Week of Eating In Days Four and Five: To Travel and Not Eat Out

That is the question. It is quite possibly the most perplexing thing about not eating out. We live in a culture that travels a lot -- whether it's just a twenty-minute commute to work each day in a car or perpetually being "between" two coasts, or countries, by plane. I wonder about our wandering if it isn't the reason why take-out or fast food was created in the first place. Eric Schlosser certainly makes a causality seem logical in his tour of interstate highway development in Fast Food Nation: the more we hit the road, the more we press the brakes on preparing meals ourselves.

Chilaquiles Con Leftovers

Note: This is not a recipe. Ceci n'est pas une recette. It is more a suggestion, and as so many traditional peasant dishes are, a great way to use up leftovers. Like chilaquiles, a common breakfast in Mexico. Now, whenever there's a bag of stale tortilla chips leftover from some party, it's a common breakfast for me, too. Alright, and midnight snack. Dinner? Why not. And seconds, please.

Seared Turnips with Leftover Vegetable Stir-Fry

There is a dish in Cantonese cuisine called turnip cake. Then there is a dish with turnip cake, chopped into cubes, and stir-fried with bean sprouts, scallions, some other veggies and often peanuts. I’m quite certain this latter dish was a leftover invention. The very best turnip cake (which is actually made from radish but I’ll get to that later) in my opinion is seared to a beautiful crisped surface, and is soft and mushy on the inside, like glutinous mashed potato, with chunks of radish and minced dried shrimp or Chinese sausage. If uneaten in this heavenly state, the leftover turnip cake firms up a little, becomes drier and basically needs a boost. I thought I'd interpret this latter dish, only with slices of real turnip instead of the cake.

Cabbage, Pear & Pistachio Salad (and Leftover Chutney)

What happens when you: 1) make a great batch of something, eat it, and love it; 2) eat it for leftovers, and love it; 3) eat it for leftovers again, and kind of loved it more the first or second time you ate it; 4) can't stand to look at it in the refrigerator anymore? I know. Even with my favorite foods, there comes a limit to my tolerance to it after consecutive encores. That's where the brazen versatility of leftovers comes into play. In the case of this raw, slaw-like salad, it knows no cultural boundaries, either.