Leftover madness

I've shared with you that Big D and I are producers in training, but I have to confess that the old me was equal parts consumer and waster- especially when it comes to food.  I threw away LOTS of food.  Ok, I still throw away some food.  But I'm trying to become a better manager of our resources, including leftovers.

Here are some of my recent exploits with leftovers: 

My mom gave us some leftover honeycrust ham earlier in the week that we used to make a few sandwhiches, but it was kind of gooey and just sitting in our fridge for the last few days.  I found this fabulous recipe for ham and broccoli shells at joy in my kitchen and doubled it, making enough hearty mac-n-cheese to feed an army.  Thanks for that HUGE frying pan you bought me for Christmas, Mom!  The family loved it and I felt so pleased at having used up the leftover ham and broccoli taking up space in my fridge.  And if you've been following my recent posts on food, you know what we ate with our ham and broccoli shells. 

If you guessed zucchini, you're right!  Amy at the finer things in life actually has a tab at the top of her blog for zucchini recipes.  I've been frequenting Amy's zucchini recipe collection and trying a different one almost daily.  Last night I made cheesy zucchini crisps.   I love that last night's dinner was not only tasty, but economical what with using leftover ham and zucchini from Big D's garden.  Four kids finished off the shells and cheese for lunch today (the others ate frozen homemade pizza pockets).

That's not all.  Last night I threw together some crockpot oatmeal for this morning and overestimated how much our family would eat- by a bunch!  So after breakfast while cleaning the kitchen I had a producer's in training inspired thought:  I wonder what I could do with all this leftover oatmeal?  I was surprised to find a ton of recipes online for leftover oatmeal.  I decided to try leftover oatmeal bread and leftover oatmeal cookies.  I only know how to make bread in my bread machine so I used about 2/3 of the amounts listed for the ingredients so my bread machine could handle all the mixing.  Also, I added the flour gradually, allowing a couple of cups to be mixed into the dough at a time.  It still made two good sized loaves.  And the cookies went so fast that I didn't get the chance to snap a photo first. 

What else have I been doing?  I learned you can freeze shredded zucchini so I've been freezing lots of it.  This way I can bake our favorite zucchini breads and cakes even after zucchini season is past.  (You just have to try the cinnamon raisin zucchini cake recipe on Amy's zucchini recipes page.  It's to die for!)

And Big D is once again making his famous cucumber tomato salad with his garden produce.  He mixes his cucumbers and tomatoes with chickpeas, black beans, onion, and balsamic vinagarette.  It's delicious!

What have you been making with garden produce and leftovers at your house?