There's No Room for Leftovers This Week!

Here's what happens when you don't feel like winding up with a lot of leftovers.

Half of the lima beans that I put in the slow cooker Sunday night became the Beans & Pasta recipe from Good Recipes for Hard Times, a very non-veg but nifty cookbook. I didn't have the celery called for in the recipe so I tossed in some bok choy instead. I also used scallions in place of the onions in the recipe. The final insult to the original recipe writer was, I omitted the pasta. I have plenty of pasta but I wanted to try making polenta and serving it with this recipe instead.

The end result was a tasty soup, the pasta would have made it less soupy. As for the polenta, if I hadn't added an extra 1/4 cup of water to it, it would have been great. Instead it was just ok. I knew I shouldn't add the extra water but I just couldn't stop myself! It was super simple to make. I will definitely try this again.

The remaining limas got mashed into a bean salad which we had on bread for lunch. I just used a bit of nayonaisse, garlic powder, onion powder, relish and a squirt of mustard to season the beans. Everyone seems to like this.

Now what to do with the leftovers of these two meals???

For dinner tonight, I cooked some barley in the leftover bean soup and I made whole wheat crepes. I served the leftover soup, now not water at all thanks to the barley,inside of the crepes. That's an awful description but it tasted really good.

For dessert, I put a tiny bit of water into a the practically empty jelly that was in the fridge. I took the remaining crepes, sprinkled a bit of powdered sugar on them, rolled them up and drizzled the jelly over them. These were good but there was an ongoing debate about whether cinnamon sugar would have been better than powdered sugar. Personally, I lean toward cinnamon sugar.

As for the leftover bean salad, it will be demolished by lunchtime tomorrow.