Thursday, October 6, 2011

VeganMofo V: Recycling your leftovers take 2


 
So the other day I posted about the whole recycling your leftovers, as brought forward by one of my most loved zines The Cheap Vegan ( a sadly out of print zine.
 Issue 14 seems to be on etsy tho!

Where in the last post I turned some smashed beans and other leftovers into a rice bowl/burrito filling.
 
Now that leftover burrito filling becomes soup/gumbo! With the aid of some additional red onion, turnip, canned tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, another spoon full of kidney beans from the batch I made last week, and fresh garlic to pump up the garlic taste.


Start with chopping your new fresh onions and garlic. You want the onion to cook for a bit in some oil with salt/pepper before adding your garlic. While those cook, peel and chop your selection of turnip (or other fridge veggies). Once the onions are getting good, saute the turnip pieces to brown then toss in your spoon full of beans and some tomato liquid. Add seasonings. You want the flavours to blend a bit before you dump the whole can in, but we do want lots of liquid to help boil the turnip so they become nice and soft.
Once you have a nice soupy base thanks to the tomatoes mix in your bowl/leftover burrito filling (if you'd made it all into burritos then slice the tortilla into strips and save it to bake/top your soup bowls with). Now, if your burrito mix had diaya like mine did you'll want to stir the crap out of it as it cooks. The mixture wants to stick to itself but we want it to break apart into soup and get everything all mixed together. So keep string it occasionally and make sure nothing is burning at the bottom. I brought it to a boil and covered for 10 minutes before taking the cover off and simmering until the turnip were finished. Add additional seasons if it doesn't taste the way you want.
I like mine chunky, but smaller piece would cook faster
And voila! So now we have 3 different ways to eat the same thing. Alternatively, if you hadn't mixed your smashed beans with stuff on the first leftover day you could find a few dozen things to do with them. But this worked out well enough.
 

4 comments:

Monique a.k.a. Mo said...

I wish I was better at figuring out how to recycle leftovers. I always overthink it.

jd said...

You are awesome! I love the idea of recycling your leftovers, especially since I'm usually the one who sends them with her BF for lunch (so that I don't have to eat them!). Great - and creative - idea!

B.A.D. said...

The Cheap Vegan really opened my eyes the basic pattern seems to be casserole, burrito filling, soup, burgers.

If you make soup/stew, add starch/sauce to make a casserole, or add something to bind it to fry into burgers/patties.

If you have made non-soup, turn it into soup! Or a casserole or put it in a wrap.

when all else fails, feed to the dog or freezer.

Anonymous said...

What a great way to save time! Do all your major cooking in one day, and stretch it to prepare many delicious looking meals! Awesome :)