Lousy with Leftovers

This week I really want to cook something. Maybe not too much. I always begin the week with a trip to the grocery store where I load my cart up with gigantic servings of good intentions. And then I spend the day at work and come home and decide that my best intentions just aren't good enough and I enjoy the delicious kiss of a peanut butter sandwich. You know. That is if I actually bought bread. Which I normally don't. So a peanut butter sandwich becomes a spoon full of peanut butter. I live a fabulous life!

Let's explore for a moment my neuroses surrounding left overs and how I intend to overcome this in the coming week.

I think leftovers are gross.

Exciting, yes? They never come out how they were to start. They're soggy. They're uninviting in their clear plastic containers. And then, if you're like me and you don't eat them, they then cause you to be minus one of those clear plastic containers because you just can't bring yourself to open it before you throw it away for the fear of seeing what it has become and it being so devastating that you'll just never eat food again. Okay. That's over analyzing. It's quite apparent that I haven't given up food.

The first hurdle of leftovers is to EAT them. And when you're cooking for yourself, unless you're some magical person who can exactly extract the proper for-one portion of EVERY food before you prepare it (and by the way, if you're that person I'll just hand this blog over to you), you're going to end up with something left over. I don't know about you, but cooking actually decreases my appetite; in good ways and in bad. I'm interacting with the food, smelling it, tasting it in moderation to make sure it's actually doing what it's supposed to be doing... which curbs hunger a little and just makes me less likely to have the appetite for everything I prepared. There's also the bad part where I'm doing things like handling raw meat, a task that I equate to water boarding. Or bamboo shoots in my nail beds.

Letting leftovers grow limbs, name each other, and start a little terrarium in your refrigerator not only leads to disgusting clean up, but you're wasting your time, money, and a possible tasty meal that went unloved. So this week I'm going to prepare a couple full recipes and enjoy them as leftovers. I have a coworker willing to participate in this experiment, so she will be enjoying lunch for a couple days. I hypothesize that this will lead to not only getting to enjoy home cooked meals (real ones, not ones that consist mainly of things obtained from a bag in the freezer that doesn't reseal) but also it will cut down on the number of frozen dinners I consume for lunch. I love sodium (mmmmm, salt... uuuhh!) but I do understand it isn't exactly good for me. And eating 50% of my daily sodium recommendation in one shot kind of kills it for me when I salt EVERYTHING I EAT!

I am making three meals this week, all with the notion that I will be eating them more than once. I'm preparing Rotini with Chicken, Asparagus and Tomatoes, Broccoli Cheese Soup and Corn & Bacon Chowder (it's soup season, people!). The rest of the week I'll have left overs or find something else around the house. I've even left myself open to go out to eat one night if the mood strikes.

As we discussed in a previous post my grocery budget is $40 a week. This week I went $3 over budget because I wanted some juice. I mean liquefied empty calorie extravaganza. I mean juice. I went over exactly the price of the juice but I was $10 under last week, so I'm still on top. I bought absolutely no frozen lunches. And since today is Sunday, I thought I would go ahead and cook something, enjoy it today and then have it ready to package up to take in for lunch tomorrow. I started with the rotini dish.

This recipe is from Cooking Light which I actually followed pretty much spot on. You know, except I'm lazy and I used pureed, refrigerated basil. Everything else is in there. Here's what we have:

8 oz. uncooked rotini

cooking spray

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into ¼ inch strips

salt/pepper

1 cup sliced asparagus

2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

2 garlic cloves (they say minced, I grate mine)

2 tablespoons chopped basil (or equivilent with my handy dandy paste!)

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 oz crumbled feta

Cook your pasta according to the directions on the box. I think we can all manage that.

While that's happening, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add your chicken and asparagus. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and cook for 5 minutes, stirring just a couple times to evenly cook chicken. Add your tomato halves and garlic; saute another minute. Remove from heat. Add pasta, basil, vinegar and oil (I put those last three ingredients together and mixed well before adding them to the dish for the sake of distribution) to chicken mixture. Top with cheese.

This yields 4 servings and I was surprised that this time it came out spot on. I measured four 2 cup servings and that's what it was. I also fastidiously measure and weigh things. We're looking at 419 calories and 9.5 grams of fat. That's sufficient for getting the old gallbladder working! It also has about 34 grams of protein, which is really something I lack in my diet (I mentioned the raw meat disgust, right?). Has also about 200 less milligrams of sodium than the Smart Ones meal currently in my freezer. The best part about this is for the pretty big serving that you get this meal is only $2.50 per serving, which is pretty comparable with a frozen meal except for the fact that you get MORE FOOD.

So I had some for dinner tonight and I have three more portions. One for lunch tomorrow (and lunch for a friend!) and another for dinner a different night this week (hopefully not tomorrow!). I guess I could have it for lunch too. There's really no rules for this. I'm going to wait on the feta until after we warm it back up just to keep the integrity of the cheese. Also remember that when you're looking for high quality leftovers, let the food cool down uncovered. There's nothing worse than opening up leftovers and getting the condensation shower. Ick.

I'll save the best news for last. This morning I stepped on the scale and I was 163.5. That's 2.5 more pounds to get back to my original pre-stress eating weight that I enjoyed this past Summer. Here's to hoping our little experiment helps me along. After all, if dinner is already prepared and ready to reheat at home, I can afford to spend a few more minutes at the gym after work before the people around me on the ellipticals start looking like walking, talking pieces of food.