In Love with Leftovers 09: Nachos

As I mentioned earlier this month, I've started a new thing this year. I cook a couple main dishes and usually a breakfast item over the weekend. I have a 1/2 work day on Mondays so often the cooking spills over into Monday afternoon. Then I put everything in containers in the refrigerator and I have ready-to-eat meals all week long. As long as plan correctly and have some fresh salad items on hand, I have well balanced meals for every meal. There are no more junk food dinners, except on the rare hormonal occasion ;-), and I end up saving money. There is rarely any wasted food and I don't run into the grocery to get hummus and rice crackers every day for lunch because "it's really the only thing I can have that I don't have to prepare." I feel better, my skin is clearing back up and I'm losing weight - slowly but surely. Basically, I'm loving it.

One of the things I love most about this new plan is this: as the week begins drawing to a close, I have leftovers of some things. I enjoy taking those items, adding some new ingredients and making completely different meals out of them. I do this partially out of boredom for the same things for a couple days and partially out of actually wanting to prepare something. Admittedly, another reason is so that you'll have something to look at :-) Throughout the year, I'm going to try to look at the food in my refrigerator like I look at the clothes in my closet : when I get tired of the same outfits, I mix up the pieces to get new outfits. Here begins my journey of being "In Love with Leftovers"

I had leftover:

• Black Beans (Veganomicon)
• chick cheese (The Ultimate Uncheese book - my copy should be coming today!)
• A little piece of red bell pepper
• Some quickly fading green onions

My mother had just bought me a beautiful bag of veggie tortilla chips from Trader Joe's. Yum! And I had just purchased some lovely grape tomatoes for the upcoming week's salads. Nachos were in order.

First I thinned the chick cheese with water and added chopped red bell pepper and one sliced green onion. I added Texas Pete (one of my favorite men - he's always in my refrigerator!) for a little kick and had a wonderful cheese sauce.

I arranged some of the chips on the plate, topped with black beans, grape tomatoes (cut in 2-3 pieces) and covered in the sauce. Then I microwaved the whole thing until warm. The chips were soggy because of the thin cheese (which did thicken up a little more when cooking) so they were a mess to eat. So in the future, I'd warm everything up and just put them on top of the chips after heating. They aren't much to look at. In fact, I realize they look a little gross, but they surely were delicious!