Growing up, I ate a lot of leftovers. My parents both worked two jobs so it was much more efficient to make a few big meals and then eat leftovers on off nights–especially since I could heat them up myself. Since you can’t always eke out a full meal from a single leftover, you often have to combine things or eat separate dishes. My mom referred to this as “Grab ‘n’ Growl”, a term passed down through the generations in my family’s unique (read: very bizarre) lexicon, which posits a family as a bunch of Neanderthals scavenging the fridge for food, battling over the best bits. Closer to the truth, perhaps, than we’d like to admit.

With Amy in Budapest, it’s officially grab ‘n growl week. This is sort of weird, since it’s just me, but I feel less lonely if I growl. Since I tend to do most of the cooking, the swingin’ bachelor life doesn’t necessitate eating cold beans out of cans, scratching my crotch, and drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. I may prowl the house growling, but I can still drink whiskey from a glass. What the bachelor life does invoke, however, is my occasional need to purge the refrigerator of leftovers and about-to-go-bad food. On a small scale, this is best accomplished in a single meal. But with Amy gone–taking her need for delicious, inventive cuisine with her–I’m free to do a major purge, using up everything in strange and sometimes wonderful/sometimes not combinations.  In other words, this isn’t generally the kind of food I’d foist on other people.

But from the ashes doth arise the phoenix! Behold these Curried Potato Everything Cakes aka Poor Man’s Pakora:

These puppies used up mashed potatoes, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, kale, and a scosh of raw sushi filling, as well as some leftover Chik’n Almond Bake and crushed crackers for the breading. For combining so many different–and somewhat disparate–ingredients, these were actually pretty awesome. The cracker/Chik’n Almond Bake combo was the key.

I enjoyed this with leftover Avocado Wasabi Salad ala Vegan Yum Yum:

Remember that Roasted Poblano Chili? The leftover beans (I still haven’t mastered the exact yield of dry beans when you cook them) were a perfect base (along with rice, obviously) for beans and rice.

On Saturday, I made a green Thai curry out of a small smattering of frozen veggies (ack! I know), tofu, and the leftover raw Siamese Dream Soup.

And finally, last night I made a version of Zuppa Toscana, using up the rest of the mashed potatoes; some dilapidated turnips that didn’t make it into the Potato, Turnip, & Rosemary Soup; and the unused tempeh (we get it in bulk) from the Smoky Tempeh Hummus Wraps.

That’s a lot of food! As I’ve chiseled away at out leftovers (and this post), it’s become clear to me that we both cook and shop for our palettes, not from our resources. Forgive me if I’m stretching here, but this, in a general sense, is one the key problems with the American food industry. You can get as much of anything, from anywhere, at any time, as you want.  The variety comes from the store, not from your kitchen and brain.

Equally problematic is the amount of time between trips to the grocery store. Like most Americans, we tend to go once a week, if that. We task ourselves with predicting what our future selves will want to eat–based on what? How can we know what we’ll want to eat 3 days from now? This means that as the week wears on, we become less satisfied with our choices and less likely to cook with what we bought. Scanning our half-full fridge, nothing looks good. So we either (a) settle on something merely “acceptable” or (b) give up completely and go out for dinner. I’m not against going out to eat, but I think it should be a deliberate choice–because you want to, not because you need to. But (a) is a bit of a crapshoot; on nights when I’m feeling creative, it’s a fun challenge and usually turns out pretty tasty. On off nights, it’s a burden and “edible” suffices.

One solution to this is to shop more frequently and buy less. This also helps ensure the freshness of your food. The other solution, I’m afraid to say, may be getting comfortable with “pretty good” some of the time. Maybe it’s been a good week for culinary creativity, but I feel like I’ve eaten pretty well with nary a thought of hitting up the grocery store (okay…that’s not entirely true…when I ran out of soy sauce, I felt a ripple of panic). This may owe, in part, to the very fact that I’ve used up almost everything in the fridge; my choices have dwindled as the week wore on. While some choice is certainly good, a lot of choice, it turns out, is actually rather bad (think about your occasional trip to an all-vegan restaurant–it’s almost paralyzing; you’re not accustomed to so many choices). The problem with too many choices is our tendency to weigh any single choice against the combined best parts of all the other choices. While this doesn’t actually change how good any single choice is, it does change how satisfied we feel.

So my final thought, in this lazy cognitive meandering, is that our enjoyment of our food is often based on our frame of reference. Given my limited options, what I came up with seemed really good–as soon as I’d eliminated the other possibilities. This is the fulcrum on which “leftovers” become “leftover surprise”.

Rrrrrooaawww!

Of all the soups on this Earth, the Thai Tom Kha is among my favorites.

