eating this every Thanksgiving?” This isn’t the type of sando that you pick up - you eat it with a knife and fork. Get two slices of bread and toast it. Meanwhile heat up slices of turkey with gravy in a pan. Microwave some mashed potatoes and stuffing. Assemble on a plate the bread, mashed potatoes, stuffing and turkey slices. Pour extra gravy on the top - sometimes I add a little cranberry to the top. Usually this sandwich ends up being around 5 inches tall… yums.

I also enjoy a good turkey hash with the leftovers. This uses cubes of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. The idea is to mix everything together (use a little gravy if its too dry) and then fry it in a skillet with a little butter. You want the potatoes to be sorta crunchy on the outside, so be sure to flip the mixture with a spatula once to brown both sides. Some people make little “cakes” out of the potato mixture instead. I usually fry an egg up to go with this breakfast, but you can also mix the egg into the potato for a sort of egg scramble.

Well, I hope your Thanksgiving turned out nicely as far as leftovers goes. I’m sad that it’s over, but looking forward to next year’s after-party. I was also thinking about getting a ferret for the aforementioned pumpkin pie scheme. But alas, they’re not legal here in California.

I guess it’s time to buy an iguana.

Dang, I’m glad it’s Friday. Well, ever since I had a major FAIL while breadmaking, I vowed to regroup and try out some different techniques. You see, I’m not a baker. But I always wanted to make bread.

Cue the No Knead Bread music please.

Yeah, I’m not even going to try and convince you. Look at the picture. I couldn’t fricken believe it.

It really does work. I’m going to try work up a full article over on Cheaplander about the process soon. I’ve also “graduated” to trying to make homemade yeast water as well, and incorporating it into the no-knead recipe. A little scary, but the science experiments are still thriving in their respective mason jars after a few weeks.

For now, here is the article where a lot of the publicity for no-knead bread came from. I pretty much followed it exactly. (By the way, that link probably won’t work - NY Times is stupid like that. However, just do a search for “no knead bread” and it’ll come up.)

See you all next week.

I have to make a short post today, since I have to get to a meeting in a bit. So we’ll go with Leftovers for Lunch again and hopefully I’ll get another post in later in the week. This is yesterday’s lunch, another combination of leftover “Parent’s” cooking and something made at home.

Sorry, this isn’t as a good photo as a few of the other Korokke ones I’ve made. The potato and meat based fried croquettes are really popular at my parent’s house, and they heat and crisp up really well in the toaster for nearly a week afterwards.

The Yakisoba, which is a little like Japanese chow mein, is half homemade and half storebought. They have sell the noodles, which are the fresh variety and not dried, and the dry sauce mix at the store for very cheap - about $1.50 or less for a three pack. They completely kick the ass over any dry ramen varieties. But they aren’t very good for you, of course. If you haven’t had it before, the taste of the sauce is a bit strange - very worcestershire sauce-like. We take 2 packs and add to that some sliced pork, carrots, celery, onion and whatever green veggies are around. Not too bad for dinner and leftover lunch the next day.

Ugh, I’m a little under the weather. So we’ll have to go with simple pics with captions again for this week.

Obviously, making good use of Turkey Leftovers from Thanksgiving is definitely Cheap Eats. I say if you cooked the turkey, you’re entitled to the bones and some of the meat. Even if you didn’t make it - beg, borrow and steal that carcass. And heck with it: take the mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and cranberry as well. I surreptitiously begin “setting aside” a leftover goodie bag while most guests are still working on clearing their plates. And you can distract (or scare) other would-be turkey bone thieves with wild-eyed stories of the “turkey that got away”.

By the way this year, I did the turkey using the Alton Brown brine-method w/ foil turkey shield, Polder probe and once again it came out underdone. Grr… Needless to say, after following his method EXACTLY 3 years in a row with the same results - I’m looking for a new method next year.

But let’s talk, er, happy turkey thoughts. Happy turkey leftover thoughts that is: I like to make at least 2 things with the leftovers. First is an Open Face Turkey sandwich, as in below:

I just warm up the leftovers and pile it on top of toast. To me, this is even better than turkey on the Day itself. Second up: The day after I also make a stock with the turkey bones and carcass (stockpot: water, 1/2 onion, 1 garlic clove, 2 carrot, 1 celery, dried thyme, simmer slow, skim, strain, refrigerate). Then on Saturday for lunch, we add some noodles, carrots, leftover shredded turkey, dash of Worcestshire, and sometimes potatoes to the heated stock. And it’s Turkey Soup time:

Man, looks like it came out of a can. But tastes a lot better. See you next week…