So I resolved to eat out my freezer, slowly, mostly in order to make space for future hoarding. It turns out it is no easy task. I have Costco-sized bags of frozen vegetables, fish and berries from yesteryear, and all kinds of irregularly shaped items that make it hard to close the freezer door without risk of injury. Years ago, when I was a more accomplished Type A personality, I kept an Excel spreadsheet labeled "FREEZER INVENTORY" on my refrigerator door. It was a good idea because my freezer now has become some kind of fantastical, mysterious Narnia - full of items such as eel, home-cured salmon, wontons, potstickers, berries of many varieties, bagels, shrimp, bread, frozen veggies, meats of many sorts... the list goes on and on.
In step with my renewed dedication to eating what I've made rather than making more food, today's lunch was comprised wholly of leftovers - a little bit of leftover rice, leftover wonton soup (now minus any wontons which were greedily gobbled up days ago) with leftover spinach from an undressed spinach salad with walnuts, and leftover meatballs made from leftover dumpling filling. I had originally planned to have the leftover wonton soup, but aside from the wontons that formerly populated the soup, it was completely vegetarian. I know my own tummy well enough to predict that I could not be satisfied with just vegetarian soup. The rice served to add some bulk and body to the soup, and by dropping two happy frozen meatballs into the mix, finally I had a well-balanced lunch.
There are many who turn their noses up at leftovers, but a leftover meal can be a more complex second life to your food, if treated properly. Think of leftovers having gone to a better place (the worse place being the trash). With the addition of chopped fresh scallions, I daresay I could have served this soup to normal people (myself being an exception). The only miscalculation was the occasional stray walnut that had made its way from its first life in a salad to its second life in a soup. Walnuts don't really work well in soup.
Nevertheless, until the freezer avalanche at home subsides, I look forward to more cobbled together meals bringing back pleasant memories of meals of yesterday.