We were introduced to it at the Thai Pavilion in DeKalb, IL–where I was introduced to Thai food in general. There seem to be lots of varieties of this tofu & coconut soup–some sweet and rich, others more savory–and the Thai Pavilion’s was sweet. Perhaps because that’s the Tom Kha I first loved, it’s the one I love best, and the one I’ve been striving for years to reproduce at home–with mixed levels of success. I had half an acorn squash and shloads of tofu on hand from the Indigenous Scramble, and a hankerin’ for soup, so this seemed like the perfect time to once again attempt a Tom Kha. This version is only slightly modified from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai, a book I’ve been faithfully neglecting for years. Also, this version was pretty awesome.

Tom Kha w/Acorn Squash

• 2 cans of coconut milk
• 1.5 cups of veggie stock
• fresh ginger, cut into about 20 quarter-sized disks (the recipe calls for galanga, but we never seem to have that on hand)
• 10 peppercorns
• zest from an entire lime (in theory, kaffir lime leaves are more authentic, but also harder to come by)
• 1/2 lb extra firm tofu, drained and cubed
• 1/2 acorn squash, skinned and cubed
• 6 mushrooms, cut into fourths (or slightly smaller if they’re large mushrooms)
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 stalk of lemon grass (we left these out and it was still delicious; you can also use lemon grass powder)
• 1 tbsp brown sugar (optional)
• green onions, chopped
• salt, to taste

In a medium to large pot, bring coconut milk and veggie stock to a boil. Add in the ginger/galanga, lime leaves/zest, peppercorns, and prepped lemongrass (if using) and reduce heat to simmer. We had leftover baked acorn squash, I just removed to skin and cubed it. For firmer squash, you’ll want it uncooked–which means that you’ll need to pare off the skin, then cube. Add the squash and mushrooms and bring back to a boil, cooking for 10 minutes. Add in the remaining ingredients, cooking until the tofu is heated through and has acquired some of the soup’s deliciosity.

This is best served (and we think traditionally) with rice on the side. Take a spoonful of rice and dunk it in the soup, occasionally grabbing some tofu, squash, or a mushroom. Place contents in your mouth. Rejoice.

We had this with a “Thai” salad–essentially a Western salad, but with a Peanut Sesame Ginger dressing, peanuts, sliced clementine, and a bit of wakame on the salad.

Thai Peanut Sesame Ginger Dressing

• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 3 tbsp water
• 6 tbsp safflower oil
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
• 1 tbsp natural peanut butter
• 1 large carrot, peeled
• 1 tbsp red thai curry paste
• 1 tbsp chopped onion

Blend all ingredients in a blender until smooth.

No, this is not a hilarious dance performed by the natives to this continent–it’s a tofu scramble made with local ingredients, namely wild rice and acorn squash. I like to imagine this as the Thanksgiving Breakfast, pilgrims and natives alike feasting cruelty-free on tofu and native crops. No one gave anyone smallpox and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Manifest Destiny only required that the food was delicious.

We made this for a brunch this morning (well, this afternoon). This being the Year of the Brunch, it’s been a real challenge to make a sufficient variety of breakfast foods without (a) repeating ourselves and (b) overlapping with what others are making. Remember that brunch where you all made potatoes?

This was inspired by a scramble we had some time back at Seva, a local vegetarian restaurant. It’s a little labor intensive for your usual breakfast, so it’s more ideal for a brunch-type scenario. Accordingly, this recipe is for a double batch–so be sure to halve everything if you’re only feeding a few people and/or don’t want a ton of leftovers.

Indigenous Scramble

• 2 medium-sized white onions, diced
• 2 lbs of tofu, drained
• 1/2 medium – large acorn squash
• 1 cup (uncooked) wild rice
• 2 cups water
• 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp herbs d’provence
• salt & pepper, to taste
• high heat cooking oil

Preheat your over to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the acorn squash in half and place on baking sheet in a small drizzle of high heat cooking oil (like Safflower). Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, until you can remove the skin, but the squash is still solid enough to cut into pieces. Don’t worry too much about overcooking it–it’ll still be awesome, but you’ll lose a little something in texture.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized saucepan, heat 1 tbsp cooking oil over high heat. Add in the wild rice, tossing, and cook for about 3 minutes. Add in the water, bring to boil, then reduce heat and cover, cooking until the water is gone and the rice is done.

Meanmeanwhile, saute the onion in oil in a large pot over medium heat. Once the onions are soft, add in the tofu, crumbling. Now add in the nu yeast and the turmeric. When the squash is done, peel the skin off and cut it into bite-sized pieces. Add it to the tofu. When the rice is done, add that too, Finally, add in the spices, salt, and pepper. Mix it up. Eat it up.

