Learning to Love Leftovers

Leftovers. Sometimes it's a dirty word. I remember as a child the nights we would make dinner by, as my parents put it, "cleaning out" the refrigerator. It was not usually my favorite night. Sometimes there would be something that was good and we impatiently made claims, my brother, sister and I, on what it was that we wanted. Sometimes we made almost no claims on the leftovers--none seemed appealing. Usually dinner was a little of this and a little of that and not always a balanced meal with all the four food groups represented.

But the longer I study food and its ethical implications, the more I think that we in the developed world had better learn to love leftovers. This is for a couple of reasons. First is that for many people all over the world having enough food is a luxury, so having too much is something unfathomable. Yet many days in my own kitchen, even if I am just cooking for myself, there are leftovers. Now, I try to make good use of them so I often make more than I eat at one sitting so as to have a hot lunch the next day (I embrace soup for example for this very reason).

Second, though, is that many people, myself included, carry a few extra pounds on our frames. Remembering exhortations to join the "clean plate club" I often ate more than I should have when I was young, and often still do. Sometimes it is because something is just so good, but other times is out of a bad habit to finish what is on my plate. But if I were to learn to love leftovers even more than I do now and in a different way than I do now, maybe that could change a little bit.

So for these two, disparate reasons, learning to love leftovers is important. It is good for me physically as I could stand to lose a few pounds and good for me intellectually and spiritually as I recall that many go without. Now, I don't mean for this last point to sound like the "clean your plate there are children starving in China" (or some other country) thing that many of us heard and has been memorialized in television shows and movies. We all know that if I eat all that is on my plate it doesn't do a thing to feed a starving or malnourished person. But the idea here is a little different. It is an acknowledgement that when we have enough to have leftovers we should be recognizing that we are living in a time and place of plenty which is not the case for so many others around the world, around the country and probably around the block. And it moves from this recognition to hopefully action that works to prevent hunger and malnutrition.

So today it has been primarily dining on leftovers. Breakfast was coffee (fair trade and locally roasted, of course), juice (from a northwest farmers collective) and toast from left over bread from the dinner party. Lunch was made from the leftovers from the appetizers from Monday's party too. Homemade hummus, cucumbers, feta cheese and some more baguette. Dinner was made up of leftovers, too. Some roasted acorn squash bought in October at Green Bluff and held over the winter (just a few squash left--thank God they won't be seasonal again for a while!), leftover wild rice salad and chicken marbella. I put some arugula with the rice salad -- got it eat it while it is still green on the plant now that it has bolted!

And a side note--last night I was out with a friend for a drink who told me after I ordered my drink (and somewhat obnoxiously I admit, changed her drink order) that she had been wondering after seeing my blog how I would go out for a drink ethically (that is, "ethically" in the sense of eating ethically). She said that when she heard my drink order she answered her own question--drink locally. And boy, oh boy, does that Dry Fly Gin mean drinking locally and drinking well. Hope she liked it!