Weekend 3-Way: Lefties

The emails have been flying between my sisters and my mom and me this week. Flying. I'd come home from work every day to find 35, 55, 75 emails waiting for me. Was something wrong, you ask? Did something happen?

No, nothing was wrong. Nothing happened. The mails were all about food.

My sisters? Love food. They love to eat food and they love to cook food. Okay, they don't all love to cook food, but even the ones who don't love to cook food love to eat food. And they all love to talk about eating food.

One day was all about deconstructing breakfast. Jane and Mom? Cereal lovers. (As is Mistah. Whenever he has a bowl of the fibrous stuff I always ask, "Having some ceeeeeeeeeereal?" I love to say that because it drives him crazy). Me and MB? Not so much. I proudly bragged about eating 1/2 a wheat tortilla and a slice of turkey for brekkies lots of mornings and Jacquie, naturally, gave me bucketloads of crap for that. (For no good reason; it's the perfect breakfast.)

But none of that is important right now. What is important is not what one cooks, but what one does with it after one cooks. I mean, the day after one eats it for the first time. The day it becomes (da-da-da-da...) Leftovers. Or, as they say in the vernacular, Lefties.

So. For this weekend's 3-way? Lefties. Tell.

Ellie:
I love lefties almost as much as Jacquie loves salty snacks (hmmmmmm.... my weekend 3-ways seem to be about food lately.....). I live for Lefties. I do! I Live for Lefties.

Our years on the road meant living out of a cooler, which meant limited resources, and limited space. We cooked with lefties in mind. Grilling chicken on an open fire meant chicken quesadillas in a few days. Making a pasta salad meant, well, pasta salad quesadillas in a few days. Basically we lived on cooler quesadillas.

But those habits translated to life in a house, too. Take tonight. I'd made a perfectly fine, perfectly delicious dinner the other night -- pasta, spinach, mushrooms, peas, with the leftie rice pilaf, and leftie asparagus cooked with olive oil and garlic and ginger thrown in. What? Was I not going to eat those lefties?

Anyway. Tonight? Tonight Mistah, the Master of Lefties, transformed that leftover pasta into a dish better than the original. He cooked it in more olive oil, added eggies (a la Dibble) and parmesan and his special Schleckah touch, and it was just absurdly, ridiculously good. So good I -- I mean one -- couldn't help but hit the leftie-lefties even after they were put away in the fridge.
.

See?

Jacquie:

ooooooh, that looks good. I love lefties, I do. But I'm not afraid to opt out, either. I do not subscribe to the philosophy that requires consumption of lefties before any other, newer, better food can be enjoyed. Sometimes my lefties languish. There comes a point when they fall into the "life's too short" category. I remember when you were here, Ellie, and I was trying to talk you into going out for dinner one night but you were married to the lefties... and I think they were like 3rd day lefties; so I was giving you shit as I'm prone to do, and schlekah started to joke that you were going to whip up a souffle from the half ramekin of sauteed mushrooms and overdue milk and eggs. Ohhh, the funny.

We are big mexican food fans around here, and there is simply no food more versatile or wonderous when it comes to transformative lefties. It's just all so YUM, and you can dump it in or out of various forms of tortilla to recreate a magnificent meal.

I also love to crank out a soup or stir fry or salad with all the various bits from the current leftie brigade. I think that Ellie and I are prone to have perpetual lefties because we learned to cook in a family of 8 foodies, always eating with one eye on the platter to make sure that we get more. I always cook for 8 - anything less is simply not enough. Seriously. What good is a meal if it's gone when you're done?

Beth:
You guys are funny. And passionate. About your leftovers.

I too love lefties. Most food is great the next day, excepting, of course, dressed green salad. Blech. I don't go there.

Like Jacquie, I love Mexi lefties, but my favorite is leftover pasta and pizza. Who doesn't love a big leftover slice in the morning? Oozing cheese and slightly soggy crust? Yum.

My husband is not a big leftie fan. In fact, I have to strong arm him just to get the lefties into a proper Tupperware and into the fridge. The irony, and reason, being that he eats them all as a mid-night snack.

My brother did the exact same thing, only earlier in the evening. Lefties in our house after my brother was, say, 14 or so, rarely made it to the next morning.

Geez, when I think about it, I suffered through years of being left out of lefties and it looks like my future years hold the same in store.

Maybe I should start cooking for eight.....