Every once in a while we can’t, for the life of us, decide whether we want a soup or something more “entree”-like. In that event, the best bet is almost always a casserole–something most of us learn to a despise from a young age, but which can actually be awesome. This has broccoli, for supra health powers, white beans, for supra protein powers, and rice, for supra cheapness powers. For how easy this was to make, it was unbelievably delicious.

Broccoli & Rice Bake-em-up

• 2 cups white rice
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 1 – 2 stalks of broccoli, chopped into small florets and/or medium-sized pieces
• 1 cup cooked white beans
• 2 cups unsweetened faux milk
• 1 cup ground cashews
• 1 large white onion, diced
• 6 cloves of garlic, diced or pressed
• 1/2 one-pound block of soft (but not silken) tofu
• salt and pepper, to taste
• saltine crackers (optional, but almost excessively awesome)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, Fahrenheit and start the rice cooking in the veggie stock. In a medium-sized frying pan, sautee the onions and garlic over medium heat, until soft. In a blender, puree the beans, faux milk, ground cashews, and tofu. When the onions and garlic are soft, add them to the puree, blend until smooth, then salt and pepper to taste.

Steam the broccoli until it’s tender, but not at all mushy–you’re going to bake this, so it better to err on the side of underdone. This will only take 5 – 10 minutes and should be done around the same time as–if not a little before–the rice. Once the rice is done, stir the rice, broccoli, and puree together in a 13×9 baking pan or casserole dish.

NOTE: we didn’t end up using all of the puree, but you’ll find it’s awkward to have just over a cup of white beans left, and just over half a block of tofu. The moral of the story is: add the puree in stages; just enough to get everything coated really well. Alternatively, you could add another 1/2 cup of rice to make a larger casserole. The power is yours.

Finally, drizzle safflower and/or olive oil on top and pop it in the oven for 30 minutes. If you’ve opted to add the cracker topping–an excellent choice, dear reader–then you’ll want to crumble enough crackers over the top of the casserole to cover it thoroughly then drizzle more oil on top of that. Bake for an additional 10 minutes. If you’ve decided to forgo the cracker topping, you can just bake it for 40 minutes straight.

We had this with a delicious salad, bread, and Tom/John Collinses.

It’s that time of year. Well…for us, it’s always that time of year. You have a bunch of veggies in the fridge on the verge of going bad, so you have to take drastic measures and forge a soup from a dearth of disparate ingredients. Some folks loathe this; we  love it. It’s the free jazz of cooking. Maybe. We don’t really listen to free jazz, but it’s what I imagine free jazz to be.

This soup features the last of lots of fall veggies from both our garden and the farmer’s market: eggplant, butternut squash, potatoes, onions, leeks, garlic, carrots, and green bell peppers. It’s rich and savory–perfect for a warm fall day as much as a cold fall day.

Fall Everything Soup

• 1 medium-sized white onion, diced
• 1 medium-sized green bell pepper, diced
• 2 smallish eggplants, cubed
• 2 medium-sized potatoes, cubed (peel ‘em if they’re brown–we used purple)
• 1 large carrot, peeled and cut into half-disks
• 1 very small purple cabbage or 1/3 of a regular purple cabbage
• 3 large leeks (or a handful of small leeks–this is what we got from the farmer’s market)
• 1 regulation-size butternut squash
• 1 head of garlic
• 10 cups of veggie stock
• 1 handful of fresh chives, diced
• 6 fresh sage leaves (or 1 tbsp dried sage), diced
• 1 tbsp herbs d’provence
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 cup of wild rice, cooked in 2 cups of water

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the butternut squash in half lengthwise and place on a lightly oiled cooking sheet. When the oven is done preheating, pop it in the oven and set the timer for 45 minutes. Sautee the onions, peppers, eggplant, carrots, and potatoes in oil in a large pot over medium heat. When the onions are soft, add in the veggie stock and the herbs. When this comes to a boil, cover and reduce heat, simmering.

Bring the rice and 2 cups of water to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer.

Slice off the top of  a head of garlic. Place on a sheet of aluminum foil, douse generously with olive oil, and wrap tightly. After the squash has been cooking for 15 minutes, pop this in the oven with the squash.

When the squash is done, remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Spoon out the seedy part. Spoon the rest into a blender, along with the garlic (you should spoon out each clove with a knife). Add in enough stock to blend easily and blend. Blend it up! When it’s smooth, add it to the soup.

Stir everything well, and add salt and pepper to taste. You’re almost done. You just need the rice. Once it’s done, add it to the soup and cook for an additional 10 -15 minutes.

You’re done! Huzzah!

Serve with a crusty loaf.

Until the last 6 months or so, I’d never had much luck with Thai food. Recently, though, I’ve begun to penetrate into the lurid mind of Thai food.

