Day 54: Six degrees of bacon

I like it when each meals provides a stepping stone to the next.

This week, it all started with a package of bacon.

I cooked some up and put it into a pie plate filled with the remains of a bag of frozen hashbrowns. I added two half blocks of cheese left over from other recipes, leftover broccoli, and eggs and milk. Ta-da: quiche!

Tonight I threw some dried beans into the crockpot with the rest of the bacon. After cooking on low for 10 hours, I added some seasoned salt and served them with homemade cornbread muffins and sweet potatoes. 

Three days from now, those leftover beans (sans the largest pieces of bacon) will get mashed to become burrito filling. 

This week there was also a secondary story line involving stir fry made from leftover rice, leftover cooked veggies, and a minuscule amount of chicken left in the freezer after making BBQ crockpot chicken for sandwiches.

I'm sensing a theme: if you want to use up your leftovers, make lots of stir fry and quiche. And be willing to have a lot of non-recipe meals.

If you're not bringing home the figurative bacon, it helps when you can stretch the literal bacon.

Day 7: Mmmm Mmmm Mung Bean

I recently discovered the deliciousness that is (are?) mung beans.**

**Blushing...sorry, Mom. I know you taught me subject/verb agreement at some point during my 12 year homeschooling career but I have forgotten and am too lazy at the moment to consult a grammar book.

Health food? Well, no.

But then again, aside from some additional vitamins and protein, spaghetti noodles aren't exactly a wonder food either. Not to mention that to people like me, they're significantly UNhealthier if I end up getting sick from them. I solved the lack of protein by stir frying with some pork and leftover veggies. To say I am scraping the bottom of my fridge after the snowstorm might be an understatement.

Mung bean noodles (also called sai fun) are unique but fun to cook with. There's something to be said for the novelty of eating clear noodles.

So give mung beans a try. You might hate them but then again, you might find a new vehicle for stir fry when you are totally burned out on rice.