What do you do with a ton of Easter left overs and a big order of fresh produce from your favorite local farmer? If you are smart (and don't like eating straight leftovers day after day) then you try and come up with a week's worth of interesting ways to "remix" those leftovers. I do subscribe to waste not, want not but I also like flavor and variety.
What did I start with?
Leftovers:
Beef Tenderloin
barbeque chicken
poppyseed/sesame seed/homemade vinegarette
(Ben ate all the deviled eggs and is working his way through the rolls)
Produce:
Big bag of spinach
big bag of mesclun greens
fresh made goat cheddar
fresh made chevre
asparagus
bag of strawberries I picked myself last wednesday
Meal 1:
Monday night was a fantastic salad.
Fluff a whole bunch of spinach, top with fresh fruit (mandarin oranges, blueberries, sliced strawberries, slivered almonds, generous dollops of chevre and tasty vinaigrette. Add leftover beef tenderloin just before eating. I eat mine with the beef hot, my mum likes hers cold, so go with your preference. Did I think to snap a picture of this beautiful and tasty salad? No. Was it excellent and delicious? Yes.
Meal 2:
Tuesday night was a steak burrito.
This time I took pics!
I started with a La Tortilla Factory tortilla. If you have never tried them they have an amazing 13 grams of fiber and 80-90 calories and still manage to remain super soft. Especially the one they have made with olive oil. So delicious. I added to this amazing tortilla shredded up beef tenderloin, goat cheddar.
Next up, black beans. I always keep them around because they are tasty, filling and versatile. And as someone who has read every label of every brand of black beans in my local grocery store, I can tell you that the goya brand canned black beans are the lowest in calories and if you rinse them you get rid of most of the sodium.
I added about 1/2 a cup of the black beans to my steak burrito.
Meal 3.
Wednesday night (that would be tonight) was a super awesome barbeque chicken salad.
Did I remember to take pics again tonight? No, I was starving. But in my fantastically awesome salad spinner that Ben bought me a couple years ago I shredded equal parts spinach and mesclun greens into tiny little shreds, rinsed it and spun out the water. Since there was a can of open black beans, I added about 3/4 cup of black beans, thawed about 1/2 cup of frozen kernel corn and added that, chopped up one whole roma tomato that I spied chillin' on the counter and tossed it all together until well mixed. Next up I threw about a cup of the barbeque chicken in a pan, slathered on some more sauce and heated it up until it was nice and hot. Then we layered a heap of salad, a few little shreds of goat cheddar and then a bit of the barbeque chicken on each of our plates and dug in. Like I said, I was starved. I realized about halfway through I hadn't taken a picture. Oops.
Meal 4.
This one actually went in our lunches - Beef Tenderloin Wrap
Remember those tortillas from meal 2? Well, I grabbed one of those and slathered on a thin layer of mustard. On top of the mustard I put a generous bed of fresh spinach. On top of that about 3 oz of the leftover beef tenderloin and then 1 slice of pepperjack cheese (the only sliced cheese I happened to have in my fridge). Then I rolled is all up wrap-style.
Meal 5.
Creamy BBQ Chicken Sandwich - up for tomorrow night
I love sandwich thins. The plan here is to toast a sandwich thin and spread a thin layer of the chevre on one side. Next up I am going to heat up the remaining BBQ chicken and plop it on my sandwich thins. Easy peasy. Yum.
Ok, so now that you have made it through that huge long post, I have a question. If I decided to host a linky party called Refreshing Remix for you to link up posts on how you creatively used your leftovers or your farmers market finds, would you join the party? Are you interested in these kinds of posts at all? Just wondering. I had fun this week being creative with my leftovers.
Goodnight!!
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