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It’s no secret that I have trouble seeing leftovers in the fridge, and even more trouble throwing good food away.  Here are a few interesting uses for some things I found hanging around in the kitchen this past month.

We’ve had some apple cider in the fridge for a couple weeks now, a couple of cups in the bottom of a two quart jug.  Neither me nor my husband has been drinking it with the gusto that comes with a first taste in early fall, so there it sat.  I used it as a braising liquid for pork chops.  Yum.

In the cupboard I had a sleeve of Girl Scout tea cookies that while unopened had been there too long.  I pulverized them in the food processor with some dried cranberries and melted butter to make a yummy crumb crust for a pumpkin pie.

That same pie yielded extra filling that I wasn’t counting on.  I really only needed about two-thirds of the filling a standard recipe for a 9-inch pie calls for, due to the thickness of the crumb crust I had made.  I stowed the extra filling in the fridge along with the bottom of the can of evaporated milk I hadn’t finished.  Today, I combined the filling and the milk with two extra tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of canola oil.  I mixed it well with a bowl of dry ingredients consisting of one cup all purpose flour, a half teaspoon of baking soda, a half teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and a half cup of oatmeal.  Voila!  The result was enough batter for eight fragrant and moist muffins.  I baked them at 375 degrees for about twenty minutes.

“Waste not, want not,” is pleasantly true when really good things come out of disparate bits and pieces.  I’ve got half a roasted chicken sneering at me from the fridge right now, but with a little innovation, it’ll be rockin’ dinner yet again one night this week.  Maybe with my leftover marinara, capers, and wine I can negotiate some cacciatore.