This is hardly original, but last night I pulled some chili out of the freezer, put it into an 8×8 pan, grated about 4 ounces of cheese and sprinkled it over the chili, made a batch of batter for the best corn muffins in the world, poured that over top of it, and cooked the whole thing for about 30 minutes at 400, until the top was set and the chili was bubbling up around the edges of the cornbread. It was extremely tasty, and I finished it just in time to take some to class for dinner (my masters program teaches its classes in the evening. Next semester, thankfully, there will be no night classes, because I’m doing an independent study with an undergraduate class.) It reheated nicely a little while later when Jeff wanted dinner, and still later when I got in from class and wanted seconds.

My only complaint (and most of why I’m posting about it, since the Internet is my memory these days) is that I got the chili to cornbread ratio off; I forgot that the cornbread was going to rise like crazy, so instead of chili and cornbread, we had cornbread with some chili. It was still extremely tasty, but I’ll want to adjust that ratio next time. I also wonder how this would do in the slow cooker - if I made chili in the slow cooker, then made up the corn muffins and dropped them into the chili to cook for the last hour. I think the muffins would steam and come out very tender, but I’m not sure. Anyone else ever tried this?

Example the first: Tofurky. Actually, this isn’t too bad, other than the fact that it needs refrigerated transport¹. Still, it’s the sort of prepackaged food we don’t buy too often. The co-op has it on sale this month, and it makes very tasty pizza. One sausage per pizza is plenty for us, so we have three more pizza’s worth in the freezer. :)

Example the second, however, is worse. Last night, Jeff grew a craving for… chili cheese dogs. So, off we traipsed to the store, where we got (turkey) hot dogs, and chili in a can², and, um, mac and cheese in a box. We served up the chili dogs on homemade tortillas, and it was all very tasty.

What’re your guilty pleasure foods?

1. We’ve been trying to eat fewer non-local goods that need refrigerated transport. Tonight at the co-op, what came out of refrigeration in the store was maple syrup (bulk), tofu, and milk (local).

2. And then, the next morning, if there’s a bit of leftover chili in a can, scrape it into a small baking dish, make a couple of biscuits and drop pieces in on top of the chili, and then crack two eggs on top of that. Cook about 15 minutes in your toaster oven, until the eggs are set, and top with some sharp cheddar cheese. Tasty, tasty.

We did a pot roast last week that turned out really, really tasty. However, it also made lots of leftovers - it was a couple pounds of roast, plus potatoes, and even with three people eating dinner, I put 1 2.5 cup container in the freezer, sent a bunch with Jeff for lunch the next day, and still had another 2.5 cup container full.

I’m rarely in the mood for straight pot roast the second time around. Other dishes I will happily eat meal after meal, but not that one; I suspect it’s all the meat. So last night I made a batch of biscuits, and we had biscuits and gravy, with beef instead of sausage. It really, totally hit the spot, and the simple addition of biscuits made the leftover roast a lot more palatable.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve done with leftovers recently?

I’ve some catching up to do this weekend, but I just wanted to make a quick post about something that one of our wonderful readers, Teena (to whom I still owe email, sorry about that!) pointed out to us this week: Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge. I thought it might be of interest to our readers and wanted to point it out.

The numbers they have, however, made me chuckle a bit. For 2+ family members and 2 wage earners, one is allowed $144 a week. For the record, we’re two adults, one of whom has a part time job, and one of whom is a graduate student and is on a graduate assistantship (that pays well for the number of hours I work, but it’s still grad school wages.) Realistically, I suppose we count in the “2+ family members and 1 wage earner” category, between the two of us, which is $121. That’s $484 a month. In January, 89% of our food dollars were spent on local or organic food, and we spent $291.03 on food. In February, it was 77% and $348.24. We eat virtually all of our meals at home (I think there were a couple of fast food incidents each month when we were out running errands on weekends, and we went out to dinner once in February with friends.) We eat well on sub-$400 a month (as you’ve all seen so far this year.) $484 on food in a month? For the two of us, I’d have a hard time spending that much money. Granted, these are national numbers, and national averages, and 2+ family members is a pretty broad category - we don’t have two-legged children, and I tabulate the cat food in another category. :) Still, the numbers seem high. Are groceries really that much more expensive in other areas of the country, do people eat more specialty items than we do…? I’m confused.