Red Thai Curry w/Tofu

• 1/2 lb tofu, cubed
• 1 medium-sized white onion, petaled
• 1 green or red bell pepper, cut into large pieces
• 2 medium-sized carrots, peeled cut into 1″ pieces and quartered
• 2 small red or purple potatoes, cubed
• 2 cups (1 can) coconut milk
• 1 tbsp red thai curry paste (we used store-bought this time, but making your own isn’t too difficult)
• 1 tsp chili powder
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 – 2 tsp lemon grass powder (to taste–this will depend on your curry paste)
• 2 tbsp fresh cilantro, diced
• ~ 1/8 cup cornstarch
• safflower oil
• peanut oil
• salt, to taste

Start by sauteeing the onion and potatoes in safflower (or other high heat) oil over medium heat in a frying pan. Start heating some peanut oil in another frying pan, also over medium heat. Meanwhile, peel and cut the carrots and toss them in with the onions. Similarly, chop the pepper and toss that in.

Press the tofu and cut it into 1/2 – 1″ cubes, whichever is your preference. Toss lightly in corn starch and fry it up in the peanut oil. We generally keep it shallow and flip it, but if you like your entire house/apt/flat to smell like peanut oil for days, you can fry it in 3 feet of oil. Your call.

When the tofu is nice and firm, drain the oil (we keep a jar of oil for frying–you can reuse this a few times) and add in the vegetables. Pour in the coconut milk. Mix in the curry paste and all of the remaining ingredients, except the cilantro–put that in a few minutes before serving. Simmer for 5 – 10 minutes.

Serve over rice.

Usually, we love broccoli in Thai food, but something about a red curry dislikes broccoli. To make this meal a little healthier, we had it with steamed kale, lightly sauteed (you can just toss it, if you prefer) in sesame oil and soy sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds or gomashio.

It’s like a Yoga Noogie for your taste buds!

So this is actually a recipe for Hoppin’ John, but it’s so frighteningly real, you’ll jump back with terror.

I should note in advance that I’ve never actually had non-vegan Hoppin’ John. I do know, however, that it’s usually made with ham. This version uses homemade fakin’ to reproduce (with frightening accuracy) that “hammy” quality. But in a good way. Not the gross way.

Jumpin’ John

• 1 medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• 1 medium-sized tomato, diced
• 1 rib of celery, diced
• 1 medium-sized green bell pepper, diced (optional)
• 4 cups cooked–or 2 cans–of black-eyed peas
• 4 strips of fakin, cut into smallish pieces
• 1 cup long grain brown rice (I used brown basmati)
• 2 cups veggie stock
• 2 tsp thyme (or 4 large sprigs)
• 1.5 tsp paprika
• 1/2 – 1 tbsp liquid smoke
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

First things first, let’s start that brown rice in the veggie stock–pour the rice and stock into a medium saucepan and heat on high until boiling. Reduce heat and cover. Brown rices take 4-eva.

Now, with that out of the way, let us, you and I, sautee the onion, celery, and green pepper (if using) in a medium to large-ish pot, over medium heat. Wonderful. In the meantime, I think it would be splendid to fry up some fakin. Don’t you? Yes! Let’s.

I had leftover fakin from Tofu MarkMuffins, which doesn’t save terribly well anyway (it starts to get crumbly within a week or so, unless you freeze it). Additionally, you will most likely have a fair amount of tofu fakin crumblins. These perform like a true champeen in this dish. You will also likely have leftover fakin juice, which will work like a sweatshop laborer to make this dish as tasty as possible. In this event, you will not need the soy sauce and Liquid Smoke.

Barring the use of homemade fakin, you might find it convenient and/or enjoyable to use a store-bought variety. In this event you will most like want to “ham” things up by adding the afore-mentioned soy sauce and Liquid Smoke.

But I digress. The fakin should be in small pieces and should be fried lightly in a frying pan over medium heat, in the cooking oil of your choice. You just want it cooked, not crispy. This isn’t Bone-Crunching John.

While the fakin is cooking and once the onions are soft, add in the diced tomato, then the spices, mixing well. Now add in the black-eyed peas.

When the fakin is done, add it to the mix.

When the rice is done, add that too.

Salt and pepper to your smallest of heart’s content.

Conquistadors enjoyed this rice for its simplicity and savoriness!

This particular version has pinto and kidney beans for protein power!

Spanish Rice

• 2 cups brown rice
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1/2 red bell pepper, seed and chopped
• cooking oil
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 2 tsp oregano
• 1 dash cayenne

In a large pot, sautee the onion and peppers over a medium heat, until tender. Stir in the herbs and spices. Stir in the rice, cooking for about 5 minutes. Add in the veggie stock and tomato paste. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat, simmering until rice is tender and stock has all boiled off–about 45 minutes.

Serve after genocide and/or before seeking out el dorado.