My dining room table in a most unusual state: Clear of clutter

My husband walked into my office yesterday afternoon and dropped some knowledge on me. His parents are coming over. I didn’t even wait to hear anything else he had to say. I just ran screaming into the dining room to clean up my leaning tower of junk before they arrived. You see, I have a horrible habit. I walk through the front door and unload everything onto the dining room table like it’s my own personal dumping ground. Newspapers. Receipts. The dog’s leash. Mail. Empty coffee mug. My Invisalign retainers. My purse. Pennies. Work I.D. Sunglasses. Pedometer. Earrings. You get the idea. The pile grows and grows over several days until the fire department leaves notice to clean it up. This bad habit is all the more infuriating because I’m not even sure why I do it. Sure, it’s convenient in the moment. But then there is the gross inconvenience of cleaning it all up, usually when I am frantically searching for something while trying to simultaneously run out the front door. So, here goes. In an effort to break myself of this stupid habit I cleared off the dining room table once and for all and wrote a note to myself to remind me of my new resolution. The goal: From now on, I will walk into my home like a civilized human being and place items where they belong. WHAT A CONCEPT! Newspapers go into the recycling bin or the reading pile. Receipts get filed or shredded. The dog’s leash goes in the basket near the front door. And so on. I put the date — Oct. 29, 2011 — in the upper-right left corner. If I stick with this for 30 days it should work, right??? My husband is allowed to hit me in on the nose with a rolled up newspaper if I fail to follow through. Do you have a dumping ground in your house? What do you do to beat back the clutter? I ask because this is just one problem spot in my house….

Extreme clutter-busting: It's sad that it has come to this.

How to use leftover corned beef

If you’ve got a fridge, you’ve got leftovers. But have you noticed that no one likes to talk about leftovers? (Unless it’s Thanksgiving.) Well, I love leftovers and I’m always on the lookout for new, creative suggestions. I launched this blog as a way to share those recipes and ideas. Got some? I want to hear all about it! Even better: Send me a photo so I can showcase it here and link back to your blog.

I love leftovers because I just don’t have time to make dinner from scratch each night. (I honestly don’t know how people manage to do it. Hats off to ‘em.) I’m a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, and I commute up to two-hours a day in — ugh — L.A. traffic. My day starts with a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call because I’m training for the L.A. Marathon and if I don’t get my workout done in the morning, it just ain’t happening. By the time my husband gets home around 7 p.m., hungry as a bear, I’m already eyeing my pillow. I don’t know where I would be without a fridge full ‘o leftovers. (Actually, I do know where I would be: At a restaurant, squandering my paycheck, and falling asleep in the soup.)

My week-night meals have to do double duty. If I am going to cook dinner one night, I have to figure out a way to have a super easy meal the next night, ideally a meal that involves no cooking at all. Above: Reuben sandwiches I make using leftover corned beef. The real beauty of this meal is the foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. No cooking beyond a few minutes in the broiler, and no clean-up beyond two dishes and some silverware. (My real genius is finding ways to dodge dishes!)

When I sit down over the weekend and plan my dinners for the work week, I’m banking on meals that will fall into one of these three leftover categories:

–Cook once, serve twice: Meals that are so good, I make twice as much and freeze for another night. You know, like casseroles and such. Then, when I get home, all I have to do is slide it into the oven, and channel surf or do laundry and pay some bills until — R-I-I-I-NG! — the timer goes off.

–Double-Duty dinners: I prepare one ingredient for dinner one night, and then find a way to turn it into a different meal the next night. The classic: Roasted chicken tonight, and a cold roasted chicken salad tomorrow night. Or slow cooked corned beef one night, and no-cook Reubens the next.

–The Smorgasbord: This is a fancy way of saying a “clean-out-the-fridge” meal. I find that this usually occurs on Friday nights, after several days in which little tidbits and leftover leftovers have had a chance to pile up in the fridge.

I try to make dinner at home at least five nights a week. And if I plan it right, I can manage to get five meals on the table, with only one night of cooking. The rest of the nights are heat-and-serve meals — I don’t really consider that cooking — or assembly-only meals. (Like a salad.)

I wish I could say I invented this easy peasy and approach. But I did not. It’s what I saw growing up. I come from a family that frowns on waste and throwing out food. At the same time, my father is absolutely NEUROTIC about making sure food is not sitting around in the fridge long enough to spoil. That pretty much meant that food had to be consumed within a few days time, or else it went straight into the trash. The result: my parents excelled at not buying more than they needed, keeping a well-stocked freezer and pantry, and creative meal planning. The goal was to make sure that the fridge was running on empty just in time for the Sunday morning trip to the supermarket.

Anywhoo, this blog is an homage to leftovers and to my parents, and an attempt to expand my repertoire of leftover recipes.

Here’s to always having something in the fridge.

xoxo

P.S. I know my photos are lousy. I’m working on it!