Delicious Dinner - The Best Thing To Do With Leftovers Is Fried Rice

We're running low on money this late in the month, and we needed something filling that used stuff we already had in the house.

Fried Rice!

Leftover ham from yesterday's dinner, an onion, some carrots, leftover corn cut off the cob, rice, soy sauce, and you have a delicious dinner!

And it's super-versatile. I've literally made this with all sorts of leftovers:

• half a steak brought home from a restaurant and roasted veggies
• last bits of salad veggies
• last bits of a veggie platter from a party, and doggie-bag shrimp and chicken
• egg and lunch meats
• sausage (and one time, hot dogs, though that was really salty)
• one time, only with alliums--onion, garlic, elephant garlic, green onions

Pretty much anything you have leftover at the end of the week? Throw it into the fried rice! It's less of a recipe and more of a technique--less of a technique and more of a way to clean out the fridge and not waste food!

I made soup today

It wasn't really anything like the Minorcan Clam Chowder recipe I based it on, but it was good, and it went like this:
3 sandwich-sized bags of frozen turkey broth from the Thanksgiving turkey
1 can of Italian-style chopped tomatoes
1 can of red beans and their sauce / juice
1 can of baby potatoes, chopped
about a cup each of frozen peas and frozen corn
2 big scoops of Sofrito
a palmfull of fried garlic (the kind in the jar from the asian market)
maybe two palmfulls of fried onions (also from the asian market)
some thyme, red pepper, oregano, salt, pepper
2 bay leaves
a teaspoon or so of sugar

Cook all this until it's boiling
Throw in enough chicken for everyone who's eating-- I just dropped the chicken breasts in whole and let the poach
Throw in a third cup or two of rice
Let the whole thing simmer until the rice gets that split look that rice in soup is supposed to have
Nom nom.


I'd like to add more veggies next time, and probably some fat of some sort-- cream or butter in at the end of the cooking. Maybe some cheese. But it was good like this, and a keeper as far as half-thought-out recipes go. Not bad for a house with basically no food in it.