Don't forget the pork-Update

Update: Thanks to the kind offices of Mr. Badthings & Our Girl, the aforementioned WSJ article is here. The ideas are decent but there is a little bit more of a home ec vibe than I would have guessed:

Call it culinary split personality: You spend your weekends flipping through cookbooks, squeezing eggplants at the market and preparing leisurely meals. Then Monday rears its head -- you're late getting home from work and everyone is hungry -- and it's back to telephoning for take out or microwaving leftovers for dinner. But many people would rather sit down to a home-cooked weeknight meal, as long as it isn't Sunday dinner, warmed-over.

The solution: Cook ahead. That means that while you're making a weekend dinner you can also get a head start on a second meal. Then, on Monday or Tuesday, you use some of the ingredients you've prepared, but put them together in different ways to produce distinct textures and flavors.

This may be childish, but scripting the repurposing of leftovers like this seems to take some of the fun out of eating them. Hard not to imagine this kind of exchange on Sunday:

Mrs. Smith: "Delicious pork, honey."
Mr. Smith: "Glad you like it, honey, because we are having it tomorrow in a torta, and then as a sauce for papardelle on Tuesday!"
Mrs. Smith: "Oh."

I can imagine doing all of these things with a shoulder of pork, but not scripting its fate like this, and if I did, I would certainly avoid divulging the seqence of meals to anyone I hoped would share them, but I'd be interested in hearing how others approach this kind of issue. Are leftovers an opportunity for improvisation, or do you have sequences you follow?

Comments

[mzn]

Since you asked:

Sometimes we script. E.g., roast a chicken on Sunday with the intention of having chicken enchiladas or BBQ chicken pizza later in the week. My dining companion and I have no culinary secrets from each other. I would never conceal my intentions for the leftovers from her to amp up the surprise factor later in the week or to save her the disappointment you suggest in your post. The leftovers are something to look forward to.

I agree, though, that it's fun to improvise. Yesterday my pasta with pot roast leftovers was more delightful because the thought of doing that with the meat had occured to me only half an hour before I was eating it.

[Fesser]

I hear you. Like so many things, it is a question of marketing. Actually, cinetrix is Chair of Leftover Awareness, and frequently coaxes me into using them by proposing an "Iron Chef challenge" involving cooking with what is at hand.

[Rose's Lime]

In my house, waiting for serendipity means you're going to be eating a BLT without the lettuce or tomato (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Agree with Chuck that many foods are better leftover and nothing's lost in the anticipation. I like to make extra of an ingredient in one meal that's an ingredient for a great cold dish. Two-fors from our house:

Roast a large chicken dinner with mashed potato and veggies and recomopose the leftovers into a chicken shepherd's pie.

Make extra pasta, cool with cold water and toss with oil instead of marinara and add antipasto for a nice lunch.

Make extra corn on the cob for a cold corn salad with cherry tomato and blue cheese.

Sautee spinach for serving on top of pasta and put the rest in a quiche.

Ditto, spending the entire afternoon before having friends over doing your mise makes it much harder to enjoy their company than if all the mushrooms are sauteed, onions carmelized and meats marinated the evening before over a leisurely listening to NPR or WEEI and the only tasks remaining before guest arrival is skewering sates and tossing a pizza crust.

[BK]

Most I plan ahead is to save a carcass for soup. Would hate for planning to kill off my freedom in calling kitchen audibles. The game I play is to create a (delicious, mind you) new dinner that finishes off as many fridge leftovers/ingredients as possible while introducing only one new ingredient. Often the challenge is simple (i.e. using up that bunch of cilantro and the half a lime before they go), but others require great cunning, and perhaps Rose's Lime's leftover bacon.

[la_depressionada]

one of my favorite logic games is NEVER having any wasted food. totally fun. but it's always a surprise to the significant others, because once they move in their (albeit rudimentary) cooking skills wither and die. the tilia vacuum packer has changed our lives.