Dinner from Leftovers: Meal I

We’re pairing down, getting to the bottom of the lake house pantry, making meals from whatever is left from the those early days in the summer when I had the fridge and freezer fully stocked for a summer of fun. Running out to the store seems infeasible, when we’re trying to pack up, purge and empty the cupboards. But we’re still hungry. We are making do, and doing just fine.We’re combining meals with neighbors, so that we can share our excess of vegetables of cheese, with someone who has an excess of something else that we’re lacking. At the last minute, friends called us over for a an impromptu boat ride, and we said, sure, and “Are you hungry?” Of course, their teenage son was, and we were glad to have him help us take the extra pork off our hands. We never did make it on that boat ride.

In these final days, the challenge now becomes making a meal from what you have. From these ingredients:

Two cups of leftover rice
1 pound of salami leftover from a trip to the deli.
1/2 yellow pepper
1/4 of a container of feta cheese

I heated the skillet and began to saute the peppers, and added the rice and salami until heated through.  Cut the heat, and I added the feta, then made a dressing:

1/2 cup vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
Couple dashes of salt and pepper
Handful of Italian Parsley from the garden. (Thank you garden… you have saved me more than once from a trip to Wal-Mart.)

Dinner is served…  without a mad rush to the store. And I told the kids… here, just pick out what you want… but this is dinner.

Adaptations are endless… beans, crumbled fried eggs, spices, potatoes… and the list goes on.