Creative Leftovers

I don't know about your families, but occasionally usually when I say "leftovers" to the Fish Sticks, it is followed by moaning.  It's not that they didn't love it the first time around, but for some reason, it doesn't sound so appealing the 2nd time around.  This calls for a bit of creativity on my part.  Now some leftovers are just leftovers and there's no 2 ways around it.  Some though I have found I can re-create into a new meal and no one has any clue that they were leftovers.

Last week I made a great pork roast in the crock pot on Sunday with carrots, potatoes and onions using Italian salad dressing as a marinate.  We had it for meal #2 on sandwich bread and then I had 1 cup leftover.  My job was to feed it to them for the third time, stretching one cup of meat into a meal for 8 and preventing them from ever recognizing it.  The best way was fried rice.  A handful of frozen peas, half of a chopped onion, 2 eggs, a tad bit of oil and rice in the rice cooker.  Voila!  They never knew that the yummy pork fried rice was just pot roast leftovers.  It was my one-dish meal with a side of cucumber slices and baby carrots.

I'm not always full of good ideas.  My friend, Amy, will attest to that this week when I served her leftover chili on top of leftover fried rice because cooking rice for 20 minutes didn't seem a good option as we tried to visit with 6 little munchkins to tend to.  It wasn't that bad, but when Amy left and I actually thought about what I had done, I got pretty embarrassed.  Sorry Amy.  I'm so glad we're still friends.  I owe you one of my Martha Stewart lunches.....next time.  :)